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There is a much easier solution that already exists - parental controls on children's devices. I honestly don't understand why is it not solving the problem? Y

by johnc1 3mo ago

There is a much easier solution that already exists - parental controls on children's devices. I honestly don't understand why is it not solving the problem? Yes, parents are responsible to set this up. But parents are also responsible to lock their alcohol, drugs or guns, condoms, etc., and many other things. Perhaps parental controls are not good enough? That's where the regulation could genuinely help - require child-certified devices to implement minimum set of parental controls, and make them easy to use.

kaashif 3mo ago
That's not the problem governments are solving. They're solving the problem of convincing the public it's a good idea to end the anonymity of internet use.
- johnc1 3mo ago
  I know! What puzzles me is responses every such article gets even on HN - let's build some cool tech that 95% of the general population and 100% of politicians won't even understand not to mention agree to. Yes, government want to end anonymity and that's clear to some. But governments enjoy on a pretty broad support for this and many people supporting this believe it's a real problem. Suggesting to leave it unsolved or solve it in a way they can't trust or understand is only going to alienate them, making the government job easier. I think suggesting a simple, cheap and effective solution to this problem that has no impact on privacy is a way better way to counter that. I think local parental controls fits the bill.
  - subscribed 3mo ago
    People on average aren't very smart and will happily support programs objectively harmful to them and everyone else because the government and a nice lady from the breakfast TV says it's necessary to think of someone's else's children watching porn (this soundbite is gross. I don't understand how it's okay for the serious people to repeat it).
    - hdgvhicv 3mo ago
      Once again blaming the tv which barely anyone watches rather than the algorithmic feed in their pocket 24 hours a day. It’s not 1980 any more.
      - subscribed 3mo ago
        Naah, "nice lady from the breakfast TV" is mostly[1] an allegory of the traditional media narrative, but you can't seriously deny the impact and importance of it? If you deny for example Murdoch-owned media impact on the society, or the extent of the damage for example BBC did in the UK to the human rights or the discourse, I'd suggest reading more :) [1] one TV programme I remember (I don't watch it): "Good Morning Britain is the UK's most talked about breakfast television show with a weekly audience reach of 4 million people." that's 10% of the age group 16-64 here, not too shabby-- and that's ONE tv.
    - pmg101 3mo ago
      Of course it's accurate to say a lot of people aren't smart. A lot of people also may or may not be smart but have limited knowledge of this area and limited time/effort to expend thinking about it. I don't think you should rail against those things because they will always be true for every topic. Instead, people who have understood the deeper implications of this, for instance the typical HN reader, need to connect with the average person, engage with rather than dismiss their child protection fears, while explaining the downsides. Taking a high handed dismissive attitude will not help to shift public opinion.
      - subscribed 3mo ago
        But I'm expressing my opinion on HN, not for the general public? I thought that stating this, I believe, fact as a contributing factor in the creeping authoritarian climate would be understood without having to attach a handful of caveats and papers? (you're contradicting yourself)
  - pessimizer 3mo ago
    > But governments enjoy on a pretty broad support for this No they do not. They do an enormous amount of PR trying to convince people that they have it, though. In the real world when there is a ton of support behind a position, you see representatives of it all over the place and they are pushing the agenda and the coverage. In the world of online age verification, you just see a bunch of lame duck politicians using procedure to sneak policy changes in and keep objections from being heard, and a few government contractor-surrogates writing op-eds (that they haven't read.) When puritans go on the march, they're actually pretty loud. Most of the anti-social media people are hippy-dippy upper-middle class liberals who curse "screens," completely believed Cambridge Analytica's PR and think that Trump rules through mind control - who will be bothered by the end of anonymity; and the remainder are angry online right-wingers who think that they were censored by and as a result of social media. They're not marching together, they're not marching to have people identified when they're using the internet, neither of them are even prioritizing social media right now and they aren't putting pressure on anyone. The fact that it's so unpopular is why there are lame ducks doing it. They're just assuring their fortunes on the way out, and the person on the way in will pretend like they had nothing to do with it even though it will be will be passed and implemented on their watch.
    - intended 3mo ago
      The bills are being raised and passing in more countries than just America though.
    - KaiserPro 3mo ago
      > No they do not. They do an enormous amount of PR trying to convince people that they have it, though. Ok who is paying for that PR though? its not free. its not like all the UK kids charities are for it. > Most of the anti-social media people are hippy-dippy upper-middle class My kids school is very much not in the posh area of london (although they are trying to make it posh) they hate what social media feeds their kids _indirectly_ As in clips and trends sent to their kids via chat or DMs. It appears that what they want for their kids is basically a walled garden where the advert-content can't bombard their kids, along with the racist/violent stuff.
- refurb 3mo ago
  Precisely. The people in power would love nothing more than to stop “disinformation” (facts that cause social unrest).
- BoobertScoobert 3mo ago
  That's why they are still appealing to sentiment rather than established research (which actively refutes the arguments they are making).
- totetsu 3mo ago
  which begs the question, In preparation for what?
  - meindnoch 3mo ago
    Alien disclosure. In 1953, Eisenhower signed a pact with the Zeta Reticulans (grey aliens) at Holloman Air Force Base. This pact set in motion a century-long program of preparing humanity for the alien disclosure. Communication must be controlled at a global scale, to avoid mass panic and the collapse of society when the disclosure is announced.
- KaiserPro 3mo ago
  > That's not the problem governments are solving. They're solving the problem of convincing the public it's a good idea to end the anonymity of internet use. I'm really sorry, but that's giving politicians far to much credit for being able to plan ahead. Look at both the UK and the USA. The UK's just yeeted its PM because he had the personality of a block of cheese. The USA is currently inches away from shooting people if they mention the word green and water in DC. None of that screams "I am a master at planning ahead and manipulating public opinion in to doing x" The politicians have no idea about how this all works, they see that "social media" is causing harm (its not the only source, we might get to that) The public, especially in the UK really do not like americanised media being forced in their faces and want "something to be done" Again for the UK specifically the OSA specifically didn't layout a government mechanism for age verification. they left it to the end company to avoid the suggestion of tracking. Despite it being ripe for uberfraud and blackmail. it would be much more private if ofcom had published an opensource gateway to anonymously authenticate against. (assuming the thing was built properly and verified) But to the point you are hinting at Google, meta, apple and $OS makers already track you. This is not an issue of privacy persay, its about who can track you and why. I'd much rather a list of times I access a site that required age verification being stored by the government, than every single fucking page I looked at tracked by google/meta. The latter is already here.
  - defmacr0 3mo ago
    Formally politicians may be in charge, but at this point most political power derives from within the administrative state.
  - sethammons 3mo ago
    > its about who can track you and why. I'd much rather a list of times I access a site that required age verification being stored by the government, than every single fucking page I looked at tracked by google/meta. It is about what abuses can happen from that info. Google could sell your data. The government can imprison you. You don't think Trump wouldn't try to collect info on his opponents and weaponize the DOJ against them?
    - 3mo ago
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
Morromist 3mo ago
I don't understand why the act of buying internet access isn't considered a parental control. I doubt very many kids are doing it or can. Ok, but parents buy internet access and then let their kids use it, because the kids need it for school. So? The parents job is to keep their kids out of trouble. Learning how to keep track of what their kids access shouldn't be difficult, and maybe should be part of the obligation parents have, kind of like their obligated to teach their kids to drive before giving them the keys to a car. Its analogious to saying "kids shouldn't walk home from school or be let out of the house at all because they might wander into a nude beach or join a drug smuggling satanic cult". Most of us don't hold that view because we trust that kids can be taught to be vaguely responsible. What's more: tools to shield the kids have been around for longer than most of the parents have been alive at this point. The problem is pretty much solved in multiple ways, and wouldn't even be a problem if parents only followed their basic responsiblities. Also it isn't a problem in the first place, I haven't seen any clear, undisputed evidence that shows that kids are degenerating into fiends because of looking at adult stuff on the internet.
- mikestorrent 3mo ago
  The problem with this idea is that it assumes responsible parents, which are not a given. I agree with you completely - I don't want any kind of controls on the Internet - but we live in a world where we cannot actually rely on parents to fulfill what you would consider to be basic and reasonable expectations of parental duties.
  - DennisP 3mo ago
    For kids with parents like that, the internet is probably the least of their problems.
    - fc417fc802 3mo ago
      They certainly have other problems however the internet is unique in that it drops the entire world directly in your living room. Even with irresponsible parents zoning laws keep most children away from things like casinos and strip clubs (at least until they can drive) and everyone benefits from community efforts to keep the neighborhood safe.
wolvoleo 3mo ago
Yeah. Didn't you find your dad's dirty VHS tapes when you were young? I'm sure most of us did. And we turned out fine. And no, porn isn't more extreme these days either. I remember seeing bukkake, golden showers etc on borrowed tapes and hacked pay TV. BDSM existed back then too. And I had some pics of a girls face surrounded by male members and their output. Never once did I think this would be a normal thing to do with my girlfriend once I got one. And these things are still gonna happen. Teens are going to go through their dad's phone when he's sleeping, find his stack of Blu-ray's or vids on this computer. Even with all this age verification stuff. I don't understand why we suddenly think that's the end of civilization.
- redwall_hp 3mo ago
  > I don't understand why we suddenly think that's the end of civilization. Because they've been told to think it by the combined forces of Meta and the Heritage Project. They spelled it all out in Project 2025, a check list which has been followed nearly to the letter. They're also rampaging through libraries and trying to keep books of the shelves. Conservatives don't like porn, because controlling sexuality is part of the cult playbook to control people. (Addendum: they don't like other people having it. They're hypocrites, of course.) They also want to, while instituting a backdoor ban on porn, define everything else they don't like as pornography. Project 2025 repeatedly uses the term "pornographic" as a synonym for for LGBT issues and other things. The goal, after de-anonymizing the Internet, is specifically to control access to information and entrench their fascist Overton window shift. They're really sore that many Millennials and Gen Z had the internet as an escape hatch from local, abusive churchy bubbles and want that locked down going forward.
  - wolvoleo 3mo ago
    Haha a backdoor ban, I see what you did there ;) And yes that usage of the law by linking LGBT content to porn is something I've seen in Europe like in Hungary too. But even in the Netherlands, one of my friends is always foaming at the mouth about schools mentioning lgbt in sex ed class. When it's the most important time to prevent people needlessly struggling with their orientation. Luckily where I live this isn't a thing and it's still very pro lgbt. The city always makes a huge deal about pride month with posters and events everywhere. I do worry about the control over the internet too. And I've seen it coming for a while. When I was younger there was this WAN movement where people connected their WiFi networks together with parabolic dishes and the government was always trying to prevent and discredit that saying it was used for illegal file sharing (which it was but so is/was the internet). I'm not so worried for myself because I'm so technical, whatever restrictions they come up with I can work around them. But most people aren't that lucky.
ufocia 3mo ago
Children can buy their own devices. School issued devices are not under parent control. Parental controls and school controls are laughable. There is no incentive for OS vendors/retailers to provide robust solutions to this problem. PII industry is essentially pushing regulatory capture.
kerridge0 3mo ago
I was thinking that some kind of permanent physical attachment with passive electronics could be given to children, like an ankle bracelet used for home curfew, monkey's headband, a dogs shock collar, or just a nice bracelet, call it MoB, which couldn't be removed until they are of age. Devices they are given could be associated with those devices and not usable without them, if they disappear from passive scanning then they have been tin-foiled, etc etc. I've not seen any discussion of this type of approach which gives children something to aim for - freedom, and tallies with human historical culture as well.
- schneehertz 3mo ago
  My God, what a horrific and evil idea
  - kerridge0 3mo ago
    go on, spell it out - its just a thought experiment - how is it worse than the death march we're already on? and the inexorable march to control adults, this is the opposite of that, and it reflects the control we're supposed to exert over our children, in a pretty neutral way (it seems - waiting for your arguments to burst my balloon!). Society and parents control you while you need a parental guardian, then once of age you're free to do whatever we like.
prmoustache 3mo ago
I think their point is to protect kids who have parents so tech illiterate they do not know how to manage parental controls. Having seen some parents I kind of believe it but not to the point of wanting to implement ID tracking on everything.
- hdgvhicv 3mo ago
  Have decent defaults. “Is this phone for a child” and “scan this wr from parents phone”. 90% of problems solved. That said while Apple does a good job at parental controls, Microsoft is altered. Trying to have controls on Minecraft across a windows laptop and a switch involved a multi hour odyssey, creating tons of accounts for parent and child.
  - johnc1 3mo ago
    Or, just incentivize or mandate stores to sell "child-certified" phones with parental controls pre-configured (along with a physical plug-and-play usb key for parents disable them when the child is old enough).
  - izacus 3mo ago
    People aggressively attacked the proposal of California to add parental controls into OSes, so I'm not sure if that would fly.
- f6v 3mo ago
  You've got to be really on the margin of society to not be able to set it up when every grandma and her dog use smartphones. There're about 1000 different ways to improve the lives of such people without making everyone use their government ID when scrolling Instagram.
  - aidenn0 3mo ago
    I consider myself fairly tech literate and parental controls are incredibly hard to use correctly. I ended up just setting up an android phone with an MDM, because as someone with a sysadmin background it was far easier for me than anything I could find targeted at parents. The local school district has been issuing iPads to kids for about a decade, and they still haven't figured out how to block exactly what they want blocked. The system they give parents for monitoring the iPads is a joke (Apparently my kid spent 75% of his iPad time the last week of school on sites categorized as "web"). I am a member of FIRE, I am extremely opposed to the mandatory ID laws, but the state of parental controls is phenomenally bad and saying you have to be "on the margin of society" to not be able to set it up is so far from my experience that I couldn't help but to respond to this comment. I'm not sure what the solution is; a lot of people have suggested requiring sites to send categories (e.g. if every social media site was self-tagged, then blocking social media could be just a single check box in parental controls), but that probably isn't constitutional in the US (Compelled speech is usually banned under 1A grounds), and is subject to too much interpretation (seems unlikely that all 50 states would agree on a definition of "social media" much less "pornography"). Having devices send the age out to sites seems strictly better than ID checks to me, but is still a "one size fits all" approach to parental controls, I worry that if that became the norm the already mediocre controls that exist would atrophy, and it certainly would make it easier for malicious actors to setup a website to target minors.
throwaway72587 3mo ago
[dead]
rapidaneurism 3mo ago
There is a bootlegger and baptist thing going on here. One understandable point of view is that of parents that control their kids' phones, but other parents in the community do not. Then their kids are the only ones in the class without tiktok or Instagram or something. For those parents life is easier if nobody is allowed on these things.
- JoshTriplett 3mo ago
  > For those parents life is easier if nobody is allowed on these things. Get over it, and stop caring how other people parent their kids. Or, better yet, learn from them.
confidantlake 3mo ago
Why would you want to lock condoms?
- Tangurena2 3mo ago
  Have you missed the recent moral panic about the declining birth rates of white children? Brought to you by the same people who hate pronouns [0], trans people, and/or covid vaccines. In such a world, condoms will be required for non-whites (or race mixing relationships) and forbidden to aryan/white couples. Notes: 0 - For an example of using 2 pronouns in one sentence: "I am he". https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018%3A6-8&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018%3A6-8...
  - amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
    I am he As you are he As you are me And we are all together
lemming 3mo ago
...parents are also responsible to lock their alcohol, drugs or guns... No they're not - all those things are illegal for children nearly everywhere.
zchrykng 3mo ago
They very much aren't good enough yet. I'm a highly technical user and have had to move to using MDM tools to actually have something that works reliably.

by johnc1 3mo ago

kaashif 3mo ago

That's not the problem governments are solving. They're solving the problem of convincing the public it's a good idea to end the anonymity of internet use.

johnc1 3mo ago
I know! What puzzles me is responses every such article gets even on HN - let's build some cool tech that 95% of the general population and 100% of politicians won't even understand not to mention agree to. Yes, government want to end anonymity and that's clear to some. But governments enjoy on a pretty broad support for this and many people supporting this believe it's a real problem. Suggesting to leave it unsolved or solve it in a way they can't trust or understand is only going to alienate them, making the government job easier. I think suggesting a simple, cheap and effective solution to this problem that has no impact on privacy is a way better way to counter that. I think local parental controls fits the bill.
- subscribed 3mo ago
  People on average aren't very smart and will happily support programs objectively harmful to them and everyone else because the government and a nice lady from the breakfast TV says it's necessary to think of someone's else's children watching porn (this soundbite is gross. I don't understand how it's okay for the serious people to repeat it).
  - hdgvhicv 3mo ago
    Once again blaming the tv which barely anyone watches rather than the algorithmic feed in their pocket 24 hours a day. It’s not 1980 any more.
    - subscribed 3mo ago
      Naah, "nice lady from the breakfast TV" is mostly[1] an allegory of the traditional media narrative, but you can't seriously deny the impact and importance of it? If you deny for example Murdoch-owned media impact on the society, or the extent of the damage for example BBC did in the UK to the human rights or the discourse, I'd suggest reading more :) [1] one TV programme I remember (I don't watch it): "Good Morning Britain is the UK's most talked about breakfast television show with a weekly audience reach of 4 million people." that's 10% of the age group 16-64 here, not too shabby-- and that's ONE tv.
  - pmg101 3mo ago
    Of course it's accurate to say a lot of people aren't smart. A lot of people also may or may not be smart but have limited knowledge of this area and limited time/effort to expend thinking about it. I don't think you should rail against those things because they will always be true for every topic. Instead, people who have understood the deeper implications of this, for instance the typical HN reader, need to connect with the average person, engage with rather than dismiss their child protection fears, while explaining the downsides. Taking a high handed dismissive attitude will not help to shift public opinion.
    - subscribed 3mo ago
      But I'm expressing my opinion on HN, not for the general public? I thought that stating this, I believe, fact as a contributing factor in the creeping authoritarian climate would be understood without having to attach a handful of caveats and papers? (you're contradicting yourself)
- pessimizer 3mo ago
  > But governments enjoy on a pretty broad support for this No they do not. They do an enormous amount of PR trying to convince people that they have it, though. In the real world when there is a ton of support behind a position, you see representatives of it all over the place and they are pushing the agenda and the coverage. In the world of online age verification, you just see a bunch of lame duck politicians using procedure to sneak policy changes in and keep objections from being heard, and a few government contractor-surrogates writing op-eds (that they haven't read.) When puritans go on the march, they're actually pretty loud. Most of the anti-social media people are hippy-dippy upper-middle class liberals who curse "screens," completely believed Cambridge Analytica's PR and think that Trump rules through mind control - who will be bothered by the end of anonymity; and the remainder are angry online right-wingers who think that they were censored by and as a result of social media. They're not marching together, they're not marching to have people identified when they're using the internet, neither of them are even prioritizing social media right now and they aren't putting pressure on anyone. The fact that it's so unpopular is why there are lame ducks doing it. They're just assuring their fortunes on the way out, and the person on the way in will pretend like they had nothing to do with it even though it will be will be passed and implemented on their watch.
  - intended 3mo ago
    The bills are being raised and passing in more countries than just America though.
  - KaiserPro 3mo ago
    > No they do not. They do an enormous amount of PR trying to convince people that they have it, though. Ok who is paying for that PR though? its not free. its not like all the UK kids charities are for it. > Most of the anti-social media people are hippy-dippy upper-middle class My kids school is very much not in the posh area of london (although they are trying to make it posh) they hate what social media feeds their kids _indirectly_ As in clips and trends sent to their kids via chat or DMs. It appears that what they want for their kids is basically a walled garden where the advert-content can't bombard their kids, along with the racist/violent stuff.
refurb 3mo ago
Precisely. The people in power would love nothing more than to stop “disinformation” (facts that cause social unrest).
BoobertScoobert 3mo ago
That's why they are still appealing to sentiment rather than established research (which actively refutes the arguments they are making).
totetsu 3mo ago
which begs the question, In preparation for what?
- meindnoch 3mo ago
  Alien disclosure. In 1953, Eisenhower signed a pact with the Zeta Reticulans (grey aliens) at Holloman Air Force Base. This pact set in motion a century-long program of preparing humanity for the alien disclosure. Communication must be controlled at a global scale, to avoid mass panic and the collapse of society when the disclosure is announced.
KaiserPro 3mo ago
> That's not the problem governments are solving. They're solving the problem of convincing the public it's a good idea to end the anonymity of internet use. I'm really sorry, but that's giving politicians far to much credit for being able to plan ahead. Look at both the UK and the USA. The UK's just yeeted its PM because he had the personality of a block of cheese. The USA is currently inches away from shooting people if they mention the word green and water in DC. None of that screams "I am a master at planning ahead and manipulating public opinion in to doing x" The politicians have no idea about how this all works, they see that "social media" is causing harm (its not the only source, we might get to that) The public, especially in the UK really do not like americanised media being forced in their faces and want "something to be done" Again for the UK specifically the OSA specifically didn't layout a government mechanism for age verification. they left it to the end company to avoid the suggestion of tracking. Despite it being ripe for uberfraud and blackmail. it would be much more private if ofcom had published an opensource gateway to anonymously authenticate against. (assuming the thing was built properly and verified) But to the point you are hinting at Google, meta, apple and $OS makers already track you. This is not an issue of privacy persay, its about who can track you and why. I'd much rather a list of times I access a site that required age verification being stored by the government, than every single fucking page I looked at tracked by google/meta. The latter is already here.
- defmacr0 3mo ago
  Formally politicians may be in charge, but at this point most political power derives from within the administrative state.
- sethammons 3mo ago
  > its about who can track you and why. I'd much rather a list of times I access a site that required age verification being stored by the government, than every single fucking page I looked at tracked by google/meta. It is about what abuses can happen from that info. Google could sell your data. The government can imprison you. You don't think Trump wouldn't try to collect info on his opponents and weaponize the DOJ against them?
  - 3mo ago

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

Morromist 3mo ago

I don't understand why the act of buying internet access isn't considered a parental control. I doubt very many kids are doing it or can. Ok, but parents buy internet access and then let their kids use it, because the kids need it for school. So? The parents job is to keep their kids out of trouble. Learning how to keep track of what their kids access shouldn't be difficult, and maybe should be part of the obligation parents have, kind of like their obligated to teach their kids to drive before giving them the keys to a car. Its analogious to saying "kids shouldn't walk home from school or be let out of the house at all because they might wander into a nude beach or join a drug smuggling satanic cult". Most of us don't hold that view because we trust that kids can be taught to be vaguely responsible. What's more: tools to shield the kids have been around for longer than most of the parents have been alive at this point. The problem is pretty much solved in multiple ways, and wouldn't even be a problem if parents only followed their basic responsiblities. Also it isn't a problem in the first place, I haven't seen any clear, undisputed evidence that shows that kids are degenerating into fiends because of looking at adult stuff on the internet.

mikestorrent 3mo ago
The problem with this idea is that it assumes responsible parents, which are not a given. I agree with you completely - I don't want any kind of controls on the Internet - but we live in a world where we cannot actually rely on parents to fulfill what you would consider to be basic and reasonable expectations of parental duties.
- DennisP 3mo ago
  For kids with parents like that, the internet is probably the least of their problems.
  - fc417fc802 3mo ago
    They certainly have other problems however the internet is unique in that it drops the entire world directly in your living room. Even with irresponsible parents zoning laws keep most children away from things like casinos and strip clubs (at least until they can drive) and everyone benefits from community efforts to keep the neighborhood safe.

wolvoleo 3mo ago

Yeah. Didn't you find your dad's dirty VHS tapes when you were young? I'm sure most of us did. And we turned out fine. And no, porn isn't more extreme these days either. I remember seeing bukkake, golden showers etc on borrowed tapes and hacked pay TV. BDSM existed back then too. And I had some pics of a girls face surrounded by male members and their output. Never once did I think this would be a normal thing to do with my girlfriend once I got one. And these things are still gonna happen. Teens are going to go through their dad's phone when he's sleeping, find his stack of Blu-ray's or vids on this computer. Even with all this age verification stuff. I don't understand why we suddenly think that's the end of civilization.

redwall_hp 3mo ago
> I don't understand why we suddenly think that's the end of civilization. Because they've been told to think it by the combined forces of Meta and the Heritage Project. They spelled it all out in Project 2025, a check list which has been followed nearly to the letter. They're also rampaging through libraries and trying to keep books of the shelves. Conservatives don't like porn, because controlling sexuality is part of the cult playbook to control people. (Addendum: they don't like other people having it. They're hypocrites, of course.) They also want to, while instituting a backdoor ban on porn, define everything else they don't like as pornography. Project 2025 repeatedly uses the term "pornographic" as a synonym for for LGBT issues and other things. The goal, after de-anonymizing the Internet, is specifically to control access to information and entrench their fascist Overton window shift. They're really sore that many Millennials and Gen Z had the internet as an escape hatch from local, abusive churchy bubbles and want that locked down going forward.
- wolvoleo 3mo ago
  Haha a backdoor ban, I see what you did there ;) And yes that usage of the law by linking LGBT content to porn is something I've seen in Europe like in Hungary too. But even in the Netherlands, one of my friends is always foaming at the mouth about schools mentioning lgbt in sex ed class. When it's the most important time to prevent people needlessly struggling with their orientation. Luckily where I live this isn't a thing and it's still very pro lgbt. The city always makes a huge deal about pride month with posters and events everywhere. I do worry about the control over the internet too. And I've seen it coming for a while. When I was younger there was this WAN movement where people connected their WiFi networks together with parabolic dishes and the government was always trying to prevent and discredit that saying it was used for illegal file sharing (which it was but so is/was the internet). I'm not so worried for myself because I'm so technical, whatever restrictions they come up with I can work around them. But most people aren't that lucky.

ufocia 3mo ago

Children can buy their own devices. School issued devices are not under parent control. Parental controls and school controls are laughable. There is no incentive for OS vendors/retailers to provide robust solutions to this problem. PII industry is essentially pushing regulatory capture.

kerridge0 3mo ago

I was thinking that some kind of permanent physical attachment with passive electronics could be given to children, like an ankle bracelet used for home curfew, monkey's headband, a dogs shock collar, or just a nice bracelet, call it MoB, which couldn't be removed until they are of age. Devices they are given could be associated with those devices and not usable without them, if they disappear from passive scanning then they have been tin-foiled, etc etc. I've not seen any discussion of this type of approach which gives children something to aim for - freedom, and tallies with human historical culture as well.

schneehertz 3mo ago
My God, what a horrific and evil idea
- kerridge0 3mo ago
  go on, spell it out - its just a thought experiment - how is it worse than the death march we're already on? and the inexorable march to control adults, this is the opposite of that, and it reflects the control we're supposed to exert over our children, in a pretty neutral way (it seems - waiting for your arguments to burst my balloon!). Society and parents control you while you need a parental guardian, then once of age you're free to do whatever we like.

prmoustache 3mo ago

I think their point is to protect kids who have parents so tech illiterate they do not know how to manage parental controls. Having seen some parents I kind of believe it but not to the point of wanting to implement ID tracking on everything.

hdgvhicv 3mo ago
Have decent defaults. “Is this phone for a child” and “scan this wr from parents phone”. 90% of problems solved. That said while Apple does a good job at parental controls, Microsoft is altered. Trying to have controls on Minecraft across a windows laptop and a switch involved a multi hour odyssey, creating tons of accounts for parent and child.
- johnc1 3mo ago
  Or, just incentivize or mandate stores to sell "child-certified" phones with parental controls pre-configured (along with a physical plug-and-play usb key for parents disable them when the child is old enough).
- izacus 3mo ago
  People aggressively attacked the proposal of California to add parental controls into OSes, so I'm not sure if that would fly.
f6v 3mo ago
You've got to be really on the margin of society to not be able to set it up when every grandma and her dog use smartphones. There're about 1000 different ways to improve the lives of such people without making everyone use their government ID when scrolling Instagram.
- aidenn0 3mo ago
  I consider myself fairly tech literate and parental controls are incredibly hard to use correctly. I ended up just setting up an android phone with an MDM, because as someone with a sysadmin background it was far easier for me than anything I could find targeted at parents. The local school district has been issuing iPads to kids for about a decade, and they still haven't figured out how to block exactly what they want blocked. The system they give parents for monitoring the iPads is a joke (Apparently my kid spent 75% of his iPad time the last week of school on sites categorized as "web"). I am a member of FIRE, I am extremely opposed to the mandatory ID laws, but the state of parental controls is phenomenally bad and saying you have to be "on the margin of society" to not be able to set it up is so far from my experience that I couldn't help but to respond to this comment. I'm not sure what the solution is; a lot of people have suggested requiring sites to send categories (e.g. if every social media site was self-tagged, then blocking social media could be just a single check box in parental controls), but that probably isn't constitutional in the US (Compelled speech is usually banned under 1A grounds), and is subject to too much interpretation (seems unlikely that all 50 states would agree on a definition of "social media" much less "pornography"). Having devices send the age out to sites seems strictly better than ID checks to me, but is still a "one size fits all" approach to parental controls, I worry that if that became the norm the already mediocre controls that exist would atrophy, and it certainly would make it easier for malicious actors to setup a website to target minors.

throwaway72587 3mo ago

[dead]

rapidaneurism 3mo ago

There is a bootlegger and baptist thing going on here. One understandable point of view is that of parents that control their kids' phones, but other parents in the community do not. Then their kids are the only ones in the class without tiktok or Instagram or something. For those parents life is easier if nobody is allowed on these things.

JoshTriplett 3mo ago
> For those parents life is easier if nobody is allowed on these things. Get over it, and stop caring how other people parent their kids. Or, better yet, learn from them.

confidantlake 3mo ago

Why would you want to lock condoms?

Tangurena2 3mo ago
Have you missed the recent moral panic about the declining birth rates of white children? Brought to you by the same people who hate pronouns [0], trans people, and/or covid vaccines. In such a world, condoms will be required for non-whites (or race mixing relationships) and forbidden to aryan/white couples. Notes: 0 - For an example of using 2 pronouns in one sentence: "I am he". https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018%3A6-8&version=NIV https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%2018%3A6-8...
- amanaplanacanal 3mo ago
  I am he As you are he As you are me And we are all together

lemming 3mo ago

...parents are also responsible to lock their alcohol, drugs or guns... No they're not - all those things are illegal for children nearly everywhere.

zchrykng 3mo ago

They very much aren't good enough yet. I'm a highly technical user and have had to move to using MDM tools to actually have something that works reliably.