“Parenting is hard” doesn’t take the responsibility away from parents to actually parent their kids and to be aware of what their kids are doing online. I’m not saying everyone will magically start doing that, or that we should expect them to. I’m saying it’s not the government’s job to close that gap. The government doesn’t know what’s best for kids. It’s extremely self evident in the whole age verification push itself. Completely tech illiterate boomers making flawed assumptions about how to handle a situation, and destroying everyone’s privacy in the process. They don’t get to do that just because the US is full of idiots who don’t know how to be parents.
I understand what your trying to say, but realize we have probably vast amount of laws today that only exist to protect people and children on the same basis i’m arguing.
Think about anything that is harmful and illegal, we can say well, you as a person should know that you shouldn’t eat moldy meat, so why do we need laws for selling moldy meat. (bad example, but you can probably find a better one)
Also reflect about the legal process and how do they compare. For example if you start a beer brand and market towards minors via different ways ( or another product that is definitely illegal), vs you own huge social platform which you market towards kids, but you platform has ads or content that is illegal to market in traditional media. I would guess that your beer company would automatically end up in court via existing court processes, and the social media platform might be sued by private citizens and if they are lucky they might settle out of court.
And why is that? Why do we have a bunch of protection laws for simpler things, that I would consider is easier for a parent to understand and educate their children about and say we as a society have to take the responsibility to ensure that kids or grownups have vast amount of protection.
if we expect parents to SOLE responsibility for what their kids are doing online and what they are subjected to, then why would we not require the same for other things that are illegal today, alcohol tobacco, driving a car, not wearing seatbelt etc…
How much money do we spend to educate people on drugs and alcohol harms, compared to harms of internet?
Personal opinion, we have all been lobbied that platforms don’t have same responsibilities to ensure that they benefit society. our opinions don’t come out of the thin air, they spend huge (billions of billion world over) amount of money to shape laws and public opinion, this is more or less a fact.
This commenter is pointing out that - definitionally - most parents lack what they need to mount an effective defense or even understand one is needed, because of how the deck is stacked. It isn’t random uninvolved people making the tech addictive and harmful, (contrasting with parents as a group) - it’s roughly the people best on the planet at making those things damaging, who are doing so.
Commenter is not inviting government overreach, but lamenting that every parent is being asked to defend against this most pernicious force, and it’s unrealistic to expect them to succeed. As we clearly see, they don’t succeed, they lose! State of mental development for kids in the US for example is in absolute shambles.
Doesn’t seem very controversial at all, kind of just an obvious observation tbh.
For the record, I am extremely hostile to government privacy violations in the name of “protecting children”, which the approach under discussion clearly is. We all agree about that.
I don’t have great solutions, but none of mine revolve around shaming parents or insisting they become magically aware of information they lack (and may be flat out unable to really comprehend). That’s not to say you were doing that.
Community wise we can do a lot more educating about the harms. Legislatively and technologically, zero trust indications allowing specific categories of content - very coarse categories and simple binary “allowed / not allowed” - nothing to do with age or PII - would be approaches worth considering.
But fundamentally doing these things wrong is at least as harmful as leaving parents to solo the task. I’d prefer it be up to the ill-equipped and wildly varying parents than to anything centralized unless the centralized approach has verifiable transparency and all the right goals and approaches (a pipe dream). But if nothing else we should require our education and government systems to take a clear stance about educating re: harms.
“Parenting is hard” doesn’t take the responsibility away from parents to actually parent their kids and to be aware of what their kids are doing online. I’m not saying everyone will magically start doing that, or that we should expect them to. I’m saying it’s not the government’s job to close that gap. The government doesn’t know what’s best for kids. It’s extremely self evident in the whole age verification push itself. Completely tech illiterate boomers making flawed assumptions about how to handle a situation, and destroying everyone’s privacy in the process. They don’t get to do that just because the US is full of idiots who don’t know how to be parents.
I understand what your trying to say, but realize we have probably vast amount of laws today that only exist to protect people and children on the same basis i’m arguing.
Think about anything that is harmful and illegal, we can say well, you as a person should know that you shouldn’t eat moldy meat, so why do we need laws for selling moldy meat. (bad example, but you can probably find a better one)
Also reflect about the legal process and how do they compare. For example if you start a beer brand and market towards minors via different ways ( or another product that is definitely illegal), vs you own huge social platform which you market towards kids, but you platform has ads or content that is illegal to market in traditional media. I would guess that your beer company would automatically end up in court via existing court processes, and the social media platform might be sued by private citizens and if they are lucky they might settle out of court.
And why is that? Why do we have a bunch of protection laws for simpler things, that I would consider is easier for a parent to understand and educate their children about and say we as a society have to take the responsibility to ensure that kids or grownups have vast amount of protection.
if we expect parents to SOLE responsibility for what their kids are doing online and what they are subjected to, then why would we not require the same for other things that are illegal today, alcohol tobacco, driving a car, not wearing seatbelt etc…
How much money do we spend to educate people on drugs and alcohol harms, compared to harms of internet?
Personal opinion, we have all been lobbied that platforms don’t have same responsibilities to ensure that they benefit society. our opinions don’t come out of the thin air, they spend huge (billions of billion world over) amount of money to shape laws and public opinion, this is more or less a fact.
This commenter is pointing out that - definitionally - most parents lack what they need to mount an effective defense or even understand one is needed, because of how the deck is stacked. It isn’t random uninvolved people making the tech addictive and harmful, (contrasting with parents as a group) - it’s roughly the people best on the planet at making those things damaging, who are doing so.
Commenter is not inviting government overreach, but lamenting that every parent is being asked to defend against this most pernicious force, and it’s unrealistic to expect them to succeed. As we clearly see, they don’t succeed, they lose! State of mental development for kids in the US for example is in absolute shambles.
Doesn’t seem very controversial at all, kind of just an obvious observation tbh.
Ok, but what’s the solution then? Certainly not the age verification pushes we have seen recently. The tech itself should be regulated, not the users.
Very difficult question.
For the record, I am extremely hostile to government privacy violations in the name of “protecting children”, which the approach under discussion clearly is. We all agree about that.
I don’t have great solutions, but none of mine revolve around shaming parents or insisting they become magically aware of information they lack (and may be flat out unable to really comprehend). That’s not to say you were doing that.
Community wise we can do a lot more educating about the harms. Legislatively and technologically, zero trust indications allowing specific categories of content - very coarse categories and simple binary “allowed / not allowed” - nothing to do with age or PII - would be approaches worth considering.
But fundamentally doing these things wrong is at least as harmful as leaving parents to solo the task. I’d prefer it be up to the ill-equipped and wildly varying parents than to anything centralized unless the centralized approach has verifiable transparency and all the right goals and approaches (a pipe dream). But if nothing else we should require our education and government systems to take a clear stance about educating re: harms.