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Comment by pretzel5297 | Hacker News Reader

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A complementary policy is to not give six year olds publicly funded mandatory chromebooks their parents don’t control. This can reduce the pressure coming from these parents to warp and twist the web till it is safe for a six year old to have free access to an uncontrolled chromebook.

While I agree with your comment at a high level, simply saying it's the parents job k thx bai is not going to cut it. Parents have to have the tools we need to do our jobs. I don't want the government touching it with a 10 foot pole, and no adults should have to give up their freedoms (these kids will be adults some day after all, so even if we're doing it "for the kids" we need to consider the world we're building for them), but the tools available to parents right now are way too inadequate, unless mom and dad are rich enough to buy enterprise-level tooling.

If we don't want to lose our freedoms, we need to offer constructive and realistic solutions that don't involve the government. Simply saying "not my problem" may feel good, but it's going to end up with a government-enforced tech dystopia.

Parents have the tools already here in the UK.

ISPs come with adult content disabled by default and someone has to opt in to it. Every major OS (Windows, Mac, iOS, android) ships with device level parental controls. Games consoles enforce these based on birth date. ISPs here also provide free network level filtering on top of that. All of this only matters if the parents don’t bypass them when asked.

If a kid is determined enough to get past Apple family controls and the network level filtering on their home network, they’ll have a VPN from a dodgy source in 15 minutes. The solution is to use the tools that are there right now, or accept that age verification is coming for everything.

> Every major OS (Windows, Mac, iOS, android) ships with device level parental controls. Games consoles enforce these based on birth date.

These are unfortunately rather half-baked and should be improved. Which is exactly what could be mandated instead of invading everyone's privacy.

Honestly though - they’re enough to “protect the kids”. Any kid that’s smart enough to get around them is going to be snart enough to get around a VPN ban.

You are right though - the fact that those controls exist and are in place and the UK government isn’t enforcing that Apple Microsoft and Google provide better tools (which would actually achieve the aim) tells you that what they actually want is what they’re asking for - a VPN backdoor.

The part I don’t totally understand with the age verification laws is that as I understand it, the websites need to implement the age verification. It seems like the bad actors just won’t do that, and we could’ve made compliance easier for the good actors by just requiring something like the Restricted to Adults label as a meta tag.

https://www.rtalabel.org/

Exactly. We need a standardized method for meta tags that accommodates arbitrary user (or rather service operator) defined categories. We also need a broad push to force all websites to adopt said tags so that parental controls can work effectively. Government enforcement of particular categories is one option there (but not the only one, browsers could just start refusing to load any site that doesn't send the tag).

I think you'll find that trying to neatly bin the internet into neatly defined categories is something of a fool's errand. I guess the canonical example is centuries old fine art that shows a bit of nipple.

what about whitelists? this never comes up anymore. I can load profiles from the 'child safety council' if that's what I want, and should expect to cover some of the overhead in evaluating all the submitted links. particularly in an educational setting, part of the problem is kids playing games and hanging out on social instead of working.

it seems a lot more tractable than trying to classify everything and get everyone to play along. let 1000 different filters bloom.

what's fundamentally wrong with that approach?

Whitelists have the exact same problem you're objecting to. Not everyone will agree what should or shouldn't be on one.

In practice I don't think it's an issue. What I'm arguing for is the infra to facilitate self categorization and (likely) also a legal requirement limited to only a few specific categories. For example the government might mandate that porn, social media, and user generated content all be accurately tagged and provide legal definitions.

Nothing about what I describe would preclude additional layers of categorization such as (but not limited to) whitelists. In fact it should improve such efforts by providing a standardized method they can use for arbitrarily fine grained categorization that will be compatible with other software out of the box.

Note that my tagging proposition could be applied per network request. So if the service operator wants to it should facilitate filtering out (for example) a comment section without blocking access to the rest of the site.

the point being that instead of there being a kind of commission to create a schema, there are a whole bunch of different whitelists. so if your religion objects to the existence of mangoes, then you can subscribe to a mango-free internet filter.

and instead of burdening the isp the publisher of mango sorbet recipes with ticking off all the right schema boxes, this can all be enforced at the consumer.

all the rest of these approaches kind of assume that there is 'reasonable' and 'unreasonable' content, and that we all mostly agree on the difference. which I think is fundamentally fallacious. do you really think we can agree, as a species, what PG-13 should mean for the entire internet?

I think you've seriously misunderstood the system I described. I'm saying we need first and foremost a standard for communicating such tags. It wouldn't dictate any categories, merely provide a framework for communicating any number of arbitrary categories. It would be immediately useful for the same groups that publish whitelists by providing a standard interoperable way for anyone to communicate categorizations.

Separately, I'm suggesting that the self reporting of certain categories be given legal significance and mandated. Such as porn.

I never said anything about burdening the ISP. Only the publisher, and when you consider the "burden" of self categorizing a few legally defined categories that for the most part already exist I really don't see an issue. What did you think these ID law proposals were for if not restricting access to various legally defined categories?

You have stated everything in your answer. I want to point out that the problematic starts with who controls the safety. Yes tech-constructors should be obligated to build their software such that the end-user can exercise any kind of required control and yes the parent should be liable. None of this require the government forcing identity through the OS layer.

I'm against any kind of age verification legislation, but this is a really bad argument.

It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."

In theory, one could implement age verification by negligent parent imprisonment, in practice, I don't think that would work, and definitely not in all cases.

If we accept the premise that children having unfettered access to the internet is a bad thing (which, again, I don't think we should), there have to be multiple layers to it. Punishment is one, increasing friction and "making honest people honest" is another.

These systems won’t work any better than identification requirements for alcohol and tobacco or anything else. Maybe you didn’t know anyone who drank or smoked when you were a teenager but they are pretty widespread even when parents aren’t negligent. Systems like the proposed ones will be even easier for kids to find a way around.

I’m somewhat in favour of these foolish attempts at control because they always drive innovation in technology to circumvent them and adoption of that technology creating a thriving underground scene. Content piracy and alternative platforms could use a resurgence and this is just the thing to get it jumpstarted.

I agree that the recent craze about internet ID checks are foolish but your example falls on its face. ID checks to purchase goods at a physical location are actually quite effective. They don't achieve perfect compliance but that's not a fatal flaw (or even necessarily any flaw at all despite what people might say).

Disagree completely, they were easily bypassed and I think they’re probably more easily bypassed today.

We don't hold parents responsible for most neglect. Why is this special?

Does UK not have equivalent to CPS?

We do - https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-protection-system - but, at least in England, as with most governmental functions, it's been slashed to near death by years of austerity and "small government" lunacy.

It's not lunacy. It's the parents' child, not the state's.

> It's the parents' child, not the state's.

And who should look out for the child's interests if the parents can't or won't?

Who decides what the child's interests are?

I would hardly define allowing your child access to the internet as neglect. Like anything else, like crossing the street for example, there are dangers that can be mitigated against by education by parents and schools.

The government is vastly overreaching in this and quite frankly if one argues that this is a good thing, then where to draw the line? Will we want to see government legislation for every possible permutation of potentially harmful behaviours or consequences.

Sorry Johnny can't come out to play because I have not yet bought the latest government-legislated knee guard armour to prevent a graze, and BTW I notice that you have not renewed the foam coating on your sidewalk, if Johnny trips and falls there...

Imagine having unrestricted access to meth. For the vast majority of the population, they’d continue to be productive members of society. For some, limited use might help them function better. But for a few, it would completely decimate their lives and impact the lives of many around them. They have absolutely no ability to manage their use, and oh, yeah, they’re also children.

Some will experience a significant down regulation of dopamine receptors caused by the constant artificial reward stimulus. As tolerance builds, more is needed for longer to get the same response, while the ability to function normally becomes more difficult. That’s screen addiction, not meth.

We regulate most things with that potential, even if it only affects a small percentage. About 1% of the population struggles with meth. 6-10% with internet related addictions and more like 40% among youth.

120 years ago, opium, alcohol, marijuana were a free for all. There was similar opposition to their control. Now it’s accepted as a public health benefit and most people would probably be shocked at how recent these became regulated.

My elementary aged kids can’t use “safe search” without being exposed to pornography, extreme violence, Five Nights at Epstein’s, flat earther’s, etc. Tech company’s have failed to create a safe product and when that goes on for long enough, the government steps in.

Worth pointing out that there are people (such as myself) opposed to the current drug regulations who will be put off by your meth example. The key detail is the part where it's being provided to children - in this case with the help of the school!

People will debate all day what should and shouldn't be regulated for adults but it seems the vast majority agree on shielding children from having potentially harmful things actively pushed onto them by strangers.

> It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."

Define “properly” and how often do the self-righteous themselves cause harm. I see a strong desire for people to want to “control” all outcomes on everything and have everyone in the world think and say and act as they want.

Yes but you see, my views are the correct ones and should be the only allowable views. Other people who want this are controlling and their evil views are simply wrong. If you don’t agree with me you’re a bad person.

“Properly” is the choice of the parent, except in some narrow cases we’ve defined culturally.

The last thing we need is society deciding in detail how children should be raised. CPS horror stories are bad enough as it is.

Nevertheless as a society we do have laws protecting the children, also the adults, on the streets. Why not having or applying laws for the online? Why should we expect or ask that the internet be magically better handled by the parents alone?

Because online is global, and you can't have effective local laws against a global system. Parents don't need magic; they just need to watch what their kids use devices for, and keep the devices in public areas of the house.

The main thing the state can do is stop requiring kids to have portable internet-connected devices for state schooling.

You are obviously not a parent. I lock down devices, lock down my network, then the public school gives my kid a laptop with access to nearly everything I’ve tried to filter. Even if I can successfully monitor it at home, the device is in their possession and out of my control as a parent for 6-8 hours a day. The government is literally bypassing our family rules and my ability to protect my children in the way I see fit.

For 90% of kids, that’s not going to be an issue and everyone can feel like they’re such a great parent. But for another group of kids, they absolutely cannot handle it and have not developed the executive function to be able to manage access to everything the Internet offers.

In the past we understood this as a society. Broadcasters on public airwaves had standards for what was appropriate. We’ve completely thrown those out in one generation and decided gambling, porn, extremely violence, social and emotional grooming and abuse, and lots more are all OK to give children access to, unchecked and with limited education. It’s really kind of sick.

If your kids are accessing things they know they shouldn’t, and you know they’re doing it anyway, is that it? We’re at an impasse? I really don’t want to tell anyone how to parent, but I’ll say that if I did what you described I would have been punished and/or grounded, because I knew the rules, and I knew I was breaking them.

Unfortunately, that’s not how addiction works. It’s hard to punish addiction out of anyone. Different kids have different nature and nurture, and for some kids, consequences don’t matter. I would have judged parent’s in this situation before becoming one. It’s humbling and builds empathy.

What do you do when punishment doesn’t work? When therapy doesn’t work? When strict control doesn’t work? When there is no remorse, shame, fear of repercussion, or ability to anticipate consequences or risk? When the kid has the highest IQ in the house but fails tests and doesn’t turn in homework because they don’t care about anything but their vice? When they literally spend 2 hours a day _at school_ on YouTube and games (among other things) on a device the district mandates they have?

Do you punish a child for years because they can’t function with access most people consider normal? When their siblings have all of the same access and devices and don’t have the same issues and would respond to rules and who would punishment in exactly the way you would describe?

Maybe it’s a parenting issue, but I’d like to think we’ve done far more than most parents could imagine for over a decade and come up short for one of our kids. Meanwhile 3 others are just fine.

ok, probably age verification and strict access control from the state solve your problem.. for some time.

But what will you do when this one will grow? There will be no restrictions - not from you, not from the state. Does restriction really solved the root problem?

Honestly, I don’t know. My hope is that as executive function matures, logic and consequences become more apparent in decision making. Children haven’t developed that yet. I completely get that in a few years, the training wheels are off and the floodgate is open. I’ve had family members, before internet was what it has become, that had similar problem, albeit in different areas. By their mid-20s they had figured things out, but lost several years.

What I do know is that we have an epidemic of mental illness affecting children and adults are crying about how it affects them. Privacy is important. Protecting children it’s important. Let’s have both.

It sounds like you should exercise your right as a parent to choose a different school that is more in line with your values, instead of attempting to force your values on everyone.

Fortunately many states are experimenting with school vouchers and other programs to help parents choose alternatives. It has some downsides (some public schools are having trouble adapting and special ed is an issue) but it may help with situations like yours.

Serious question: how do you get your kid(s) to another school? Add an hour of travel time every day?

Vote for school choice.

What you're describing, combined with the sort of state provided access being described, seems like it would incentivize the child learning how to lie and hide things more effectively. It's absurd that the school would facilitate such broad and directionless access to the internet outside of the parent's supervision. It's directly undermining them.

And how's the parent punishing them not incentivizing the same behaviour of lying and hiding more effectively? If you want something done on all levels, you need regulation on all levels - any hole will be exploited, and kids don't have such a thing as "responsibility" developed yet.

You mean the parent enforcing the rules? What are you even trying to argue here?

are the school laptops locked down at all? work laptops are locked down at most corporations and that’s for adults!

They are but middle school and high school kids are more creative, have less to lose, and have no concept of long term consequences compared to employees. School district IT is no match for kids with unlimited time, creativity, and access. Bypasses spread faster than memes. AI chatbots are blocked, one of my son’s friends ran a local proxy to his unblocked domain and other kids get local network access to AI. Installers blocked? Get a hacked game loader that looks like an approved binary.

You have a class with 30 kids with gaming (or social media or or porn) devices and a teacher whose just as internet addicted behind their own computer at the front expecting the kids to work on their own through the lesson while they do who knows what.

How much YouTube do you think you can you watch in a a high school PE class? About 50 minutes at today’s public schools. The teacher doesn’t care, the principal doesn’t care, the superintendent doesn’t care, and the school board doesn’t care. As long as the PE teacher’s baseball team does well, who cares, right? (Hi Scottsdale Unified School District! I’m talking about you!)

> Hi Scottsdale Unified School District! I’m talking about you!

Oh, I guess you’re not my neighbor. You had me going there for a long time.

Stories like this are everywhere. Parents don’t share them because they perceive it is an individual problem, and a shameful problem.

We don’t even have a good way to talk about the problems, never mind their solutions.

I don't know why you think I'm not a parent. What did I say that made you think that?

> they just need to watch what their kids use devices for, and keep the devices in public areas of the house

How do you monitor what a child is using a device for when you don’t have access to the device and they’re at a school that doesn’t care? What device is safe to use, even when in a public area? You’re able to see the screen of all devices I your house at all times? You’re awake at all hours monitoring public areas of the house? Would you think an elementary schooler could get into trouble with an eink Kindle? With an Xbox (beyond gaming to long)? With a school issued Chromebook? What happens when Screen Time fails and the whitelist of allowed sites and limits on time no longer work (as happens several times a year)? What happens when the locked down Chromebook allows arbitrary web access through a log in screen buried deep in help that all the kids know about and despite layers and layers of controls out in place the school device happily ignores them all and lets children do whatever they want?

The idea that a child can be given a device and that they could be monitored 24/7 suggests you don’t have kids, they don’t have any technology in their life, you don’t know what they and/or their friends are actually doing, or you only have children like my daughter. I suppose if everyone was like her I’d be naive to what most kids are doing as well.

I don't need to see things all the time - it's just a general communal thing that helps limit behaviours.

I do have kids, and they don't have much technology in their lives, but they are both preteens. They have a Yoto and we have a family Xbox that's very locked down with PINs.

As for the school laptop situation, I already said this:

> The main thing the state can do is stop requiring kids to have portable internet-connected devices for state schooling.

CPS horror stories should be the least of your concern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s-1990s_Romanian_orphans_p...

Since it is fashionable tiktok subject nowadays, you do it like genx and boomers.

We turned out alright.

>It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."

Like with normal cases - have court go over this.

But decision if any form of age lock should be implemented or not is up to parents. You cannot just shift argument to "you HAVE to restrict children from internet or else!"

What about the California version, where the government says you HAVE to offer parents the choice to restrict their children from the internet or not? That seems like a pretty reasonable middle ground, and solves the actual problems without denying privacy.

It has always been the responsibility of parents to raise their children "properly" (whatever that means). What is special about internet access that now requires the government to legislate for it, and as a side-effect, greatly reduce the privacy of the rest of the population. This is without even addressing the argument that these measures may even make the privacy situation for children worse.

> It doesn't answer the question of "what do we do about parents that don't do their job properly."

Nor can it, because it takes a village to raise a human being.

And in this (global) village, we have determined that we will monetise everything... and for the victims, there's thoughts and prayers. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_and_prayers

Is your child my child? Should I involve myself in how you choose to bring up the child, if you espouse ideas I disagree with?

We should be involving our community members more in the exchange of ideas, and digital sources of information quite a bit less.

Why? I certainly don't think as highly of my community as you seem to. But really, what is the value you personally get from opening up your life to your community?

It depends on the harm that you witness. Your question does imply your awareness that parents are not/may not be intellectually (or even morally) competent.

In no Western society that I can name are parents omnipotent owners of their children. Parents may even lose custody of their children. If you know that parents are doing physical harm to children, you have a social obligation to try to do something for those children.

Even though we may turn a blind eye, we do have a social obligation to all children. Human anthropological history reflects this.

Although intellectual harm tends to be seen as sunken cost (and possibly "correctable"), social harm has intolerable consequences.

No one is an omnipotent owner of anyone, not even the community, not even the government.

If you strip away conventions bound in law, governance the idea of community, and go to basics: if I see something going on that troubles me, I should take whatever action I think is appropriate. No 'community', no man made laws required.

This is the way! It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone, in return for not having to care about their offspring and the illusion of 100% safety.

I think the authoritarian trend accelerated during corona. Our western political nobility got a real taste for power, and they have not been able to free themselves from that afrodisiac ever since. Therefore chat control, 1, 2, 3, and when that didn't go as planned... lo and behold... age verification, and that of course needs control over vpn, and encryption, and there we go... chat control slipped in through the back door.

Soon we can no longer criticize china if this keeps up.

> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up

... every aspect of parenting.

> how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone

...is there evidence that it's parents who are the constituency you describe?

> It is frightening how eagerly parents want to give up freedom for everyone,

It's not like parents have much of a choice. When you gotta work 2 jobs to barely make rent and groceries, you need some sort of "safe space" to pawn your children off to.

Just my opinion but…

I’m all for helping people in the situations that aren’t of their own creation, so using the excuse “what are they supposed to do” doesn’t really fit for me? The first option is to use a condom if they are in a bad financial situation. It’s been amazing how every time I’ve used one, I haven’t had a child.

When did we stop making people responsible for their choices? I’m not against assistance, I’m against the idea that it is my responsibility to give up rights and freedoms because <insert person> made poor personal choices and now society is once again a surrogate to yet another child of irresponsible parents. If you aren’t able to parent, don’t have children. Don’t care what your situation is that rule stays the same.

And of course, someone will jump in with “but maybe” and “what if the situation changed”. Again…I’m not against helping parents who fall on hard times to get back on their feet — society SHOULD be there to help with assistance and programs, even help with getting your kids watched. And all of that exists. I’m against expecting every individual of society to not only help bear the costs, fund and administrate these programs, provide countless charities, etc…

But now the suggestions is also somehow that we are required to be the surrogate parent to every one of their offspring by giving up our rights to create an entire society of a padded playground?

No, I think that’s the line for me.

Parents can give up all their own rights they want and live in their padded kingdoms, but that ends at your doorstep when you walk out to the space you share with every other person…including digitally. You can build the physical and virtual walls around your padded kingdom as high and thick as you want to keep your children shielded from the world.

>The first option is to use a condom if they are in a bad financial situation. It’s been amazing how every time I’ve used one, I haven’t had a child.

That's what they've been doing in unprecedented numbers. Which via demographic collapse is going to cause an even worse crisis, economic, social, political, and more, further down the line.

It's also why some political factions are trying to ban condoms. Often the same factions that are trying to ban VPNs.

Yeah, I'm sure Kier Starmer is pro-natalist...

Good. If people can’t afford their own livelihood, then they probably shouldn’t have them. If they can and choose not to, arguments could be made about why someone would rather they make a different decision. But if “we need poor children in a welfare system or I can’t live my comfortable life” is what someone would think is the answer, there is something desperately wrong with the people who would think it.

>If people can’t afford their own livelihood, then they probably shouldn’t have them.

"Poor people shoulnd't breed" - Follow me for more ivory tower advice

What a stupid take.

Being poor and not being able to afford your OWN responsibilities at your income are two different things. I grew up poor, so yea, you can f off with your own ivory tower inventions while you go read what I actually said about how we SHOULD provide safety nets.

It’s incredible how idiots think living beyond your means at any income and then adding children is a good thing. If you can’t care for yourself then you can’t care for others. Not being able to afford your own needs is not caring for yourself, so no, shocker, you shouldn’t add an additional person BY CHOICE to that situation. People who would advocate that they SHOULD are seriously messed up in the head.

That's fussing around with symptoms. The real cure would be to remove the reasons parents don't have time for their children anymore.

"Being able to parent" is something you don't know about before you have your first child, and each child increases exponentially the difficulty. You can manage ok the first one and be overwhelmed when the second one is born.

Also not everyone is a trust fund kid that works at a FAANG: people get sick, lose jobs, divorce, change homes, and so on.

I'm really happy that you found the perfect antifragile optimum in your life, but this kind of "vae victis" thinking will only make parents more miserable and decrease birth rates.

love that not having kids when you can’t actually afford your own existence at that time is a hot take that no one could know in advance that they shouldn’t do. Also love that I SPECIFICALLY called out your argument, almost like you couldn’t even finish reading before needing to get in your super well thought response. That’s sarcasm, figured I’d make sure it was clear since the reading thing is up in the air.

I think that you should try to have kids (plural) before trying to make grand and contemptuous theories about parents.

Ah yes, the old “you can’t have an opinion if you aren’t a parent” argument. How quaint.

I think that you should try to have kids (plural) before trying to make grand and contemptuous theories about parents.

All of the people who say you should have kids if $X... will be quite happy in their old days to have the other irresponsible parents' children to wipe their ass and bring them food in the fridge.

I think that you should try to have kids (plural) before trying to make grand and contemptuous theories about parents.

All of the people who say you should have kids if $X... will be quite happy in their old days to have the other irresponsible parents' children to wipe their ass and bring them food in the fridge. I really hope that public pensions get scrapped for this exact reason.

I do not think parents are the one pushing these controls. They are busy raising the kids.

There’s an alternate view that parents are very much in support of centralized policy. When policy is left up to individual families — little Johnny X has an iPhone but little Timmy Y doesn’t — the creep towards everyone having a phone begins. When, instead, the school board bans phones it’s much easier for the conservative majority of parents to hold the line.

I'm more fine with schools banning frivolous use of tech devices on school grounds during school hours.

Banning phones at school has nothing to do with freedom to use phones. You are not restrained in your freedom because using you smartphone while driving is forbidden.

Kids go to school to learn, not to watch modern cable shopping network (aka Tiktok/Instagram).

I think parents are raising the alarm about nefarious social media practices (ie recommendation algorithms that actively do harm) and those services are in turn pushing these controls in order to deflect responsibility away from themselves.

Did you ever heard a parent asking for this in the real world? Parents who care either don't give smartphones, or dumbed-down ones that they can control.

Asking for less tech at school is not an authoritarian move, but rather a point of view about how schools should work.

If you asked me, I think that parents should throw away their TVs and minimize screen time at home, both for them and the kids. However I won't ask this to be enforced by the State - if anything, it will make my kids more competitive against the cartoons-infused ones of the other parents.

You argue against "individualist societies" but then blame "their parents" for not coping with the kinda impossible task of protecting their kids from big tech or the surveillance state.

It is a collective problem with collective solutions.

So your solution to preventing "surveillance state" is to unmask everyone on the internet? Now who has the inconsistent argument

I don't know the parent's policy position, but it seems like they didn't express one, and you've just assumed they support deanonymization?

Ye this modern view that more and more assumes polarisation of stands on matters is kinda annoying. I don't support deanonymization.

It’s become bog standard to just throw up extremely binary strawmen these days or otherwise bait people into arguments demanding sources that you can then point at and whine about. Zero attempt to understand or ask questions that clarify. Anything that avoids having to listen or express your own opinion in a substantive way.

where did they say anything like that?

I did not say anything about protecting kids from big tech or the state?

Even if I had, your argument is we must surveil more to protect the kids from the surveillance state?

I interpreted you as it was the parents responsibility to protect their children, ye.

I don't argue for a surveillance state. Authoritarians push authoritarian policies with convinient excuses. I do understand that.

I think there need to be a cultural shift and that involves the collective of parents not indivual families.

Like, my TV installed adtech shovelware over night and my son woke up early and watched it. Sport teams organize on Facebook. The school headmaster wants CCTVs. Door bell cameras are getting more and more common.

We can't fight those things as individuals.

Sadly, this is how societies eventually tend to become. They need the younger generation to be “properly” raised (definition of “proper” really depends on the society).

If the side effect is that you also end up controlling adults and making them behave “properly,” then that is considered a plus.

Not to be to overly reductive, but you could use the same argument for drugs and weapons.

It's not being reductive at all. I'm certain parent commentor doesn't have kids so they don't care. If someone was using the street outside their house to deal drugs and causing problems they would be happy for the police to "regulate" that activity.

It's just selfishness. "I want some privacy utopia on the internet (which can no longer exist, the internet isn't the place of the 90s and early 00s), so your kids can be exploited by social media and porn".

How does banning VPNs equate to policing drug dealing? The drug dealing is already illegal.

It doesn't equate; it's being employed as an analogy to address the justifiability of broad enforcement efforts targeting something.

The example you give doesn’t really track. If a drug dealer is outside the entrance of your home it’s completely unavoidable. A kid looking at adult material online? Entirely within the control of the parents. We already have filtering and monitoring software.

I know several parents that limit screen time, require screen usage be restricted to public areas of the home, have parental controls and filtering operating etc.. some of the parents I know won’t even let their kids watch a movie unless they screen it first.

If a drug dealer is outside the entrance of your home you can avoid it by not leaving your home. What if every time you turn on the computer it shows objectionable content? It's easily avoidable by not turning on the computer. Same argument. Is it a reasonable one?

Something must be wrong with your computer. I don't see objectionable content when I turn mine on? I'd have to actively seek out objectionable content and I don't even have any sort of filtering or parental controls enabled on my own devices.

I do, it asks me to log in with a Microsoft account and thereby give all my personal data to Microsoft.

Actually not, since I use Linux, but most people's do. It's much worse on my phone.

The drug dealer is a potential very bad decision in the making. And a potentially very interesting one for a young person.

The internet can also contain potentially very bad decisions.

I don't want to argue to block the internet, but it is just not black and white.

"Do you know who's responsible to make sure children are safe online? Their parents."

Parents have the responsibility to do what is necessary to protect their kids

In the case of parents v. so-called "tech" companies, who should win

What happens when the companies are protected from parents by Section 230

Yet platforms should be accountable for the harms they create (in some way it has to be regulated)

Harms to adults. No children should be on the platforms, and it's up to the parents to regulate it.

Expect more of the same then?

I've gotten exactly one response on what that looks like. The parent suggested writing custom moderation rules for his router. He was serious that this was feasible general solution.

That is a thought-terminating cliche. Everyone has some responsibility to everyone else. That's what living in a society means.

If Facebook decided to start showing hardcore porn to people it identifies as being under 14, would you blame the parents for letting the kids use Facebook, and not blame Facebook? If you would blame Facebook, that means you believe Facebook has (at least some) responsibility.

It's not about children. It's about re-introducing Stasi.

I do criticize where individualism and those kinds of societies have gone wrong, but I also think it's going to be very hard for a parent to control that.

A single parent, definitely.

A group of parents? I’m more hoepeful.

(In my country,) There are many levels of government between the individual and the nation. Sometimes that is a curse. But sometimes change needs to start locally. This is an excellent example.

As a parent, then, what do you do when a public school district hands every 7 year old a Chromebook and has completely inadequate filtering on it?

Take it off them when they're not in school.

Parents are expected to do more than you can imagine and everyone has an opinion on how they’re supposed to do it, especially in the US. You’re a terrible parent if you can’t keep a 5 year old from ever alerting somebody to their presence, but you’re also a terrible parent if you give them an iPad for a few minutes so they don’t bother people.

This whole thing where parents are expected to do it all themselves is actually a new phenomenon. Historically, across basically every culture, it was up to the community to raise all the kids together. To sacrifice and make compromises together.

Your parents likely didn’t have to deal with YouTube. There were basic laws in place that guarantee the content on broadcast TV fell within certain limits. Was that unacceptable to you as well? It strikes me that you take for granted the fact that you could never have been exposed to Alex Jones as a child. Let’s not pretend your parents knew everything you watched and saw, they just knew it could only be so bad most of the time. Yet you now expect parents to know everything on every screen in front of their kids with no assistance ever as the “attention economy” machine attacks all of us. It’s not a fair fight at all and your response is “parents just solve it yourselves” without a second thought.

I do not agree with all these age verification and surveillance state initiatives we are seeing. I am categorically against them. But your philosophy is harmful and frankly selfish. You live in a community. You have to make compromises.

Why should I be responsible for raising someone else's children or give a shit if they see porn? Who cares.

Sounds like you made a decision you regret and expect everyone else to bend their life around you. It is selfish to assume others will take care of your shitty kids.

> It is selfish to assume others will take care of your shitty kids.

FYI: your seeming inability to muster even a tiny bit of empathy is pretty strong evidence you're in no position to call anyone selfish.

Wow

Okay. How?

I have a little boy. He does not use computers yet. One day he will. His friends will have YouTube or it’s spiritual successor and everyone in his school will be on TikTok where they’re hammered with whatever brainrot gets the most engagement.

What do you propose, exactly?

What age are you worried about?

Elderly undue influence costs victims billions.

I shouldn't have to consider getting a parent an under 18 account to protect them better.

I will do everything in my power to keep the tech bros out of my children's life. Yes, that includes being a responsible parent. It also includes societal norms being established. Just as was done for alcohol, nicotine, movies, porn mags ect.

I guarantee you are not as dedicated as me trying to protect my kids, so there will be age gates, and that includes VPNs.

Everyone knows VPNs are only used for getting shit for free, so there is also a pretty powerful corporate interest to lock them down. In the case of the "corporate content provides" vs the "tech bros", the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I'll take a win however it comes.

Mozilla have picked a battle that will kill off Firefox, I am now not longer interested in recommending or using it. I'd bet their user base skews to older people, more likely to be parents.

>Everyone knows VPNs are only used for getting shit for free,

I don't use my vpn for 'shit for free'.

> Mozilla have picked a battle that will kill off Firefox, I am now not longer interested in recommending or using it

Presumably your support is for a browser developed by Google instead, as they are clearly not interested in surveillance or being in your children’s life?

Firefox forks are available, and will probably last long than Mozilla.

And exist because of the amount of work Mozilla does in keeping the browser up to date.

How many Firefox developers are actual Mozilla employees?

No affiliation with Mozilla, just a very long time FF user.

They don't release this info so I don't know. That said, the best info I can find is here [0]. It claims that 87% of Firefox's contributions are from "mozilla". Red Hat also contribute. If you dig into some of Mozilla's outgoings, a lot of their non-employee outgoing spend is going on paying other vendors to work on their software. At least some of these looks like "paying people to work on firefox but not mozilla employees" - maybe it's EOR/contracting stuff. There is a huge outlier in André Bargull too, but it looks like as far as this analysis is concerned mozilla are absolutely integral to the current state of FF.

[0] https://bkardell.com/blog/2023-Mid-Season-Power-Rankings.htm...

every corporation is running a vpn network. Every router manufacturer builds them into the firmware so you can safely access your home network. there’s a much bigger use case than free stuff.

I think we both know perfectly well that anti-VPN laws are not "make wireguard the protocol illegal" laws but rather "make it illegal for the websites you visit to not know your identity" laws.

How about this: nobody shall be unsafe online or offline, and the state shall guarantee it. That's a foundation you can build law on, instead of hoping every child got lucky with their parents.

you're describing a cage

I think North Korea is attempting to do this, for example by punishing not only the criminal but also their immediate family to a life-sentence in working camps, if the person commits severe enough crime.

I don't think it's as successful as it sounds on paper, from the comfort of our western society homes.

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