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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

#61

Post by jauntywundrkind »

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.

Colorado is trying to do this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47097904

It's just terrifying to think of an internet that goes from open & usable, to requiring only approved government devices & systems. Within a very brief time.

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

#62

Post by jauntywundrkind »

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…

The US also locking the bootloaders has been extremely extremely extremely saddening. Just remarkably shit turn of events.

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

#63

Post by GauntletWizard »

irishcoffee wrote: post #11
starkeeper wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will make children visible targets and be more exploitable.

Blizzard, the video game company, moved their forums from character name to legal name. I think it lasted a week or two before a ton of people got doxxed and they reverted. Curiously, people doxx themselves. That is like the entire business model of plaintir, collect all the information people volunteer about themselves and others publicly, for free, to anyone that cares to look. We seem to be at the bit where people…

I have no problem supplying my real name online - it's trivially attached to this account via my resume, and I use this account name all over. I also have several other account names, some disposable and some not.

There are plenty of reasons to be anonymous online. There's plenty of reasons not to be. I kind of wish that the government would launch a series of public political debate forums that required real ID, not that I think they would actually be valuable places for debate, but the technical challenges would be worthwhile to solve and the ability to publicly register debate positions would be incredibly useful for nailing politicians down.

The problem comes when the government tries to regulate one form or another, because strongly authenticated, pseudonymous, and anonymous forums all have their place in debate, and there's reasons for both public and private entities to host all three.

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

#64

Post by techblueberry »

bilegeek wrote: post #53
techblueberry wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m feeling very William Wallace, you make take our lives but you’ll never take our freedom. We cannot keep saying well the laws are insane so we’ll just let Zuck force feed them mindless crap and advertisements. Yes, people need to become more active in their communities to fight this bullshit.

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

#65

Post by hedora »

bubblewand wrote: post #39
hedora wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s definitely an inversion going on, where all the predators (individuals and corporations) target parts of the internet designed for children, and the kid’s platforms created financial incentives for themselves that mean the worst content bubbles to the top. I thought youtube kids was sketchy as hell until I discovered the current state of “educational” online games.

I'd never have guessed it'd be the case, but the number of "educational" games has exploded since I was a kid, while I'm not sure the rate of new ones that are any good at educating (not proportion, actual count) is even as high as it was in the '90s. It's kind of amazing. It appears that, for some reason, the market's way bigger but being any good isn't a useful differentiator for the purposes of sorting out who get…

As I understand it, Sierra acquired most of the educational software outfits, and then was acquired for stock by a company that had been propped up by securities fraud.

Here’s the story of the acquisition that killed the company:

https://www.filfre.net/2025/04/the-end-of-sierra-as-we-knew-...

That site probably has the story of the educational software consolidation somewhere.

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

#66

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp are not "the internet"

Anything that hurts Meta's business is arguably a potential step toward more "anonymous" internet access. Anything that helps to stop the process of indoctrination of future generations into and the normalisation of what Meta does is a step toward more anonymous internet access as it allows expectations of privacy to rise to previous levels

Companies like Meta have worked to systematically destroy anonymous internet use. Anonymity directly conflicts with Meta's "business model" of data collection, surveillance and serving users up as ad targets

Meta and "anonymous internet access" are mutually exclusive. Meta doesn't collect data about and show ads to "anonymous" internet users. It forces users to create "accounts" and "sign in" with clients that run surveillance-related code on the users' computers without the user's input. It builds profiles of internet users (ad targets), even ones that do not use Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, e.g., through the use of tracking pixels on the open web

Apple's and Google's operating systems also try to profile users. The companies encourage users to create "accounts" and "sign in". The operating systems intentionally provide a purpose-built machanism to target users with ads. If used as encouraged by the compaanies, these operating systems are incompatible with "anonymous internet access". The user is not anonymous to the companies, and the companies invite advertisers to use the computer user's internet bandwidth to deliver ads

It was not always like this; I owned Apple computers when there was no such thing as an Apple "account" and Apple's computers did not attempt to automatically "phone home" when powered on. Expectations of "anonymous" internet access amongst new internet users have greatly diminished thanks to Meta, Google and Apple

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

#67

Post by pwg »

trueismywork wrote: post #20
techblueberry wrote: post #8

I find it relatively strange that over the past 30-40 years, we went from a world where most everything was intermediated by parents, and “adult” media was relatively well gatekept to this online Wild West where it seems almost any attempt to gatekeep is seen as a freedom violation. Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms? But like, kids shouldn’t be able to sign a ToS until they’re 18. I have little sympa…

The idea is of general purpose computing. In past, you could restrict access without restricting most freedoms. Today's world, restricting access means restricting access to a ggeneral purpose computer. And thats the biggest deal.

Cory Doctorow:

Lockdown: The coming war on general-purpose computing

Jan 10, 2012

https://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

The article does reflect the issue at the time (the media mafia's boogeyman "piracy") and the thought that to prevent piracy, users must be restricted from access to "general purpose computers".

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

#68

Post by techblueberry »

trueismywork wrote: post #20
techblueberry wrote: post #8

I find it relatively strange that over the past 30-40 years, we went from a world where most everything was intermediated by parents, and “adult” media was relatively well gatekept to this online Wild West where it seems almost any attempt to gatekeep is seen as a freedom violation. Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms? But like, kids shouldn’t be able to sign a ToS until they’re 18. I have little sympa…

The idea is of general purpose computing. In past, you could restrict access without restricting most freedoms. Today's world, restricting access means restricting access to a ggeneral purpose computer. And thats the biggest deal.

Does it? If we had real control of our machines it doesn’t feel like this would be an issue.

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

#69

Post by techblueberry »

torginus wrote: post #44
techblueberry wrote: post #8

I find it relatively strange that over the past 30-40 years, we went from a world where most everything was intermediated by parents, and “adult” media was relatively well gatekept to this online Wild West where it seems almost any attempt to gatekeep is seen as a freedom violation. Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms? But like, kids shouldn’t be able to sign a ToS until they’re 18. I have little sympa…

For all the extensive list of my character defects, I'm pretty sure none can be attributed to me having seen Robocop at 5 years old.

I’m not sure if you meant this in support of my argument, but this is in fact, a cornerstone of my argument. Kids should be watching robocop and not force-fed Zuckerberg approved AI slop.

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

#70

Post by irishcoffee »

GauntletWizard wrote: post #63
irishcoffee wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard, the video game company, moved their forums from character name to legal name. I think it lasted a week or two before a ton of people got doxxed and they reverted. Curiously, people doxx themselves. That is like the entire business model of plaintir, collect all the information people volunteer about themselves and others publicly, for free, to anyone that cares to look. We seem to be at the bit where people…

I have no problem supplying my real name online - it's trivially attached to this account via my resume, and I use this account name all over. I also have several other account names, some disposable and some not. There are plenty of reasons to be anonymous online. There's plenty of reasons not to be. I kind of wish that the government would launch a series of public political debate forums that required real ID, not…

> I have no problem supplying my real name online - it's trivially attached to this account via my resume, and I use this account name all over. I also have several other account names, some disposable and some not.

You’re aware and made a choice, that’s good. Most people are not aware and have not elected to make this choice. This is a heavily-conversed topic on this and many other sites.

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