Posted by 1659447091 6 hours ago
Instead children would own special devices that are locked down and tagged with a "underage" flag when interacting with online services, while adults could continue as normal. We already heavily restrict the freedom of children so there is plenty of precedent for this. Optionally we could provide service points to unlock devices when they turn 18 to avoid E-waste as well.
This way it's the point of sale where you provide your ID, instead of attaching it to the hardware itself and sending it out to every single SaaS on the planet to do what they wish.
China has restrictions for social media and screen time for kids — how do they implement this?
It's obvious we're moving in a direction where we are going to get these restrictions in one way or another, and this is the only way I've come up with that doesn't come with serious privacy implications.
Most importantly, this solution would be simple for anyone to understand. You don't need to be a cryptography expert to understand there are child safe devices and then there are unrestricted devices for adults.
The better question to ask ourselves is, does the capability to gather more information also lead to more power to act on this information? If the investigative resources are spread thin already it's not like they're gonna catch more criminals with investing more there. Repelling questionable individuals off the platform with lots transparancy -is- an effective way, but just a specific tool for a symptom.
I think a part of a better solution is to give parents and children better tools to manage their social graph themselves. Essentially the real problem is discovery and warding off of social outliers in a way that doesnt out all responsibility on opaque algos or corporations.
A part of their e2e keys could be shared using an intentionally obtuse way like mailing an item or a physical "friend code". That way parents and vetted friends can have their privacy. You don't need to tie an id to someone's person to get positive confirmation on someone's poor behaviour. If someone crossed the line then parents can see it and escalate. In additon, what would happen to a child with abusive parents who can then arbitrarily restrict and deny a childs freedom to communicate? I did not have this myself, but without free access to other minds and information I would have been duller. Does a large information dragnet really serve our collective interests or are more precise tools needed?
This is actually a key consideration for the proposed implementation. The biggest issue for parents when restricting their children's online activity is that they simply don't understand the tool available for it.
By having a "child mode" iPhone, parents don't have to know any of that. They simply buy the iPhone Kids for their children and then get a plain iPhone for themselves.
If these restrictions were to actually be enforced by law as well, then it would make it very easy for teachers and other guardians to check if a device is appropriate for the child using it.
So if the teen phone turned into a restricted "call mom" device with no cameras and with neon yellow obvious fuck you coloring and a restricted set of apps, and police took away a full phone much like they take away cigs and beer it might be enough to break the critical mass to create this issue. They can have dedicated cameras for video club, use the family computer, have an xbox or switch and have whatever tech experience that millenials had, the last generation to not have exponential increases in anxiety , depression and sexlessness.
It's the covert camera + internet that it's the key issue.
1. You end up being the bad guy, other parents don't restrict their kids internet usage etc. Some folks would argue to just not set up restrictions and trust them. But it's a slippery slope and puts kids in a weird position. They start out with innocent YouTube videos, but pretty quickly a web search or even a comment can lead them to strange places. They want to play games online, but then creeps abuse that all the time. Even if you trust them to not do anything "wrong", it's a lot to put on their shoulders.
2. If you want to put restrictions in place, even if you're an expert, the tools out there are pretty wonky. You can set up a child protection DNS, but most home routers don't make it easy (or even allow you) to set a different DNS server. And that's not particularly hard to circumvent. I suppose a proxy would be a more solid solution, but setting that up would be major yak shaving. Any "family safety" features (especially those from Microsoft) are ridiculously complicated and often quite buggy. Right now, I got the problem on my plate that I need to migrate one of my kid's accounts from a local Windows account to a Microsoft account (without them loosing all their stuff), because for local accounts, it seems the button to add the device is just missing? Naturally, the docs don't mention that, I had to do research to arrive at that hypothesis. The amount of yak shaving, setup and configuration you have to do for a reasonable setup is just nuts.
3. If you're not good with tech - I don't see how you have _any_ chance in hell to set up meaningful restrictions.
Some countries are banning social media - sure, that's one thing. But there's a _lot_ of weird places on the internet, kids will find something else. I for one would appreciate dedicated devices or modes for kids < 18. Would solve all this stuff in a heartbeat.
California is mandating OSes provide ages to app stores, and HN lost their mind because it's a ban on Linux.
They forgot to put in the provision which exempts apps which do not need an age rating? As in: everything os related.
Sounds like a good way to get rid of snap at least since that is where all the commercial bloat is located. Last time I did a fresh Debian install I do not remember installing any app from the os repository which would require age restrictions (afaik).
That's correct. You need to provide your age to install grep.
I see you Mr Quaker Oats
ID please.
Seems entirely reasonable.
Possibility entirely ineffective, but then again I don’t often see children walking around with bottle a of booze.
It’s ok for a platform to not feature private conversations. They should just have no DM feature at all, then; make all messages publicly visible.
Private conversations are indeed not for all ages. Parents should be able to grant access to that on individual basis.
https://web.archive.org/web/https://www.devever.net/~hl/webc...
Same as with OS updates, browser updates, dependencies used by the OS, dependencies used by the browser. Also you can run malicious software such as keyloggers and you're compromised.
That argument doesn't mean E2E (even web based) is snake oil. Browsers just give you more points of failure.
So yeah, age verification should be taken down, as well as the datamining these companies do and the opaque tunning of their algorithms. It baffles me: people are concerned about their children's DMs but are not concerned about what companies serves them and what they do with their data.
Hogwash.
Where are these mythical people who aren’t concerned with both?
Absolutely. But what responsibilities do megacorps have? Right now, everyone seems to avoid this question, and make do with megacorps not being responsible. This means: "we'll allow megacorps to be as they are and not take any responsibilities for the effects they cause to society". Instead of them taking responsibilities, we're collecting everyone's data and calling it a day by banning children from social networks... and this is because there are many interests involved (not related to child development and safety).
fake and scam AD.
they literally profit from those ADs. When the AD distributes malware or make scam, they don't take any responsibility
Clear, simple, direct: Whatever was required of The Bell Telephone Company and nothing more.
It's a good thing those human operators couldn't listen in to whichever conversation they wanted.
(Reconsider my post. I'm arguing for no regulation.)
Ideally, users should be able to modify the algorithm, so they can get just what they want, while simultaneously maximizing free speech. If something isn't illegal, it shouldn't be hidden or removed.
Hypothetically speaking: What if it's a neural network in which each user has his/her own unique weights which are undergoing frequent retraining?
Would it not be an undue burden to necessitate the release of the weights every time they change?
Also, what value would the weights have? We haven't yet hit the point of having neural networks with interpretability.
Wouldn't enforcing algorithmic interpretability additionally be an undue burden?
> They must be able to know why a content was served to them.
What if the authors of the code are unable to tell you why?
The apples to oranges in this comparison is probably top five on HN ever.
They should have a responsibility of transparency, accountability and empathy towards users. They should work for the user and in the interests of the user. But multiple constraints make this impossible in practice.
The children yearn for the mines(?).
That said, these platforms are making it impossible for parents to monitor anything. They're literally designed to profit off addiction in children.
Why?
> They already got so much data on their users
There are a variety of ways (see "Verifiable Credentials") that ages can be verified without handing over any data other than "Is old enough" to social media services.
Allowing for more effective propaganda, electrol control, and lights a fire on the concept of a government _representing_ anyone.
How so?
Please explain in detail, because there are already schemes such as "verifiable credentials" which allow people to prove they are of age without handing over ID to online services.
Perhaps what we're really saying is "Ban age verification that collects lots of personal information".
Or perhaps we could distil it down further to "Ban unnecessary collection and storage of PII". In which case, Congrats! You've arrived back at the GDPR :)
Which I think is a good thing, and should be strengthened further.
(at least not yet)
This is the next two steps into 1984.
Once you start mandating this, there's no going back.
The next generation will start associating wrongthink with government IDs. (Wait, we already do that, right?)
Is it? I thought that was a logical fallacy?
> This is the next two steps into 1984.
How so?
> Once you start mandating this, there's no going back. > The next generation will start associating wrongthink with government IDs.
Could you provide some more details on why you think this? For a start I talked about a scheme in which you don't hand over ID.
I don't see how verifiable credentials with zero knowledge proofs provide that however.
I think that it's rather funny that people like to appeal to 1984 as if the only point of Mr. Orwell was that surveillance is bad, missing the entire point about stuff like the control of the language or the idea that the only self-justification of the (Inner) Party is power for the sake of power (see also: The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism).
I'd even go as far as to say that if "telescreens are horrible" is the only thing that someone takes away from 1984, they've frankly missed the point.
They're saying this at the same time as they're clutching pearls over Iran's repression of protestors. Typical of the ethical consistency I would expect from them.
Fixed a bit.
Smugly dismissing them doesn't do you any favors except for making you feel good about yourself for a few seconds.
I'm mindful that it's less secure than other apps, but for a lot of chats it doesn't matter.
It's a communication channel attached to the most popular social network for young people. Obviously they're going to use it a lot. They use it for the extreme convenience.
And in a perfect world essentially shouldn’t have to be, at least inside expensive walled garden app stores.
Youtube, twitter, bluesky, whatsapp? Every app with a social aspect will be used by teens. And no, tiktok is not "only for teens" or "specially targeted at teens", nowadays everyone uses it and creates content on it.
If you run (say) a restaurant, you get big spikes in business from TikTok videos in ways you don't get from Facebook or Instagram or others.
TikTok is the platform everyone is one right now.