Authentication & Authorization is a OS feature. But instead of the OS collecting everyone's age, just give parents the ability to verify their child's phone is in child lockdown mode. Then the phone narc's to the website: "the user is under age". Not "the user was born on Feb 29 2001." We can rely on parenting to ensure a child doesn't have a non child mode phone. Enable parents, not control everyone.
It's just terrifying to think of an internet that goes from open & usable, to requiring only approved government devices & systems. Within a very brief time.
It would prove that many, many parents are incapable of being the responsible adults they should be and will just cave to their kids tantrums about their phone being unlocked so they can watch tiktoks for (sometimes more than) 8 hours a day.
Everyone in the UK is now using a vpn for everything because of these "won't somebody please think of the children" smucks. Now let's see if they make good on their end and lock their child's phone...
OS vendors don't want to add this feature, though. That could be because they make their money from a percentage of IAPs and ads.
And when they are mandated, like in Brazil, we HN commenters hate that even more, because apparently in Brazil it's illegal to sell a phone without locked bootloader, or an OS that can run software from outside of an app store, because the user might install an OS or an app that doesn't comply with the child-lock law.
Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp are not "the internet"
Anything that hurts Meta's business is arguably a potential step toward more "anonymous" internet access. Anything that helps to stop the process of indoctrination of future generations into and the normalisation of what Meta does is a step toward more anonymous internet access as it allows expectations of privacy to rise to previous levels
Companies like Meta have worked to systematically destroy anonymous internet use. Anonymity directly conflicts with Meta's "business model" of data collection, surveillance and serving users up as ad targets
Meta and "anonymous internet access" are mutually exclusive. Meta doesn't collect data about and show ads to "anonymous" internet users. It forces users to create "accounts" and "sign in" with clients that run surveillance-related code on the users' computers without the user's input. It builds profiles of internet users (ad targets), even ones that do not use Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, e.g., through the use of tracking pixels on the open web
Apple's and Google's operating systems also try to profile users. The companies encourage users to create "accounts" and "sign in". The operating systems intentionally provide a purpose-built machanism to target users with ads. If used as encouraged by the compaanies, these operating systems are incompatible with "anonymous internet access". The user is not anonymous to the companies, and the companies invite advertisers to use the computer user's internet bandwidth to deliver ads
It was not always like this; I owned Apple computers when there was no such thing as an Apple "account" and Apple's computers did not attempt to automatically "phone home" when powered on. Expectations of "anonymous" internet access amongst new internet users have greatly diminished thanks to Meta, Google and Apple
Child safety is just the tip of the iceberg. We need to secure ourselves by implementing human verification and there are ways to do this without sacrificing anonymity[1].
It seems a stretch to me that an operating system having an isAdult() function would end anonymous internet access. Plenty of apps want to avoid showing NSFW content to children and having an API that lets them easily do so has a lot of value. Parental controls must be trivial for an app to implement if we want it to be widespread.
I find it amazing that we continue to let parents ruin society with their overprotective bullshit. They should be parenting, not passing the buck.
This isn't the first time overprotective parents have caused problems for everyone else. The US drug war (and the mass incarceration of poor and black people) was started mostly by organizations of parents who thought marijuana was going to kill their kids. The movie rating system introduced censorship into movies which limited artistic freedom. Game rating systems limited what games could be sold on store shelves, so most games had to be carefully censored and had limited story lines and content. Ratings on music forced major retailers to drop any music which had an 'explicit' label, making it harder for artists with 'adult' lyrics to get exposure or earn a living. Book bans are largely organized by parents' groups, a significant number of the books they want banned being LGBTQ+ books, so kids aren't exposed to the fact that homosexuality is normal. And of course you can't possibly have an app in a monopolistic App Store that has any kind of adult content; heaven forbid an actual adult wants to use an adult app.
Parents and 'Child Safety' are toxic af and we shouldn't put up with it.
Had to wade through a lot of text to find out that apparently Zuckerberg and OP both apparently think the internet is something you access through phones.
Tbf the majority of per individual Internet use is on a phone. Countries other than America exist...plenty of Asian countries where having a phone is far far more common than a laptop let alone a desktop.
Just make child phones. And make a parallel internet run and curated by, I dunno, the UN child safety task force or something. We're playing this dangerous game of "oops we almost destroyed the world in a hellish authoritarian dystopia" because we can't figure this simple thing out.
Ban cell phones. The internet must again become something you sit down to use. It'd fix the child problem and many problems for adults. It is not something that should be following you around all day.
There is very little publicly known about them. All the bylines appear to be pseudonyms used almost exclusively for posts there. No contact information other than email addresses at their domain.
They don't release any information about what funding sources they have, if any, other than donations and merchandise sales.
In this article [1] about X being ordered to obey the DSA requirements to make election data available to researchers they go on at great length about the importance of knowing who is funding the organizations asking for the data. Maybe they should set an example and disclose their own funding.
Also in that article they suggest X is being singled out for enforcement, ignoring that the the other platforms covered by DSA are at least partially responding to requests for data under DSA. That kind of biased framing is common in many of their articles.
I've never seen any reporting by them where I could not find the same thing covered with less bias from a source that is much more transparent over who funds and controls them.
Yes, it feels like another round of the same old tired "force everyone to use legal names online to save the children" that has been pushed continuously since the Internet driver's license of the 90s.
It will not save any children. It will destroy privacy, destroy free speech, and give lots of money to whatever corporation wins the bid for supplying the tech.
And of course, when that corporation gets hacked and all the personally identifiable information is put on the dark web, nobody will be held accountable.
I don't think he cares either way. He knows that the government is going to crackdown on social media because the voters are tired of anarcho libertarian tech bro dipshits.
So he can either go down with the ship or bend with the wind. And Zuckerberg always knows how the wind blows.
I doubt that, but with people using Cell Phone Apps and sites like Facebook/Twitter, people are giving up their anonymity on purpose. You can still be anonymous if you want to.
And as for verification at the OS level, good luck with that.
I find it relatively strange that over the past 30-40 years, we went from a world where most everything was intermediated by parents, and “adult” media was relatively well gatekept to this online Wild West where it seems almost any attempt to gatekeep is seen as a freedom violation.
Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms? But like, kids shouldn’t be able to sign a ToS until they’re 18.
I have little sympathy for anything that limits people’s access to these biggest platforms. I’m also largely cynical to the idea that anyone’s doing any free speeching on meta or Twitter in the first place. If counter culture gets driven back to IRC, or gasp meatspace, then all the better.
The idea is of general purpose computing. In past, you could restrict access without restricting most freedoms. Today's world, restricting access means restricting access to a ggeneral purpose computer. And thats the biggest deal.
When I was a kid, they said don't meet strangers you talked to online. That was it. Sometimes it turned out poorly, but as it could anywhere. Perhaps on the internet it was less risky because the person you were talking to had no idea you were a kid or anything about you.
There were not apps that all of your friends in school used, and if you didn't use them you wouldn't be cool, but also the apps would push you or cause you to unwittingly share photos publicly while publishing your photos/videos globally to adults who for some reason use their app longer when they look at videos of kids.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding how things work here, I don't use Facebook or Instagram. I've never even seen Tiktok. I've never used LinkedIn. But when I read these stories about what is going on with Mark Zuckerberg and Meta it sounds like they were doing a lot of things they shouldn't be doing in a commercial context, period. If you aren't 18 you should still be able to talk to your friends without being spied on, but you sure as hell shouldn't be getting connected to random people adult or otherwise from all over the world because it's increasing the usage time of those adults on some app.
I think protocols are the way to go and will be what dominate in the post-AI era. Fuck the ads, the constantly changing UIs, the bait and switch, and now just add photo verification to the list. No thanks.
When I was a kid, most families that had a computer kept it in a common area. Same with the TV, for that matter.
Some families did not. Mine did not! But that was a decision that was up to individual families.
I don’t see why these decisions should be up to anyone but individual families. Period. If your kids are mature enough for unsupervised computer use, or if you don’t see it as a problem, that’s up to you as a parent. Same as if you feel comfortable taking your kids skeet shooting or rock climbing.
There’s definitely an inversion going on, where all the predators (individuals and corporations) target parts of the internet designed for children, and the kid’s platforms created financial incentives for themselves that mean the worst content bubbles to the top.
I thought youtube kids was sketchy as hell until I discovered the current state of “educational” online games.
as personally identifying information becomes more and more central to modern life, the risk of that info being leaked or stolen becomes even greater. And, given the global nature of the internet, having that info on some server that is connected to the rest of the internet increases that risk further still.
Previously, your local dirty movie theater might ask for ID before selling you tickets to Debbie Does Dallas and they might even keep a copy on file for later reference. Assuming that the underpaid usher didn't just glance at the DOB, that copy likely goes into a filing cabinet in the back of the building. That's not necessarily safe, but the opportunity for that being stolen and sold is minuscule compared to today. Even if it were on a computer database somewhere, the internet of 30-40 years ago, inasmuch as it existed, was not the behemoth that it is today.
Isn't the entire point of the ToS to make it legal to sell your personal information? Primarily to increase programmatic ad revenue?
Maybe we should just end advertising targeting anyone under 18. I wonder if by removing the financial incentive the problem would mostly sort itself out.
They want their cake and to eat it too. They want the internet to be used for everything for everyone because of money but that also means children, teens, elderly, and non-technical normies.
> where it seems almost any attempt to gatekeep is seen as a freedom violation
1.) Because it always seems to have an outsized impact on adults. Then the predators get away with it because the platforms DGAF (for example, Discord has had a MASSIVE problem with illegality for YEARS, with boatloads of reports and evidence that was blatantly ignored, and yet NOW they need your ID?) And any gate design that COULD work without PII won't be implemented because data is too juicy.
> Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms?
> If counter culture gets driven back to IRC, or gasp meatspace, then all the better.
2.) Yes on both counts. But protocols need to be decentralized, massively scalable, available across every platform including phones, and normie-grade easy-to-use (not everybody, and it's getting better now, but lots of devs tend to give up here, like it's a binary choice between a lobotomized barely-functioning bloated Fisher-Price app and a fully-functioning lean app with awful UI. Shockingly difficult, as I discovered trying to program, but both possible and necessary.) But as for meatspace...
> we went from a world where most everything was intermediated by parents
3.) If anything, the world is intermediated by parents like never before.[1] Not everywhere, not everybody, but enough freedom of movement and gathering has been lost by children and teens that it is killing meatspace. This CANNOT be ignored if you want to address online problems. The internet, awful as it can be, is the only "free" place left to roam for many.
> I’m also largely cynical to the idea that anyone’s doing any free speeching on meta or Twitter in the first place. If counter culture gets driven back to IRC, or gasp meatspace, then all the better.
The thing is, any speech controls imposed on Facebook and Twitter will probably be imposed on all services - including IRC.
And while Facebook and Twitter are capable of compliance and have bottomless pockets to implement it, IRC isn't and doesn't.
I don't understand what position this article is trying to stake out. How is it Zuckerberg's fault that a California court called him into a courtroom demanding to know why he didn't stop children from using his platform? It seems like the author recognizes that he agrees with Meta on all the substantive questions here, but feels obligated to jump through hoops to avoid taking a pro-corporate position that Meta is right and the plaintiff is wrong.
To you and I it's made to appear that these things happen without warning. I assure you that's not at all how these things actually occur. If this truly caught out Meta by surprise then they should fire their CEO for general incompetence.
throwaway87543|8 days ago
jauntywundrkind|8 days ago
It's just terrifying to think of an internet that goes from open & usable, to requiring only approved government devices & systems. Within a very brief time.
TiredOfLife|8 days ago
senectus1|8 days ago
fennecbutt|8 days ago
It would prove that many, many parents are incapable of being the responsible adults they should be and will just cave to their kids tantrums about their phone being unlocked so they can watch tiktoks for (sometimes more than) 8 hours a day.
Everyone in the UK is now using a vpn for everything because of these "won't somebody please think of the children" smucks. Now let's see if they make good on their end and lock their child's phone...
inigyou|8 days ago
And when they are mandated, like in Brazil, we HN commenters hate that even more, because apparently in Brazil it's illegal to sell a phone without locked bootloader, or an OS that can run software from outside of an app store, because the user might install an OS or an app that doesn't comply with the child-lock law.
1vuio0pswjnm7|8 days ago
Anything that hurts Meta's business is arguably a potential step toward more "anonymous" internet access. Anything that helps to stop the process of indoctrination of future generations into and the normalisation of what Meta does is a step toward more anonymous internet access as it allows expectations of privacy to rise to previous levels
Companies like Meta have worked to systematically destroy anonymous internet use. Anonymity directly conflicts with Meta's "business model" of data collection, surveillance and serving users up as ad targets
Meta and "anonymous internet access" are mutually exclusive. Meta doesn't collect data about and show ads to "anonymous" internet users. It forces users to create "accounts" and "sign in" with clients that run surveillance-related code on the users' computers without the user's input. It builds profiles of internet users (ad targets), even ones that do not use Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, e.g., through the use of tracking pixels on the open web
Apple's and Google's operating systems also try to profile users. The companies encourage users to create "accounts" and "sign in". The operating systems intentionally provide a purpose-built machanism to target users with ads. If used as encouraged by the compaanies, these operating systems are incompatible with "anonymous internet access". The user is not anonymous to the companies, and the companies invite advertisers to use the computer user's internet bandwidth to deliver ads
It was not always like this; I owned Apple computers when there was no such thing as an Apple "account" and Apple's computers did not attempt to automatically "phone home" when powered on. Expectations of "anonymous" internet access amongst new internet users have greatly diminished thanks to Meta, Google and Apple
dom96|8 days ago
1 - https://blog.picheta.me/post/the-future-of-social-media-is-h...
charcircuit|8 days ago
0xbadcafebee|8 days ago
This isn't the first time overprotective parents have caused problems for everyone else. The US drug war (and the mass incarceration of poor and black people) was started mostly by organizations of parents who thought marijuana was going to kill their kids. The movie rating system introduced censorship into movies which limited artistic freedom. Game rating systems limited what games could be sold on store shelves, so most games had to be carefully censored and had limited story lines and content. Ratings on music forced major retailers to drop any music which had an 'explicit' label, making it harder for artists with 'adult' lyrics to get exposure or earn a living. Book bans are largely organized by parents' groups, a significant number of the books they want banned being LGBTQ+ books, so kids aren't exposed to the fact that homosexuality is normal. And of course you can't possibly have an app in a monopolistic App Store that has any kind of adult content; heaven forbid an actual adult wants to use an adult app.
Parents and 'Child Safety' are toxic af and we shouldn't put up with it.
computerthings|8 days ago
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themafia|8 days ago
gweinberg|8 days ago
fennecbutt|8 days ago
IAmBroom|7 days ago
phendrenad2|8 days ago
unknown|8 days ago
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unknown|8 days ago
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kkfx|8 days ago
nickphx|8 days ago
Am4TIfIsER0ppos|8 days ago
Razengan|8 days ago
joshcsimmons|8 days ago
inigyou|8 days ago
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tzs|8 days ago
They don't release any information about what funding sources they have, if any, other than donations and merchandise sales.
In this article [1] about X being ordered to obey the DSA requirements to make election data available to researchers they go on at great length about the importance of knowing who is funding the organizations asking for the data. Maybe they should set an example and disclose their own funding.
Also in that article they suggest X is being singled out for enforcement, ignoring that the the other platforms covered by DSA are at least partially responding to requests for data under DSA. That kind of biased framing is common in many of their articles.
I've never seen any reporting by them where I could not find the same thing covered with less bias from a source that is much more transparent over who funds and controls them.
[1] https://reclaimthenet.org/berlin-court-orders-x-to-share-hun...
bediger4000|8 days ago
aestetix|8 days ago
It will not save any children. It will destroy privacy, destroy free speech, and give lots of money to whatever corporation wins the bid for supplying the tech.
And of course, when that corporation gets hacked and all the personally identifiable information is put on the dark web, nobody will be held accountable.
Kiboneu|8 days ago
expedition32|8 days ago
So he can either go down with the ship or bend with the wind. And Zuckerberg always knows how the wind blows.
jmclnx|8 days ago
I doubt that, but with people using Cell Phone Apps and sites like Facebook/Twitter, people are giving up their anonymity on purpose. You can still be anonymous if you want to.
And as for verification at the OS level, good luck with that.
beej71|8 days ago
techblueberry|8 days ago
Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms? But like, kids shouldn’t be able to sign a ToS until they’re 18.
I have little sympathy for anything that limits people’s access to these biggest platforms. I’m also largely cynical to the idea that anyone’s doing any free speeching on meta or Twitter in the first place. If counter culture gets driven back to IRC, or gasp meatspace, then all the better.
trueismywork|8 days ago
AJ007|8 days ago
There were not apps that all of your friends in school used, and if you didn't use them you wouldn't be cool, but also the apps would push you or cause you to unwittingly share photos publicly while publishing your photos/videos globally to adults who for some reason use their app longer when they look at videos of kids.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding how things work here, I don't use Facebook or Instagram. I've never even seen Tiktok. I've never used LinkedIn. But when I read these stories about what is going on with Mark Zuckerberg and Meta it sounds like they were doing a lot of things they shouldn't be doing in a commercial context, period. If you aren't 18 you should still be able to talk to your friends without being spied on, but you sure as hell shouldn't be getting connected to random people adult or otherwise from all over the world because it's increasing the usage time of those adults on some app.
I think protocols are the way to go and will be what dominate in the post-AI era. Fuck the ads, the constantly changing UIs, the bait and switch, and now just add photo verification to the list. No thanks.
iamnothere|8 days ago
Some families did not. Mine did not! But that was a decision that was up to individual families.
I don’t see why these decisions should be up to anyone but individual families. Period. If your kids are mature enough for unsupervised computer use, or if you don’t see it as a problem, that’s up to you as a parent. Same as if you feel comfortable taking your kids skeet shooting or rock climbing.
hedora|8 days ago
I thought youtube kids was sketchy as hell until I discovered the current state of “educational” online games.
b00ty4breakfast|8 days ago
Previously, your local dirty movie theater might ask for ID before selling you tickets to Debbie Does Dallas and they might even keep a copy on file for later reference. Assuming that the underpaid usher didn't just glance at the DOB, that copy likely goes into a filing cabinet in the back of the building. That's not necessarily safe, but the opportunity for that being stolen and sold is minuscule compared to today. Even if it were on a computer database somewhere, the internet of 30-40 years ago, inasmuch as it existed, was not the behemoth that it is today.
themafia|8 days ago
Maybe we should just end advertising targeting anyone under 18. I wonder if by removing the financial incentive the problem would mostly sort itself out.
2OEH8eoCRo0|8 days ago
torginus|8 days ago
bilegeek|8 days ago
1.) Because it always seems to have an outsized impact on adults. Then the predators get away with it because the platforms DGAF (for example, Discord has had a MASSIVE problem with illegality for YEARS, with boatloads of reports and evidence that was blatantly ignored, and yet NOW they need your ID?) And any gate design that COULD work without PII won't be implemented because data is too juicy.
> Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms?
> If counter culture gets driven back to IRC, or gasp meatspace, then all the better.
2.) Yes on both counts. But protocols need to be decentralized, massively scalable, available across every platform including phones, and normie-grade easy-to-use (not everybody, and it's getting better now, but lots of devs tend to give up here, like it's a binary choice between a lobotomized barely-functioning bloated Fisher-Price app and a fully-functioning lean app with awful UI. Shockingly difficult, as I discovered trying to program, but both possible and necessary.) But as for meatspace...
> we went from a world where most everything was intermediated by parents
3.) If anything, the world is intermediated by parents like never before.[1] Not everywhere, not everybody, but enough freedom of movement and gathering has been lost by children and teens that it is killing meatspace. This CANNOT be ignored if you want to address online problems. The internet, awful as it can be, is the only "free" place left to roam for many.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945114
michaelt|8 days ago
The thing is, any speech controls imposed on Facebook and Twitter will probably be imposed on all services - including IRC.
And while Facebook and Twitter are capable of compliance and have bottomless pockets to implement it, IRC isn't and doesn't.
SpicyLemonZest|8 days ago
themafia|8 days ago
To you and I it's made to appear that these things happen without warning. I assure you that's not at all how these things actually occur. If this truly caught out Meta by surprise then they should fire their CEO for general incompetence.
throwawayffffas|8 days ago