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Parental controls aren't for parents

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Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#301

Post by americantrash »

alembic_fumes wrote: post #69

This pervasive desire to block, protect, monitor, and control your children's online activities through nebulous supervision tools seems like a particularly American solution to a particularly American problem. Much like how little Timmy simply can't go out to play without a GPS anklet and an air tag behind each ear, so too can't he go online without a supervised account on a supervised device on a supervised connect…

I made the mistake of giving my child access to Roblox when he was 7, assuming that they did some sort of moderation. Luckily, the worst thing he found was a game that told him he was going to die that night. It scared the hell out of him. After doing a bit more research on Roblox, I decided to ban it from the household. I'm happy that I did, considering it seems that it's just a cesspool of predators.

It's fine and well to say the solution is to just be around more or take an interest in what they're doing, but that is hard to do with full time jobs, multiple kids, etc. Parental controls are supposed to exist to let the parents let their kids explore in a safe space. It's not about constant supervision or tracking, its more akin to hiring a babysitter rather than leave your children home alone.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#302

Post by denkmoon »

alembic_fumes wrote: post #69

This pervasive desire to block, protect, monitor, and control your children's online activities through nebulous supervision tools seems like a particularly American solution to a particularly American problem. Much like how little Timmy simply can't go out to play without a GPS anklet and an air tag behind each ear, so too can't he go online without a supervised account on a supervised device on a supervised connect…

Do you reject bicycle helmets and other safety apparatus because you take an interest in your child’s activities? They’re gonna have to learn to ride without falling off eventually anyway

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#303

Post by schwartzworld »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #284
dTal wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even save games without an internet connection? sheesh...

people can't even listen to music without internet, so this isn't surprising xD

You can. The same devices that run Spotify will happily play your mp3 collection.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#304

Post by lovich »

selectively wrote: post #295
lovich wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more pointing out that 22+ year olds aren’t people who were “recently children” unless we’re continuing the trend of infantilizing adults farther into their 20s. I was also under the impression that the faangs hired a larger % of post docs into their first industry job than most companies, so you’re also getting 27+ year olds as entry level engineers and scientists

I think someone who is 22 was 17 in the not that distant past. Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life and people I know in the physical world.

> Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life and people I know in the physical world.

How many people do they hire without college degrees?

I am legitimately asking. I understand that was a thing in the tech world decades ago but my understanding was that big tech’s idea of “talent” has evolved to include mandatory education credentials like at least a bachelor’s degree if not further education.

18 is recently a kid

22 is someone whose been an adult for an entire Presidential term. I might be splitting hairs but I struggle to view that as “recent”

Edit: removed an unnecessarily aggressive paragraph that added nothing to the conversation

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#305

Post by toss1 »

quirkot wrote: post #254
toss1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]? Seems to be a much larger amount of work to design, implement, and support a more-or-less dozen-step customer journey that does NOT work than just implementing a few switches. And that goes even if the switch must be designed-in from the beginning by designing operation for local-only opera…

>> Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]? Yes, absolutely. 29 separate overlapping settings likely match up precisely to arguments in various APIs that are used. On the other hand, what does local only even mean? No wifi? No hardwired connection? LAN only? Connection to the internet for system updates but not marketplace? Someth…

>>what does local only even mean?

Let's start with this: Design the architecture so the core system works fine locally. Features requiring Internet connection are in separate modules, so they can be easily turned on/off, and designed so they are still primarily local.

E.g., store all current status locally and if requested another module sends it to the cloud, instead of cloud-first.

E.g.2, install updates by making a pull of all resources and then doing the update instead of requiring continuous communication.

Allow user control with options to completely shut off, whitelist, blacklist, etc.

Simple design decisions up front to make a software package meeting the user's local needs first, THEN allowing controlled access to the internet, under the USERS' control, instead of designing every feature to contact your servers first and compromising both usability and control at every step.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#306

Post by toss1 »

pwg wrote: post #253
toss1 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]? Seems to be a much larger amount of work to design, implement, and support a more-or-less dozen-step customer journey that does NOT work than just implementing a few switches. And that goes even if the switch must be designed-in from the beginning by designing operation for local-only opera…

> Building 29 separate settings with confusing and overlapping effects is less work than making a single setting of: [Local Only]? The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by design. A single "local only" switch would (so long as that switch is enabled) lock out all manner of potential future revenue and recurring rents, which these companies very much want to see hit the balance sheet. So the 29 separate con…

YES, Thank you!

>>The 29 separate confusing overlapping effects is by design

>>designed to frustrate you to the point that you allow what they want from the start, the ability of the device to generate future revenue

And this explains why they are willing to do all the extra work to do it.

It is not even close to accidental or lazy — there is nothing accidental about the intention or going to the extra cost to build those dark patterns to screw the customers.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#307

Post by wojciii »

rsync wrote: post #221
BeetleB wrote: post #172

Just recently did this with XBox. I cannot prevent the kid from seeing the marketplace. I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that are rated Mature. It won't let them play it, but it lists all the games installed in the XBox. I cannot prevent them from downloading free stuff. It was frustrating and clear to me that this wasn't designed for the benefits of parents. I just want it to act like a console w…

These are not mistakes. These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between different business units. What you are witnessing is an intentional setting of a revenue dial to the maximum allowable setting that still permits the original sale.

> These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between different business units.

I don't think the companies such as Google*, Microsoft, Valve or Nintendo** have a Child Safety business unit.

If they did, the software they produce would work and I would be able set some sane settings once when creating a group of users which contain children.

What I am experiencing is user hostility when trying to limit who can chat or influence my children. The UI is usually horrible and some devices have no way of limiting or whitelisting what games can be played by children.

* Fuck you for not requiring TVs to implement the features required to use child users on TVs.

** Fuck you for making the of doing anything on the switch related to child-profiles a horrible experience.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#308

Post by philips »

grugagag wrote: post #273

I got my son a Miyoo mini, a cheap but decent emulator. I had zero headaches and was able to curate the game list as I thought fit. There’s no online (even thouh the device has wifi) for now and worked as expected, kid plays, gets bored and lets the device down. I will not let my kid play games online because that’s a too big of a risk to addiction or priming for this later. Minecraft has potential for addiction. By…

Me too! I used the "Five Game Handheld" setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rMB5z9dQw

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#309

Post by stackskipton »

JeremyNT wrote: post #143
Aurornis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. As a parent it feels hard to sympathize with someone who outsourced their child’s app usage selection to another company and didn’t even bother to check what apps were allowed first. I visited the Gabb site they linked to and “Communication with strangers” is clearly listed as one of the tags they put on apps allowed on the phone. You’re supposed to review them as a parent, not just assume that 100% of the n…

My daughter has always used a normal low end Android phone with the default parental controls. She only installs what I whitelist. It's really not that much effort. Honestly, maybe the Gabb Phone marketing is lulling users into a false sense of security. If you still have to do the same legwork as the default Android experience, what's the point of their devices?

It is, they denied WhatsApp and Discord in their app stores for good reason but allowed GroupMe? That's a choice and not what I would call a good one.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#310

Post by awakeasleep »

Ukv wrote: post #133
vorpalhex wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends. So that is "online" in the sense that it uses the internet.. but it isn't the same as a web browser, or an open store of every online app. I run game servers for my nephew. I know he only adds his friends and I can keep a loose eye on them. I don't care if his friends talk about boobs or make penis jokes (they're 14), I only care that there aren't any p…

> The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends [...] This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound supported. Clear how it could restrict to friends-only when connecting directly to another Nintendo Switch user, but a bit murky how it'd make that determination in cases like Minecraft where the client is connecting to a cross-platform user-hosted game server that is not associated…

Console minecraft does not allow connecting to self hosted 3rd party servers
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