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Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

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Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#51

Post by michaelt »

inigyou wrote: post #35
throwaway87543 wrote: post #32

Authentication & Authorization is a OS feature. But instead of the OS collecting everyone's age, just give parents the ability to verify their child's phone is in child lockdown mode. Then the phone narc's to the website: "the user is under age". Not "the user was born on Feb 29 2001." We can rely on parenting to ensure a child doesn't have a non child mode phone. Enable parents, not control everyone.

OS vendors don't want to add this feature, though. That could be because they make their money from a percentage of IAPs and ads. And when they are mandated, like in Brazil, we HN commenters hate that even more, because apparently in Brazil it's illegal to sell a phone without locked bootloader, or an OS that can run software from outside of an app store, because the user might install an OS or an app that doesn't co…

IMHO a better approach would be two-layered tagging to indicate traffic from children.

Firstly traffic can be tagged by ISPs/cell phone companies, at the bill payer's behest (whose name and age has already been verified). Secondly, smartphone OSes can tag traffic at the behest of parental controls (which already exist).

Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#52

Post by fennecbutt »

throwaway87543 wrote: post #32

Authentication & Authorization is a OS feature. But instead of the OS collecting everyone's age, just give parents the ability to verify their child's phone is in child lockdown mode. Then the phone narc's to the website: "the user is under age". Not "the user was born on Feb 29 2001." We can rely on parenting to ensure a child doesn't have a non child mode phone. Enable parents, not control everyone.

Oh I would absolutely love this.

It would prove that many, many parents are incapable of being the responsible adults they should be and will just cave to their kids tantrums about their phone being unlocked so they can watch tiktoks for (sometimes more than) 8 hours a day.

Everyone in the UK is now using a vpn for everything because of these "won't somebody please think of the children" smucks. Now let's see if they make good on their end and lock their child's phone...

Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#53

Post by bilegeek »

techblueberry wrote: post #47
bilegeek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where it seems almost any attempt to gatekeep is seen as a freedom violation 1.) Because it always seems to have an outsized impact on adults. Then the predators get away with it because the platforms DGAF (for example, Discord has had a MASSIVE problem with illegality for YEARS, with boatloads of reports and evidence that was blatantly ignored, and yet NOW they need your ID?) And any gate design that COULD work wi…

Necessity is the mother of invention, kick all the kids off the internet, and let them drive their parents crazy until they let them out. I remember when I was younger there was consternation about people believing AOL was the internet. Now we’ve basically all settled into the walled garden. I really don’t know that there’s any more baby to throw out with the bath water.

Until

* CPS gets called?

* cops harass them again?

* the malls and many other places kick them out

* (at least for most of the USA) zoning laws and public transit issues are all fixed?

You cannot let individual families, even individual kids/teens, shoulder this burden alone. If your local malls, cops, and nosy neighbors have already clearly shown that they DO NOT want free-range kids in practice, would you risk the breakup of your family and bankruptcy from legal fees alone? (Assuming there's no community support, because a functional community wouldn't have this problem.) Kudos if so, but most people won't risk it if the chance of success is too low.

Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#54

Post by fennecbutt »

gweinberg wrote: post #36

Had to wade through a lot of text to find out that apparently Zuckerberg and OP both apparently think the internet is something you access through phones.

Tbf the majority of per individual Internet use is on a phone. Countries other than America exist...plenty of Asian countries where having a phone is far far more common than a laptop let alone a desktop.

Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#55

Post by fennecbutt »

iamnothere wrote: post #17
bubblewand wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attempting to manage this as a parent is hellish. I can't speak for other parents, but some standards for parental controls—the presence of which and adherence to might be enforced by law, if need be, and need probably would be since none of this is stuff vendors couldn't have figured out on their own long ago if they cared to—we could leverage would be goddamn nice and is all I'd really want. Especially as devices g…

I agree that it should be easier. We’re on a frigging VC website. Shouldn’t there be a huge market opportunity here for parental control systems? Why is this not a problem that anyone is going after? I’m also surprised that “family monitoring” stalkerware companies like Life360 haven’t expanded into this market.

>Shouldn’t there be a huge market opportunity here for parental control systems

Requires parents to be invested and unlike the OP (appreciate you btw) many parents are not.

No money/use in it unless people actually care enough to invest personal effort into it (which they don't, hence forcing solutions that fuck everybody over, like UK requiring id for adult websites).

Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#56

Post by senectus1 »

throwaway87543 wrote: post #32

Authentication & Authorization is a OS feature. But instead of the OS collecting everyone's age, just give parents the ability to verify their child's phone is in child lockdown mode. Then the phone narc's to the website: "the user is under age". Not "the user was born on Feb 29 2001." We can rely on parenting to ensure a child doesn't have a non child mode phone. Enable parents, not control everyone.

This sounds like a very neat guideline. I'd like to see this fleshed out further, but not at the cost of freedom (ie locked bootloaders etc)

Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#58

Post by [deleted] »

iamnothere wrote: post #26
bubblewand wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to make everyone abide by them, for it to not-suck. At a minimum, software and service providers would have to respect settings client agents tell them they have (as in the AppleTV case, it's bordering on pointless for platforms to even have them if most vendors ignore them) That'd probably be enough (plus something for school devices in particular to let parents set stricter settings during non-school hours…

I would think that as a platform like this grows, they would be able to build relationships with OS and service vendors to manage parental control settings via API. After all, this would take a lot of public pressure off of the individual vendors, especially for social/gaming/media platforms. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just decent.

[deleted]

Re: Zuckerberg's "fix" for child safety could end anonymous internet access for all

#59

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #29
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #14

I don't understand what position this article is trying to stake out. How is it Zuckerberg's fault that a California court called him into a courtroom demanding to know why he didn't stop children from using his platform? It seems like the author recognizes that he agrees with Meta on all the substantive questions here, but feels obligated to jump through hoops to avoid taking a pro-corporate position that Meta is ri…

Zuckerberg tries to avoid liability by passing the back to OS vendors. Article writer thinks that would be bad. Hence it's all the plaintiffs fault.

I don't think that's an accurate characterization of Zuckerberg's testimony. His primary argument for avoiding liability is one the article writer explicitly agrees with: the science of "social media addiction" is highly contested, and it's not clear that it's real nor that the plaintiff had it if it is real.

Nor is "passing the buck" a fair characterization of the article author's criticism; he clearly does not think that Apple or Meta should be in the business of age verification.

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