As I've written before, this could have been an HTTP header. Basically we should have two Internets, one for children and one for adults. This is like the difference between a children's library...
As I've written before, this could have been an HTTP header.
Basically we should have two Internets, one for children and one for adults. This is like the difference between a children's library and the main library. It's not that adults never go into the children's library or children are never allowed in the main library, but they have a different intended audience, and children should be supervised in the main library.
So, it makes sense to have child-locked devices that send an HTTP header indicating that they're child-locked, and cooperating websites send different content. For example, there should be no advertising and you can't buy anything on the children's Internet, and websites for adults don't let you set up an account or log in if the HTTP header is present.
It's up to parents to give their kids child-locked devices if they're going to let them browse the Internet by themselves, and vendors shouldn't sell unrestricted devices to kids.
Also, child-locked devices stlll need extra filtering because it's not like every website is going to cooperate. But the more legit websites will, and there can be laws coercing them into cooperating if needed.
If you do that, no identity-checking is needed. And there's no particular age when kids are allowed in the adult library. It's up to their parents and teachers.
Is there something to be said for letting the child experience the world as it is, and not as it's presented to be? Thereby possibly giving them the chance to make up their own mind? Edit: For...
Exemplary
Is there something to be said for letting the child experience the world as it is, and not as it's presented to be? Thereby possibly giving them the chance to make up their own mind?
Edit: For example, not sheltering or shuffling, or austesizing, but rather a cultural incentive to invite new conscious into this world with intention and honesty.
Things I saw online while I was a child, behind a spoiler for people who don't want to know, or already do. I was twelve when I first saw an image of a man's distended anus, both hands used to...
Things I saw online while I was a child, behind a spoiler for people who don't want to know, or already do.
I was twelve when I first saw an image of a man's distended anus, both hands used to hold it open. It had been behind a link purporting to be something else. I was claiming to be an adult and engaging in erotic roleplay online before I had ever kissed anyone. I was fourteen and had been involuntarily exposed to videos of horrific murders that had claimed to be episodes of a TV series. I was fifteen and involuntarily saw two women eating their own intermixed feces from a cup. A man whose anus was shredded when the glass he was penetrating himeself with shattered. A group of elderly men engaging in a piss orgy. Sexual organs with horrific absesses. Home invasion killings. Sexual acts that said they were consensual in the description but almost certainly were not. Abuse of people when the description said they were of age, but they probably were not.
I didn't seek these things out. They're just there, the poison in the waters in which we swim.
I'd like to think that I grew up to be a relatively well adjusted person. But if I got to choose between an Internet where no child would encounter goat.se or any of the other horrors I listed or one where it was a possibility, I would say that even 18 is young to be exposed to a firehose of all the horrors of the world.
I saw all of those things as well and I would greatly prefer seeing them and having an open internet than locking the internet down, both as a kid and now. However I think that social media and...
I saw all of those things as well and I would greatly prefer seeing them and having an open internet than locking the internet down, both as a kid and now.
However I think that social media and everything it does - addiction, exploitation of negative emotions, the idiotic shit that it spreads - is much worse for a young brain than goatse, lemon party or even mr. hands. That's what makes my opinion on this not entirely clear, ideally this would by handled by the parents, but obviously many parents don't care or are brainrotted themselves and I think the damage may be big enough to warrant some regulation.
I sincerely believe that the social media that openly thrives on manipulation is one of the major negative social forces right now, and that we should be dealing with it as though it was a...
I sincerely believe that the social media that openly thrives on manipulation is one of the major negative social forces right now, and that we should be dealing with it as though it was a military threat or a plague. Conceding that kids shouldn't use it and implementing bizarre and ineffective measures to prevent kids from using it is a weak and pathetic response. Ban all collection and resale of user data as well as any kind of content- or user-aware advertisement and the commercial incentive for this manipulation vanishes. It will kill a whole industry, but it deserves to die painfully. Everyone in it deserves to be as economically bankrupt as they are morally bankrupt.
The problem with this is that it's not going to happen. Even if we're here talking just hypothetically, I prefer talking about things that have some potential of being realized.
Ban all collection and resale of user data as well as any kind of content- or user-aware advertisement and the commercial incentive for this manipulation vanishes. It will kill a whole industry, but it deserves to die painfully. Everyone in it deserves to be as economically bankrupt as they are morally bankrupt.
The problem with this is that it's not going to happen. Even if we're here talking just hypothetically, I prefer talking about things that have some potential of being realized.
Honestly, why? Like actually, what are the real political roadblocks here? Yes, there are a lot of special interests that have a lot of financial incentives towards making this not happen, but...
The problem with this is that it's not going to happen
Honestly, why? Like actually, what are the real political roadblocks here?
Yes, there are a lot of special interests that have a lot of financial incentives towards making this not happen, but it's also a ridiculously, broadly popular proposal. Its not a left right culture war issue, or some line in the sand for conservative or progressive politics. Almost everyone hates being mined for data, spam, robocalls, and so on.
You'd face increased funding from opposition candidates if you ran on that, but it would be a pretty broadly popular policy proposal as long as you could maintain some semblance of control of the narrative.
There's basically no regular voter who is on the site of giant social media or data aggregation companies.
Not yet. Having seen a great many pretty uncontroversial topics become politicized over the course of my life, I have no doubt that any proposal for regulation can be twisted into a culture war...
Its not a left right culture war issue, or some line in the sand for conservative or progressive politics.
Not yet. Having seen a great many pretty uncontroversial topics become politicized over the course of my life, I have no doubt that any proposal for regulation can be twisted into a culture war issue in a heartbeat, if the right money gets into the right hands.
That's no reason not to push for it or discuss it, mind. I've also seen many good reforms be truly impossible right up until they aren't.
In my opinion you hugely overstate how many people actually care about this and similarly understate the consequences. And as soon as anybody comes with a proposal to actually do it, you will get...
it's also a ridiculously, broadly popular proposal
In my opinion you hugely overstate how many people actually care about this and similarly understate the consequences.
And as soon as anybody comes with a proposal to actually do it, you will get all the big ad companies coming with a campaign informing people that they will no longer be able to show ads to their target demographic, no matter if they're coca cola or a local pottery studio. And that while big corporations will get through this because they're already established and they have the cash for billboards, the small and new are going to lose their primary marketing channel that is now even more important than in the past as organic traffic from google plummeted in the last few years.
I think most people currently don't care about it because they view it as an inevitability, like the weather. People get data breach notifications all the time, and they don't like it, but their...
I think most people currently don't care about it because they view it as an inevitability, like the weather. People get data breach notifications all the time, and they don't like it, but their attitude is "well, my personal info has already leaked a dozen times in the past decade. What's one more?".
Everyone hates junk mail, spam and targeted ads, but there's no alternative that's ever been presented.
Yeah, you'd have a lot of money to run against, but so do environmentalists, public healthcare advocates, urbanists, and tons of other issues where people mostly feel one way, but capital feels another, and all of those things have gained at least some semblance of traction. So it's hard, but it's not like it's impossible to take on business.
Not discussing ideas because they're "not going to happen" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social change happens because the ideas of it happening gain traction and popular support. If we wipe...
Not discussing ideas because they're "not going to happen" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social change happens because the ideas of it happening gain traction and popular support. If we wipe ideas off the table because they weren't already there when we got there, they can't.
It's true that discussing new ideas is a prerequisite for implementing them, but there's a long and winding road at best from a discussion on an obscure forum and a large policy change. I think we...
It's true that discussing new ideas is a prerequisite for implementing them, but there's a long and winding road at best from a discussion on an obscure forum and a large policy change. I think we can assume that whatever we discuss here probably won't be implemented, even if it somehow went viral?
(That includes my "this should have been an http header" idea. I posted it because I'd like to see it more widely discussed, but I'm not optimistic that it will get anywhere.)
Not mattering is freeing in a way. A butterfly shouldn't worry that flapping its wings might cause a hurricane even if it's technically possible.
We can still discuss politics, but it's for us, not for the unlikely and unpredictable effects of our conversations on people who aren't even here.
You're not wrong, but also there's a line beyond which discussing the ideas is more like LARPing than talking about politics because it's firstly too unrealistic and secondly the idea is not...
You're not wrong, but also there's a line beyond which discussing the ideas is more like LARPing than talking about politics because it's firstly too unrealistic and secondly the idea is not presented with a plan on how to do it and how to deal with the consequences, which are things much more important than the idea itself. In my opinion this is the case because the financial incentives are too huge, which is why the corporations will fight it, and because it would completely break down the sales & marketing channels that many small businesses, ones that we don't hate, are built on, and create a situation where existing corporations are fine because they can afford to brute force non-targeted advertising, but new and small businesses are screwed.
Yeah. I somehow managed to avoid all that (guess I stuck to the geekiest and safest parts), but from what I know it's getting harder to avoid some of this stuff. Apparently there are trends on...
Yeah. I somehow managed to avoid all that (guess I stuck to the geekiest and safest parts), but from what I know it's getting harder to avoid some of this stuff. Apparently there are trends on Tiktok of applying AI filters to gore videos...? I only know about it second-hand from a youtube video talking about it and showing a clip of some mass shooting made to look like LEGO models.
And besides that, the rise of internet usage among all ages also means a distinct rise in predators and other creeps. When I was a kid one of my favorite games was an online Disney game called Virtual Magic Kingdom. It was a social game where the main draw was making friends and decorating guest rooms, and was played largely by kids under 13. (Actually, I recall that the one time I made a throwaway account over 13 it required some more information compared to when I'd put my actual age. Kinda funny how that works out.)
VMK had an in-game dictionary to limit our abilities to give away personal information, but we found very common workarounds. Instead of numbers we'd just say on, too, tree, for, ive... You get the idea. I remember one time someone used the first letters of various words to spell out her age. We did this stuff for truly innocent purposes, but the workarounds were easy to come up with. Hell, there were fan forums we could join and mention in our in-game signatures or to players to talk outside the game. (I think VMK did try to crack down on that because I vaguely recall forum users being wary of mentioning it, but the forums were plentiful and easy to find.)
VMK was open from 2005 to 2008. I think the only reason it was able to exist in the way it did is because of the timing: the internet was fairly common, but not nearly as widely used as today since it was largely restricted to computers. I don't think it was even that well known, I learned about it from the Disney Adventure magazine. Compared to modern games, I remember screenshots of the millionth "Guest" (new players who were waiting for name approval) only circulated in the final year, and I can assure you that many of the 1 million plus accounts were throwaways. I alone easily had dozens.
Nowadays, a Disney-run MMO aimed specifically at kids? It would be TEEMING with predators. It's been on my mind as I keep hearing about how bad and unsafe Roblox is. I have to wonder if part of the reason Disney shut it down was because they realized the difficulty of ensuring kids' safety as it grew larger...
I was a child in the early 80s and I also saw some really messed up things without seeking them out too -- back then you'd stumbled across some really hard-core magazines in the rain gutters, in a...
I was a child in the early 80s and I also saw some really messed up things without seeking them out too -- back then you'd stumbled across some really hard-core magazines in the rain gutters, in a cavity of a tree, behind a large rock, etc, on your walk home from school or while out exploring with your friends, and I guarantee you that curious children were passing them around.
The Internet makes it easier, but you might be surprised how frequent it was back then. You almost never see it anymore because such magazines have basically been replaced, so it might be hard to fathom just how common it was.
As someone born early this century. Were they really that messed up that they can be compared to what's out there on the internet now? I always thought those mags people mentioned were just...
As someone born early this century. Were they really that messed up that they can be compared to what's out there on the internet now? I always thought those mags people mentioned were just Playboys and similar. Honestly curious.
For the most part society has decided that children should have age-appropriate experiences. That’s why children are in schools designed just for them, for example. Parents buy them...
For the most part society has decided that children should have age-appropriate experiences. That’s why children are in schools designed just for them, for example. Parents buy them age-appropriate books and toys.
There is still exposure to the adult world, though. The question is how much.
Of course. That's a great way to do things. But it's the parents' right to make that decision. And a lot of parents don't put any thought into it beyond "well I'm not letting my daughter do that,...
Of course. That's a great way to do things. But it's the parents' right to make that decision. And a lot of parents don't put any thought into it beyond "well I'm not letting my daughter do that, and everyone reasonable agrees with me!"
I agree with this, but I'm not sure if this is a real option anymore and creating a sub-internet and leaving the rest be seems like the less bad solution than current attempts to require some sort...
I agree with this, but I'm not sure if this is a real option anymore and creating a sub-internet and leaving the rest be seems like the less bad solution than current attempts to require some sort of ID everywhere.
Guarantee that this would be up charged and heavily profiteered up front making the child locked devices useful for only the middle and upper class, while the rest get whatever devices they can.
Guarantee that this would be up charged and heavily profiteered up front making the child locked devices useful for only the middle and upper class, while the rest get whatever devices they can.
Why would any business serve customers who don't contribute anything? This is like proclaiming that ice cream trucks should give kids ice cream for free. You are a kind person to suggest that, but...
there should be no advertising and you can't buy anything on the children's Internet,
Why would any business serve customers who don't contribute anything?
This is like proclaiming that ice cream trucks should give kids ice cream for free. You are a kind person to suggest that, but frankly it's a bit naive. Things cost money to operate, that money has to come from somewhere.
In general I feel like you want to have your cake and eat it too - you want children restricted, but also reject the age verification necessary to effectively do the restrictions. Expecting the parents to police what devices their kids use (and how locked they are) obviously doesn't work. Take a look around you, most parents don't care - never have, never will. And the few that do push restrictions, usually end up with a kid that goes around the restrictions behind their back.
The library comparison is inadequate. Libraries are boring, kids don't wanna go there, so there's no need to police the adult section all that much. If they were full of, I donno, alcohol, titties and cocaine, and generally things teens like, then yeah - I'm sure we'd need some proper id checking there too. Just like we do at bars and strip clubs. Expecting the parents to police it and to make sure their kids don't go to strip clubs, is frankly unrealistic.
Many businesses wouldn’t have anything for kids and that’s okay. There are many nonprofit websites. Running a website isn’t that expensive and there are many people who do it. Also, parents buying...
Many businesses wouldn’t have anything for kids and that’s okay. There are many nonprofit websites. Running a website isn’t that expensive and there are many people who do it. Also, parents buying things for their kids is a thing and I’d expect child-locked devices to have a way to do that.
If there are parents who don’t care what their kids do on the Internet, that’s on them. There’s only so much we can do to control what people do in their own home. But the idea is that society should support the parents who do care by making it easier for them to manage their kids’ devices, and that should be enough to change the culture so that kids don’t have routine access to the adult Internet.
The actual objectives text seem at to contradict the title if I'm not missreading: Emphasis is mine, but that part reads more like what I think is actually being worked on; i.e. an age...
The actual objectives text seem at to contradict the title if I'm not missreading:
We call on the European Commission to propose legislation ensuring that digital identity and age-assurance systems used to access online services in the Union remain voluntary, privacy-preserving and non-discriminatory. Citizens must not be forced to identify themselves to access lawful online content or services unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law. The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age, data minimisation, selective disclosure, open-source implementation, independent security audits, prohibition of cross-service tracking by relying parties, and equivalent alternatives for citizens who do not use a digital wallet.
Emphasis is mine, but that part reads more like what I think is actually being worked on; i.e. an age verification system where e.g. a website can ask the user to prove that they are an adult (not their exact age mind you) and the user has a way to provide that via a trusted party. The trusted party also doesn't receive any information about who the user is trying to prove their identity too.
If that comes to pass I'd think that would be a fine balance to strike. You kind of have to trust someone and better if this isn't being controlled by some corporate entity and that retaining information and tracking is a strict non-goal.
I might be wrong, but I think eIDAS has something along these lines going?
Off topic: myself I honestly believe that parents should decide for a child what is allowed and what is not. Parents, not government, corporation, or providers.
Off topic: myself I honestly believe that parents should decide for a child what is allowed and what is not. Parents, not government, corporation, or providers.
I broadly agree, but it's not that black and white. Parents will usually know more about what's right for their children than just about anyone else, but they also need support from the rest of...
I broadly agree, but it's not that black and white. Parents will usually know more about what's right for their children than just about anyone else, but they also need support from the rest of society.
There's a question about how much vetting you should need to do yourself. For example, reading ingredient lists on all the food you buy is kind of tedious and you shouldn't need to be too vigilant about it, so it's good that some harmful ingredients are banned. Also, the US movie rating system seems like a reasonable way to give a heads up to parents who will make the final call. They could dive into movie reviews or pre-screen everything, but they shouldn't have to.
Oh, I definitely agree. Parents should have a tools to manage restrictions. And default restrictions should be easy to apply. What bothers me, is that the simplest way to implement all these...
Oh, I definitely agree. Parents should have a tools to manage restrictions. And default restrictions should be easy to apply.
What bothers me, is that the simplest way to implement all these functions is government id and total spying from govt..
I don't see an easy solution.
This, I strongly believe this, and I have a teenager. Parental software is shit atm, but that software should become better, and I believe that is easier on that side, it's certainly not as...
This, I strongly believe this, and I have a teenager. Parental software is shit atm, but that software should become better, and I believe that is easier on that side, it's certainly not as invasive as age checks.
I accept that all this is a super misguided attempt to regulate the parts of the internet that are actually really bad for us, for our children, and for society So like, what's the alternative?...
I accept that all this is a super misguided attempt to regulate the parts of the internet that are actually really bad for us, for our children, and for society
So like, what's the alternative? Obviously this isn't going to work, and we're getting nowhere with attempting to sue the tech giants, so, what?
I haven't seen the details. There are large differences between what a single company can agree to in a voluntary situation, and what can be forced through. How many of those concessions would be...
I haven't seen the details. There are large differences between what a single company can agree to in a voluntary situation, and what can be forced through.
How many of those concessions would be unconstitutional to impose by force on all companies in the US? I expect most of the important ones.
Are a lack of digital ID and age verification keeping the Internet alive? I guess "Maintain proportional demands for identification based on the true security needs balanced against the broad...
Are a lack of digital ID and age verification keeping the Internet alive? I guess "Maintain proportional demands for identification based on the true security needs balanced against the broad public need for a private life." doesn't have the same punch.
As I've written before, this could have been an HTTP header.
Basically we should have two Internets, one for children and one for adults. This is like the difference between a children's library and the main library. It's not that adults never go into the children's library or children are never allowed in the main library, but they have a different intended audience, and children should be supervised in the main library.
So, it makes sense to have child-locked devices that send an HTTP header indicating that they're child-locked, and cooperating websites send different content. For example, there should be no advertising and you can't buy anything on the children's Internet, and websites for adults don't let you set up an account or log in if the HTTP header is present.
It's up to parents to give their kids child-locked devices if they're going to let them browse the Internet by themselves, and vendors shouldn't sell unrestricted devices to kids.
Also, child-locked devices stlll need extra filtering because it's not like every website is going to cooperate. But the more legit websites will, and there can be laws coercing them into cooperating if needed.
If you do that, no identity-checking is needed. And there's no particular age when kids are allowed in the adult library. It's up to their parents and teachers.
Is there something to be said for letting the child experience the world as it is, and not as it's presented to be? Thereby possibly giving them the chance to make up their own mind?
Edit: For example, not sheltering or shuffling, or austesizing, but rather a cultural incentive to invite new conscious into this world with intention and honesty.
Things I saw online while I was a child, behind a spoiler for people who don't want to know, or already do.
I was twelve when I first saw an image of a man's distended anus, both hands used to hold it open. It had been behind a link purporting to be something else. I was claiming to be an adult and engaging in erotic roleplay online before I had ever kissed anyone. I was fourteen and had been involuntarily exposed to videos of horrific murders that had claimed to be episodes of a TV series. I was fifteen and involuntarily saw two women eating their own intermixed feces from a cup. A man whose anus was shredded when the glass he was penetrating himeself with shattered. A group of elderly men engaging in a piss orgy. Sexual organs with horrific absesses. Home invasion killings. Sexual acts that said they were consensual in the description but almost certainly were not. Abuse of people when the description said they were of age, but they probably were not.
I didn't seek these things out. They're just there, the poison in the waters in which we swim.
I'd like to think that I grew up to be a relatively well adjusted person. But if I got to choose between an Internet where no child would encounter goat.se or any of the other horrors I listed or one where it was a possibility, I would say that even 18 is young to be exposed to a firehose of all the horrors of the world.
I saw all of those things as well and I would greatly prefer seeing them and having an open internet than locking the internet down, both as a kid and now.
However I think that social media and everything it does - addiction, exploitation of negative emotions, the idiotic shit that it spreads - is much worse for a young brain than goatse, lemon party or even mr. hands. That's what makes my opinion on this not entirely clear, ideally this would by handled by the parents, but obviously many parents don't care or are brainrotted themselves and I think the damage may be big enough to warrant some regulation.
I sincerely believe that the social media that openly thrives on manipulation is one of the major negative social forces right now, and that we should be dealing with it as though it was a military threat or a plague. Conceding that kids shouldn't use it and implementing bizarre and ineffective measures to prevent kids from using it is a weak and pathetic response. Ban all collection and resale of user data as well as any kind of content- or user-aware advertisement and the commercial incentive for this manipulation vanishes. It will kill a whole industry, but it deserves to die painfully. Everyone in it deserves to be as economically bankrupt as they are morally bankrupt.
The problem with this is that it's not going to happen. Even if we're here talking just hypothetically, I prefer talking about things that have some potential of being realized.
Honestly, why? Like actually, what are the real political roadblocks here?
Yes, there are a lot of special interests that have a lot of financial incentives towards making this not happen, but it's also a ridiculously, broadly popular proposal. Its not a left right culture war issue, or some line in the sand for conservative or progressive politics. Almost everyone hates being mined for data, spam, robocalls, and so on.
You'd face increased funding from opposition candidates if you ran on that, but it would be a pretty broadly popular policy proposal as long as you could maintain some semblance of control of the narrative.
There's basically no regular voter who is on the site of giant social media or data aggregation companies.
Not yet. Having seen a great many pretty uncontroversial topics become politicized over the course of my life, I have no doubt that any proposal for regulation can be twisted into a culture war issue in a heartbeat, if the right money gets into the right hands.
That's no reason not to push for it or discuss it, mind. I've also seen many good reforms be truly impossible right up until they aren't.
In my opinion you hugely overstate how many people actually care about this and similarly understate the consequences.
And as soon as anybody comes with a proposal to actually do it, you will get all the big ad companies coming with a campaign informing people that they will no longer be able to show ads to their target demographic, no matter if they're coca cola or a local pottery studio. And that while big corporations will get through this because they're already established and they have the cash for billboards, the small and new are going to lose their primary marketing channel that is now even more important than in the past as organic traffic from google plummeted in the last few years.
And the issue is they're not going to be wrong.
I think most people currently don't care about it because they view it as an inevitability, like the weather. People get data breach notifications all the time, and they don't like it, but their attitude is "well, my personal info has already leaked a dozen times in the past decade. What's one more?".
Everyone hates junk mail, spam and targeted ads, but there's no alternative that's ever been presented.
Yeah, you'd have a lot of money to run against, but so do environmentalists, public healthcare advocates, urbanists, and tons of other issues where people mostly feel one way, but capital feels another, and all of those things have gained at least some semblance of traction. So it's hard, but it's not like it's impossible to take on business.
Not discussing ideas because they're "not going to happen" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Social change happens because the ideas of it happening gain traction and popular support. If we wipe ideas off the table because they weren't already there when we got there, they can't.
It's true that discussing new ideas is a prerequisite for implementing them, but there's a long and winding road at best from a discussion on an obscure forum and a large policy change. I think we can assume that whatever we discuss here probably won't be implemented, even if it somehow went viral?
(That includes my "this should have been an http header" idea. I posted it because I'd like to see it more widely discussed, but I'm not optimistic that it will get anywhere.)
Not mattering is freeing in a way. A butterfly shouldn't worry that flapping its wings might cause a hurricane even if it's technically possible.
We can still discuss politics, but it's for us, not for the unlikely and unpredictable effects of our conversations on people who aren't even here.
You're not wrong, but also there's a line beyond which discussing the ideas is more like LARPing than talking about politics because it's firstly too unrealistic and secondly the idea is not presented with a plan on how to do it and how to deal with the consequences, which are things much more important than the idea itself. In my opinion this is the case because the financial incentives are too huge, which is why the corporations will fight it, and because it would completely break down the sales & marketing channels that many small businesses, ones that we don't hate, are built on, and create a situation where existing corporations are fine because they can afford to brute force non-targeted advertising, but new and small businesses are screwed.
Yeah. I somehow managed to avoid all that (guess I stuck to the geekiest and safest parts), but from what I know it's getting harder to avoid some of this stuff. Apparently there are trends on Tiktok of applying AI filters to gore videos...? I only know about it second-hand from a youtube video talking about it and showing a clip of some mass shooting made to look like LEGO models.
And besides that, the rise of internet usage among all ages also means a distinct rise in predators and other creeps. When I was a kid one of my favorite games was an online Disney game called Virtual Magic Kingdom. It was a social game where the main draw was making friends and decorating guest rooms, and was played largely by kids under 13. (Actually, I recall that the one time I made a throwaway account over 13 it required some more information compared to when I'd put my actual age. Kinda funny how that works out.)
VMK had an in-game dictionary to limit our abilities to give away personal information, but we found very common workarounds. Instead of numbers we'd just say on, too, tree, for, ive... You get the idea. I remember one time someone used the first letters of various words to spell out her age. We did this stuff for truly innocent purposes, but the workarounds were easy to come up with. Hell, there were fan forums we could join and mention in our in-game signatures or to players to talk outside the game. (I think VMK did try to crack down on that because I vaguely recall forum users being wary of mentioning it, but the forums were plentiful and easy to find.)
VMK was open from 2005 to 2008. I think the only reason it was able to exist in the way it did is because of the timing: the internet was fairly common, but not nearly as widely used as today since it was largely restricted to computers. I don't think it was even that well known, I learned about it from the Disney Adventure magazine. Compared to modern games, I remember screenshots of the millionth "Guest" (new players who were waiting for name approval) only circulated in the final year, and I can assure you that many of the 1 million plus accounts were throwaways. I alone easily had dozens.
Nowadays, a Disney-run MMO aimed specifically at kids? It would be TEEMING with predators. It's been on my mind as I keep hearing about how bad and unsafe Roblox is. I have to wonder if part of the reason Disney shut it down was because they realized the difficulty of ensuring kids' safety as it grew larger...
I was a child in the early 80s and I also saw some really messed up things without seeking them out too -- back then you'd stumbled across some really hard-core magazines in the rain gutters, in a cavity of a tree, behind a large rock, etc, on your walk home from school or while out exploring with your friends, and I guarantee you that curious children were passing them around.
The Internet makes it easier, but you might be surprised how frequent it was back then. You almost never see it anymore because such magazines have basically been replaced, so it might be hard to fathom just how common it was.
As someone born early this century. Were they really that messed up that they can be compared to what's out there on the internet now? I always thought those mags people mentioned were just Playboys and similar. Honestly curious.
"Age when first experienced goatse.cx" is a statistic I never thought would be interesting but I guess it is.
For the most part society has decided that children should have age-appropriate experiences. That’s why children are in schools designed just for them, for example. Parents buy them age-appropriate books and toys.
There is still exposure to the adult world, though. The question is how much.
Of course. That's a great way to do things. But it's the parents' right to make that decision. And a lot of parents don't put any thought into it beyond "well I'm not letting my daughter do that, and everyone reasonable agrees with me!"
I agree with this, but I'm not sure if this is a real option anymore and creating a sub-internet and leaving the rest be seems like the less bad solution than current attempts to require some sort of ID everywhere.
Guarantee that this would be up charged and heavily profiteered up front making the child locked devices useful for only the middle and upper class, while the rest get whatever devices they can.
Why would any business serve customers who don't contribute anything?
This is like proclaiming that ice cream trucks should give kids ice cream for free. You are a kind person to suggest that, but frankly it's a bit naive. Things cost money to operate, that money has to come from somewhere.
In general I feel like you want to have your cake and eat it too - you want children restricted, but also reject the age verification necessary to effectively do the restrictions. Expecting the parents to police what devices their kids use (and how locked they are) obviously doesn't work. Take a look around you, most parents don't care - never have, never will. And the few that do push restrictions, usually end up with a kid that goes around the restrictions behind their back.
The library comparison is inadequate. Libraries are boring, kids don't wanna go there, so there's no need to police the adult section all that much. If they were full of, I donno, alcohol, titties and cocaine, and generally things teens like, then yeah - I'm sure we'd need some proper id checking there too. Just like we do at bars and strip clubs. Expecting the parents to police it and to make sure their kids don't go to strip clubs, is frankly unrealistic.
Many businesses wouldn’t have anything for kids and that’s okay. There are many nonprofit websites. Running a website isn’t that expensive and there are many people who do it. Also, parents buying things for their kids is a thing and I’d expect child-locked devices to have a way to do that.
If there are parents who don’t care what their kids do on the Internet, that’s on them. There’s only so much we can do to control what people do in their own home. But the idea is that society should support the parents who do care by making it easier for them to manage their kids’ devices, and that should be enough to change the culture so that kids don’t have routine access to the adult Internet.
Does this not regurgitate the issue of tracking users ages? Lol
The actual objectives text seem at to contradict the title if I'm not missreading:
Emphasis is mine, but that part reads more like what I think is actually being worked on; i.e. an age verification system where e.g. a website can ask the user to prove that they are an adult (not their exact age mind you) and the user has a way to provide that via a trusted party. The trusted party also doesn't receive any information about who the user is trying to prove their identity too.
If that comes to pass I'd think that would be a fine balance to strike. You kind of have to trust someone and better if this isn't being controlled by some corporate entity and that retaining information and tracking is a strict non-goal.
I might be wrong, but I think eIDAS has something along these lines going?
edit: I think I found the link to some info regarding this: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EUDIGITALIDENTITYWALLET/pages/930450954/The+Age+Verification+Manual
So essentially what the initiative is striving for is already happening?
Off topic: myself I honestly believe that parents should decide for a child what is allowed and what is not. Parents, not government, corporation, or providers.
I broadly agree, but it's not that black and white. Parents will usually know more about what's right for their children than just about anyone else, but they also need support from the rest of society.
There's a question about how much vetting you should need to do yourself. For example, reading ingredient lists on all the food you buy is kind of tedious and you shouldn't need to be too vigilant about it, so it's good that some harmful ingredients are banned. Also, the US movie rating system seems like a reasonable way to give a heads up to parents who will make the final call. They could dive into movie reviews or pre-screen everything, but they shouldn't have to.
Oh, I definitely agree. Parents should have a tools to manage restrictions. And default restrictions should be easy to apply.
What bothers me, is that the simplest way to implement all these functions is government id and total spying from govt..
I don't see an easy solution.
This, I strongly believe this, and I have a teenager. Parental software is shit atm, but that software should become better, and I believe that is easier on that side, it's certainly not as invasive as age checks.
I accept that all this is a super misguided attempt to regulate the parts of the internet that are actually really bad for us, for our children, and for society
So like, what's the alternative? Obviously this isn't going to work, and we're getting nowhere with attempting to sue the tech giants, so, what?
You say that we're getting nowhere, but Meta just settled a major lawsuit which includes a long list of concessions.
I haven't seen the details. There are large differences between what a single company can agree to in a voluntary situation, and what can be forced through.
How many of those concessions would be unconstitutional to impose by force on all companies in the US? I expect most of the important ones.
The current discussion on Tildes is right over here.
Are a lack of digital ID and age verification keeping the Internet alive? I guess "Maintain proportional demands for identification based on the true security needs balanced against the broad public need for a private life." doesn't have the same punch.