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greybcgtoday at 7:40 AM2 repliesview on HN

At the same time, I remember growing up in the internet's wild west and bad encounters weren't an issue for me because of the golden rule I was taught from the start: you don't give your personal information and you don't interact with complete strangers. Learning to navigate the web instead of being in a walled garden was helpful in many ways.

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?


Replies

debazeltoday at 8:05 AM

> 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.

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.

novoktoday at 8:08 AM

From what I've seen, the bad effects don't necessarily just come from free access to the internet, but that everyone around them in their social group has a video camera that can covertly record, they're all immature children and thus you cannot slip up once or you get kid cancelled, and they start doing a collective dissociative freeze response in a self-imposed emergent panopticon as a result.

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.