Another band-aid to cover up the real problem --- privacy invasion driven by personalized advertising.
Just make personalized advertising illegal and this will become a non-issue.
I know lots of people think they can't live without it --- but they are wrong. TV and radio existed and prospered for decades without it --- and the internet can too.
Meta and their lobbyists have been pounding advertising in the DC media market on TV, radio, and the Washington Post under all their brands about how they now support the government trying to mandate parents rights to limit access. First it was Instagram branded, but I've seen ads for their other brands lately as well.
It started when the Surgeon General released the report on the effects of social media usage on adolescent health [0].
Meta and their lobbyists have been pounding advertising in the DC media market on TV, radio, and the Washington Post under all their brands about how they now support the government trying to mandate parents rights to limit access.
Yes. Ever wonder why?
Because this will further destroy *all* privacy on the internet. The only way to prove you're not a kid is to fully identify yourself. The only alternative is to not use social media --- goodbye HN.
Anonymity has only been a reality for IT experts and the rich that can afford to hire them since 9/11. Limiting social media and online activity will lower your exposure to privacy invasive techniques, but certainly not eliminate it. Take one trip on a bus, subway, or airline and you'll have dozens of smartphone camera's in your face, often times recording video/audio.
The penetration of privacy invasive technology is so deep now that aside from hiding in the mountains or under a rock, it's nearly impossible to avoid. However, then your isolated. Whatever deviant ideology you felt needed to be protected by privacy laws, you've now effectively self-censored. Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange spoke about this over a decade ago.
The fight isn't about privacy as much as it is about targeting people who's ideology is considered dangerous to the Billionaires.
Metas official position even internally is that people LIKE getting personalized ads. Can you even imagine? That’s the koolaid they told us. When ATT dropped they complained to people and regulators that now people will have to get regular ads and they love getting personalized ads. The company needs to be banned
Feels like there has been a noticeable shift globally these past few years in favor of burdening websites to protect kids online. Makes me wonder: has the internet really gotten worse, or is something else going on here?
I'll reply with a bunch of anecdotes, so please bear with me.
A few trends over the last two decades:
* targeted monetization of everything under the sun
* a total shift towards a subscription economy for nearly everything digital.
* a near total shift towards mobile content consumption devices especially for younger consumers (tablets and phones)
has likely resulted in the following:
* low quality algorithmically driven junk food content (tiktok, instagram reels, the garbage people post to advice subreddits)
* startups j-curving for usage and leaning into advertising as their only viable business case
* Google scraping your inbox for ad keywords in the mid 2000s and beyond, Microsoft injecting ads into Windows 10 and 11, etc.
Perhaps worse:
* Generation Alpha and later Gen Z kids having relatively diminished technical literacy compared to elder Gen Z and Millenials (absolutely anecdotal. I'm citing three teacher friends frustrated that kids navigate their way around computers more poorly with each passing year)
* subconscious mass influence of behavior patterns (foreign election interference, your trip to your local McDonald's, sneaker hype culture)
Practically the only thing that hasn't actually gotten worse online, regardless of our own diverse opinions about it, is Wikipedia. It's a for-profit warzone of competing interests making competing edits, but it's an example of what can happen when the constant growth/profit/exit-motive isn't there.
Many of the hobbyist sites running on sites like vbulletin or invision are gone; we use subreddits for those now. And people don't even bother with those, more and more people just post meme gifs in the comments of reels, sitting there scrolling through with their thumbs rather than contributing something new and unique.
I have a kid that's in middle school and last year there was about a 2 month stretch of multiple daily fights that were driven by views on TikTok by 6th graders, so around age 11.
It started out small. Maybe a kid would start something in the hall while his friends pulled out their phones, recorded it and posted it to TikTok. Then they realized if they start a larger fight on the way to lunch they'd get more views because kids had their phones at lunch. Once that leveled off they realized that fights in class got even more views because it involved a teacher. It got to the point where my kid would walk outside to go to their next class because the halls were just filled with kids trying to do anything to get views on TikTok.
The larger issue were the second and third order effects this caused. Kids started refusing to go to school because of the fights and attendance problems soared. Multiple classes were constantly disrupted. Due to the layout of the school most of the hallways are narrow so it was near impossible to get to class on time.
It took the spring break and major intervention from the administration, staff, and students to finally have the fad die out. It still flared up from time to time in the spring, but never as bad as the winter.
This year it's now about how funky of a combination of socks and crocs you can post to Instagram.
Kids shouldn’t be allowed to have phones while in school. We dealt with it just fine even in the early 2000s… there’s no harm. No you don’t need to be able to reach your kid at any time of the day. Remember when kids just went outside?
They're not allowed to have them in class, but we all know how well banning anything with early teens goes.
The influence of social media extends to school boards being completely paralyzed. Imagine the "Moms for Access to Students During the School Day" Facebook group that would crop up and overthrow a school board that institutes mandatory cell phone bans.
I'm in one of the most affluent, pretty liberal, and successful school districts in the county and the past 5 years have been dumpster fire after dumpster fire due to Facebook getting small, extremely vocal people spun about "their children." Luckily they do hold of most of the more extreme end of the spectrum, but some things are not worth spending the political capital on. School board elections also align with US Presidential election years so turnout is usually high to keep the crazies away.
As an addendum realize that these kids were making that awkward transition into pre and early teen years at the height of the COVID pandemic. Social media was a connection to their friends and peers that they did not see in most large social gatherings for at least 6 months if not closer to a year.
Now my kids have mostly transitioned into smaller group text chats and Facetime conference calls with their closest friends as they are getting older. They are also heavily involved in sports and other activities where they're invested in getting better versus the constant competition of social media.
I have also instituted an Apple-only devices in the house because while they do have their short comings, the Screen Time settings do work very well. I don't monitor my kids closely, but I do limit the amount of time they can spend on social media services, YouTube, etc.
edit: I'm Gen X and our major problems in middle and high school where alcohol and drugs and everyone smoked. I know multiple people that died due to drug overdoses, mainly heroin, in the early to mid 90s. I have friends in their 30s and 40s that developed lung, throat, or mouth cancers. Thankfully, at least locally, that's not a problem.
If only it was limited to just kids. There's a whole genre of "influencers" whose main form of content seems to be annoying the shit out of the general public[1]. Not to mention cases like the guy who crashed his plane into a mountain[2].
Social media, especially with algorithmic feeds, is a bad influence.
I didn't think I could be more in favor of a total social media ban for kids, but here I am.
Seems like a ban for anyone under 16 is in order and a separate tenant for 16-17 to help kids navigate their way through the minefield before they're adults makes sense.
As a parent the part that sucks is there is good that can come of this, but it's not on the major free-for-all platforms.
My kids are involved in some activities that use other social media-like platforms for sharing information with kids and parents, posting videos/photos, and even includes some group chat features where everyone can interact. It's been great, but 1. it's a small, controlled group and 2. there's active moderation that's possible due to the small size.
My youngest has learned to draw, and is really, really good at it, due to some amazing content on YouTube. They love to sit for hours drawing both following along and using it as inspiration for their own art work. But we all know how must of a disaster YouTube can be.
My life has also been heavily influence (good and bad) by having access to BBS and early Internet chatrooms and forums begging around age 10. I was lucky in that my father was involved in the 80s and 90s telecom boom so I had access to a lot of things (with and without my parents approval) before they became mainstream. I think overall it made me a better person getting all that crap out of my system early.
I don't want my kids to miss out of opportunities like that, but I also don't want them being sucked into the algorithm-driven shitfests of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
Tech Illiteracy is definitely a problem with kids. Even if they do have a real computer, school might entirely be web based. Google classroom, google drive, google office. No one learns what they don’t use.
That being said, I’m a senior developer now and I didn’t really touch a command line until junior year of college. I guess we all learn what we need to learn and if a kid really wants to learn how a computer works he or she will.
How is tech illiteracy being defined in this case? In my experience, most kids were not technically literate during the 2000s unless you thought moving applications into a USB stick or websurfing counts as technical literacy.
> Many of the hobbyist sites running on sites like vbulletin or invision are gone; we use subreddits for those now. And people don't even bother with those, more and more people just post meme gifs in the comments of reels, sitting there scrolling through with their thumbs rather than contributing something new and unique.
Gen Z's rampant tech illiterate is likely a cause not a consequence of this. Most of the independent forums were probably run by teens and college students. They aged out of it, shut their forums down and weren't replaced by a new generation. Then Reddit filled the void to become a profitable corporation that will probably exit via IPO in the near future.
Another cause of this is the collapse of the middle class due to wage growth failing to keep up with inflation. If you can't even afford housing, health care, transportation and food then you're going to be obsessed with "side hustles" to try and make some extra money rather than actually living. Running a forum or writing a freeware game because you actually believe in it is a luxury that people can no longer afford in this "booming" (if you're a millionaire or work a McJob) economy.
It's make sense to me 20-30 years ago access to computers and internet was not easy so could be controlled a bit by parents. Today Parents can try to control their own childrens devices but reality is most children run circles around their parents when it comes to tech. Yes we the tech enthusiast might not be fooled by our children but not the case for the large portion of the population.
Most of us don't like it or won't agree but the days of the internet being the wild west will slowly be over it will be converted to a regulated internet as the powers that be/people in power don't like it when they can't control.
You can expect a kid to be online before they turn into teenager. At least to some extent. Moderation of that through parents is horrible (it's clise to surveillance / watch every step of your child).
It's just that first consumption age went down and audience widened.
Overall I think the internet has become safer, especially through the required handling of content complaints. It's just that the usage went into a direction that needs more safeguards.
I'm surprised to see people speaking positively of safeguards here. Normally the HN line is that the onus fit these things should be entirely on the parents and it's an attack on freedom to have an hindrance to a child viewing and doing whatever they want online.
If you have Paramount+ there was a South Park special, "South Park (Not Suitable For Children)", released there a couple of days ago that covers (excellently and hilariously) some of this.
How would this even work? Web sites politely ask everyone if they're under 18 and then turn on these behaviors?
Without some sort of strong notion of online identity, I just don't see how any of this is meaningfully implementable. And I really don't think anyone wants the equivalent of a driver license for using the Internet.
“Among proposed rules…turn off targeted advertising by default… prohibit sending push notifications …Surveillance in schools would be further restricted, so that data is only collected for educational purposes […] stop companies from retaining children's data forever…”
The title is poorly worded, which can be traced back to the FTC's owm wording as quoted in the article. It makes it sound like the FTC is trying to make websites responsible for things that would be parents' responsibility. But strictly speaking, it is literally correct, as it is shifting (much of) the _burden_ of doing so.
The reforms actually mostly look really good to me.
Unsure why this comment was flagged. I took a look at the proposed changes in the press release and it seems like things HN would support. Is it because the rules are centered around kids? Yea I'd like the same rules applied to my demographic, but this seems like a good step forward.
I don't understand either. I'd be happy for somebody to comment and point out something I've missed. But voting and flagging seems to pass for productive discourse here these days.
Storing minors biometric data forever is pretty clearly evil. There really shouldn't be a debate here. Yet some businesses are out there monetizing evil.
because in the very near future everywhere will only accept a couple issuers.
not even paranoia, already happened once. just like oauth in the beginning and then everyone cried about how ugly their design was with "oauth nascar" and then only accept google or apple. it already happened once. today you can only login on saas with github (Microsoft). etc.
this passkey push will boast openess, then on day one spam will take over and will serve as the excuse to limit to google or apple attestation only. as usual. and by then it will be too late because everyone was mislead by the initial promissed openess, and like you, might even have happily added it to your service, increasing the adoption momentum.
You can install several apps to use as passkeys, or use NFC keys, or Bluetooth keys, or WearAuthn on your Android smartwatch.
If an app or website implements device attestation through passskeys, that's device attestation in the same way your house key is device attestation: you need the device to unlock the door.
I don't have any up to date iDevices but I'm pretty sure you can. Android is the one behind here, only allowing apps to integrate through the standard API starting with Android 14.
I understand your perspective, but I'm going to disagree with what I think you mean, which is that /only/ parents should be responsible for their kids, and that nobody else should have to do anything at all for them. I know that's not exactly what you said, but given the context it's what I am going to argue against.
Kids are a normal part of our society. We were all kids at one point. Our lives were all made better by reasonable accomodations that others made for our safety and wellbeing. If the outside world is only designed for adults, then there is an impossible burden on parents to raise children.
I think we can and often do make reasonable accomodations for kids. Like checking IDs at the bar or checking heights before letting people on a rollercoaster.
What that level of responsibility is for websites, I'm not sure. But it's not zero.
With heroic effort I can maybe lock down my routers, my kids devices, all devices in my house and they can just go to a friends house and see or, maybe even purchase, every single thing that we[1] have deemed unsafe or inappropriate to children. I am not just talking about porn but drugs, every conceivable type of violence, every conceivable type of crime and criminal, every kind of advertisement, every kind of political propaganda. From the point of view of a parent, the internet is a pipe that potentially connects your child's innocence and naivety to every single bad influence and predator in the world.
Yes, I could keep my kids offline but then they'd pay the price of being complete outsiders.
I don't actually have a solution because I don't trust the government to regulate the internet but from a societal POV of a society that wants to keep existing it's probably best to make the easy path sane and safe per default. That's the way we tried to do it in the past, anyways.
[1] we, as in the majority of people in the majority of societies
Of course. But in many other areas involving things that are harmful to children we require others to do things that make it easier for the parents.
A couple examples are that we require purveyors of cigarettes and alcoholic drinks to check customer IDs and not sell to children, and we require annoying childproof packaging on many products.
So we've generally already accepted that it is not just parents who should have some responsibility toward children.
Websites aren't responsible for my kids. They should just provide a working mechanism for me to block them other than "I promise Im 18!". Currently it is impossible to safeguard the internet to kids once they know how to read and write.
The privacy concern is BS. Your provider already knows everything you do online. The solution is easy too - sites add a blocking flag that the internet provider uses to block access to the content unless told otherwise by the subscriber.
This has 0 privacy concerns. After all, despite https, Comcast knows what you are doing if you go to pornhub.com. And it costs nothing. A string with a magic number.
I do not know how you could think that. In a climate where people can't even get medications without getting judged, they'll be able to easily just call up their provider to unblock a website
I would never want an internet where I, an adult, have to request access to whatever is considered sensitive at the time and get placed on a centralized allow list to access it.
If you (not specifically the OP comment) think that’s a good idea, look at LGBTQ content and rights in places like Florida or Saskatchewan. It’s been a hot button controversial topic in much of the US and Canada whether educating children about LGTQ issues is appropriate, which means that would become gated information for everyone and you would have to submit yourself to a government list to view. For a lot of people that could be dangerous if that info leaked or was used against them.
A middle ground would be a user agent flag or API that browsers use to respond to age verification requests, which can be enabled and managed when a computer is set up but would not restrict anyone’s rights or unduly violate their privacy. Parents would need to make sure to select age restrictions when setting up a device and that’s it.
If you don't want to contact Comcast to enable your porn, fine.
May I have the option to call Comcast and disable it? And I mean actually disable it; ever porn providing site has to identify itself under criminal penalty.
Because disabling it on your computer as is currently "possible" is not a compromise, its capitulation.
Thanks to https, Comcast doesn't know you're into fluffy transexual anime porn. I'm not proposing to change that at all.
What I am proposing is, in light that Comcast already knows that you enjoy the occasional Friday night with your wrist, that the ability to access PH, or any other porn provider be enabled/disabled for internet accounts.
Not sure if you're joking but I've seen it argued here several times that we should get rid of minimum age requirements for alcohol and tobacco since the parents should already be policing access.
100% agree. And websites should also be responsible for their websites.
That businesses should restrict things like this is not a very controversial thing; try using the "parents should be responsible for their kids, not liquor stores" line after selling booze to a 12-year old and see how well that goes for you.
You can't expect parents to be on top of their children 100% of the time. Aside from being unrealistic, helicopter parenting also isn't good for children. Parents need to be able to give children some reasonable amounts of freedom with the confidence they'll be reasonably safe.
Now, if you want to argue what "reasonably safe" means and where and how we make this trade-off: great! Let's do that!
But discussion stoppers like this aren't hugely helpful, or insightful, or anything.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of trap that I'm missing, but my biggest complaint about most of these changes is that they only target children.
I'm not overly bothered by the GDPR banners, so I favor opt in targeted ads. I dislike push notifications, though I'm not sure if they're something that should be banned in general. And an expiration on collected data sounds great
Just make personalized advertising illegal and this will become a non-issue.
I know lots of people think they can't live without it --- but they are wrong. TV and radio existed and prospered for decades without it --- and the internet can too.