Now you’ve given every parent a way to easily mass block all adult/social sites/apps if they want and no one’s privacy need be compromised.
Now you’ve given every parent a way to easily mass block all adult/social sites/apps if they want and no one’s privacy need be compromised.
A much better idea was a .kids domain where the content was vetted, and you could allow-list your child's device to that. Much easier than trying to migrate everyone over to specific TLDs, especially when that ship has sailed already. But that never got traction either.
Edit to add: I used to work on "family safety" software. Blocking bad content doesn't work - it's too difficult of a problem. Walled gardens do work, however. The fact that there's not a push for the equivalent of an Apple App Store for kids is probably evidence of ulterior motives on behalf of regulators.
My family has tried the curated "kids" content from the major players: It's junk and not going to be interesting to a teenager. Your 14 year old is not going to be satisfied with a version of Netflix that's all Bluey and Daniel Tiger. And your 5 year old probably shouldn't be watching stuff that's made for teenagers. But our regulatory hammer knows only "kid" or "not-kid". You can't make a single walled garden.
Even within a single age. My 15 year old might not be ready for content that your 15 year old finds to be routine. How is YouTube going to know what is appropriate for any given 15 year old? Walled-off content and numerical age gating is just not a workable solution.
And even then, what about social networks showing porn? Chat apps like Whatsapp and Discord having porn etc groups?
Any platform that accepts user-generated content, from Pinterest to Ebay to forums, etc can host it. And that's just what's on the public internet.
Is it better to have TikTok AND friends, or no TikTok and no friends? Sure, the best is no TikTok and still have friends, but you can't always have it all.
"Also not using tiktok" could be one such filter.
* Buy one themselves
* Get / use a friend's
* Use public internet access points
* Need one for school
* Use the smart fridge / tv / gaming console / anything with a browser
* Access stuff in Minecraft, Roblox, etc
You can only stop it by going offline and raising them in a cabin in the woods, which is a whole other thing.
What you can do is give them The Talk, of course (but that only helps / prevents to a point, it's more to prepare them for what they may find or how they can identify problematic things). And the other is to push back as a community effort, with e.g. many schools banning kids from having phones in the first place.
Best is to assume they have access to it one way or another if they seek it. The discussion should not be about banning vs allowing, it should be focused around how to deal with situations that arise regardless.
Education about the subject and why kids shouldn't seek access is quite effective, additionally they will be informed once they are allowed access. Think about how the last decades saw a sharp decline in smoking and alcohol consumption.
One problem (there are others) is that it's not always possible (or easy) to not give your kid a smartphone, or access to social media.
Imagine that your kid doesn't have those and is having a hard time at school because all the other kids do have them. They have a whole culture based around those, and your kid is excluded from it. What do you do? Tell your kid that it's okay to wait 10 more years before hoping to not be excluded?
The only way this can go wrong is if the client sites collude and publish their visitor logs and then the government can do the legwork to identify you. But even this is pretty easily bypassed if you use a VPN.
More importantly, I don't personally have any faith that at least the US government could properly define and build a system that is reliably and provably resistant to tracking. The government has incentives to want to know what sites a person visits, the NSA would be loathed to allow that opportunity to go unused. The government also likely doesn't have the skills or resources to do it in house, I'd expect them to outsource it at an absurd cost to a third party that would also have incentives to want to track usage data through the system.
Specifically, daily personalized age verification by the specific app/website, not by a third party.
>The only way this can go wrong is if the client sites collude and publish their visitor logs and then the government can do the legwork to identify you.
Well, the government has the right to request proof that the company in question is properly conducting the age verification process. This means that the companies performing age verification will keep your personally identifying information (PII) and maintain an association between your PII and your account/activity on the platform.
On a different note, the government has the right to gather evidence of criminal activity, where the definition of "criminal" is under their discretion and if there happens to be a convenient stash of information that can be linked to your person, that's just a happy coincidence.
Failing in parenting and lobbied politicians (regulatory capture) on the other side.