Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
1–10 of 123 posts
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#2- Ofcom sets out more than 40 practical steps that services must take to keep children safer
- Sites and apps must introduce robust age-checks to prevent children seeing harmful content such as suicide, self-harm and pornography
- Harmful material must be filtered out or downranked in recommended content
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#3It's curious how aligned this is with similar moves in Canada discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40298552
For those unfamiliar Ofcom is basically the UK telecoms regulator.
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#4No intention of protecting adults?
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#5> We want children to enjoy life online. But for too long, their experiences have been blighted by seriously harmful content which they can’t avoid or control. Many parents share feelings of frustration and worry about how to keep their children safe. That must change.
Yes, stop letting kids stare at screens all day. Yes, you are a bad/lazy parent letting the firehose of the Internet pipe into their heads.
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#6> We want children to enjoy life online. But for too long, their experiences have been blighted by seriously harmful content which they can’t avoid or control. Many parents share feelings of frustration and worry about how to keep their children safe. That must change. Yes, stop letting kids stare at screens all day. Yes, you are a bad/lazy parent letting the firehose of the Internet pipe into their heads.
I agree with you but the inevitable counter argument is that not letting kids have unfettered access to screens and the internet is impractical to the point of comedy. I personally do not buy this argument, and although I do not have a child, my sister has kept my nephew screen-free so far and he's well at the age where kids start to use them independently. What does he do instead? He reads, he plays games (he's allowed some supervised access to video games), he plays sports. Stuff kids used to do and were totally fine.
The other argument is that this makes kids socially isolated from their peers, because they all have and use these devices. If that truly is the case there definitely still is a way to monitor your kids device and internet consumption without giving them free-reign. There are internet safety settings for parents on every device out there. Kids are perfectly capable of communicating with each other through a variety of mediums, they don't need tiktok (or whatever app is the trendy one of the decade).
The last argument, when you present the former argument, is that kids are clever and will find a way to get around controls. Yea, no shit, that's what kids do. Your role as a parent is to monitor that and teach/correct them.
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#7It's quite obvious that Twitter/Google/Facebook/whoever do not have algorithms that scale where they can genuinely curate their content. Seems that obvious since Google bought YouTube.
Isn't it quite obvious that it's never been their prerogative. Nor protecting copyright.
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#8No intention of protecting adults?
Adults could potentially protect themselves, children absolutely can't.
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#9> We want children to enjoy life online. But for too long, their experiences have been blighted by seriously harmful content which they can’t avoid or control. Many parents share feelings of frustration and worry about how to keep their children safe. That must change. Yes, stop letting kids stare at screens all day. Yes, you are a bad/lazy parent letting the firehose of the Internet pipe into their heads.
I agree with you but the inevitable counter argument is that not letting kids have unfettered access to screens and the internet is impractical to the point of comedy. I personally do not buy this argument, and although I do not have a child, my sister has kept my nephew screen-free so far and he's well at the age where kids start to use them independently. What does he do instead? He reads, he plays games (he's allo…
Yeah I'm not talking about no access ever, I'm talking about the (very sad imho) situation where you see toddlers mindlessly staring at their tablet watching random videos/tiktoks while ignored by parents for hours, even if the mom or dad is nearby and and could be interacting with them.
Re: Tech firms must tame toxic algorithms to protect children online
#10No intention of protecting adults?
Adults could potentially protect themselves, children absolutely can't.
When facing off against an army of ML engineers and psychologists?
It is obvious that even adults are suffering negative consequences from social media, and if it isn't obvious, take a look at any of the studies showing the negative impact on adults of social media usage.
Every single consumer is outmatched. The only winning choice is to not play at all.