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0 pointsekr____2mo ago0 comments

> 1) The parental responsibility is given to the wrong people. You're basically being forced by law to give all apps and websites your child's age on request, and then trusting those online platforms to serve the right content (lol). It should be the other way around. The apps and websites should broadcast the age rating of their content, and the OS fetches that age rating, and decides whether the content is appropriate by comparing the age rating to the user's age. The user's age, or age bracket, or any information about the user at all, should not leave the user's computer.

FWIW, this is not quite an accurate description of AB1043, in at least three respects:

1. Apps don't get your exact age, just an age range.

2. Websites don't get your age at all.

3. AB1043 itself doesn't mandate any content restrictions; it just says that the app now has "actual knowledge" of the user's age. That's not to say that there aren't other laws which require age-specific behaviors, but this particular one is pretty thi on this.

In addition, I certainly understand the position that the age range shouldn't leave the computer, but I'm not sure how well that works technically, assuming you want age-based content restrictions. First, a number of the behaviors that age assurance laws want to restrict are hard to implement client side. For example, the NY SAFE For Kids act forbids algorithmic feeds, and for obvious reasons that's a lot easier to do on the server. Second, even if you do have device-side filtering, it's hard to prevent the site/app from learning what age brackets are in place, because they can experimentally provide content with different age markings and see what's accepted and what's blocked. Cooper, Arnao, and I discuss this in some more detail on pp 39--42 of our report on Age Assurance: https://kgi.georgetown.edu/research-and-commentary/age-assur...

I'm not saying that this makes a material difference in how you should feel about AB 1043, just trying to clarify the technical situation.

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6 comments · 1 top-level

txrx00002mo ago· 5 in thread

Thanks for the clarification.

Regarding what to do with algorithmic feeds, instead of forcing platforms like Facebook to be less evil, we should give parents the ability to simply uninstall Facebook, and prevent it from being installed by the child. We could implement a password lock for app installation/updates at the OS-level that can be enabled in the phone's settings, that works like Linux's sudo. Every time you install/uninstall/update an app, it asks for a password. Then parents would be able to choose which apps can run on their child's device.

Notice their strategy: these companies make it hard/impossible for you to uninstall preloaded apps, and they make it hard to develop competing apps and OSes, and they degrade the non-preloaded software UX on purpose, which creates the artificial need to filter the feeds in existing platforms that these companies control. They also monopolize the app store and gatekeep which apps can be listed on it, and which OS APIs non-affliated apps can use. Instead of accepting that and settling with just filtering those existing platforms' feeds, we should have the option to abandon them entirely.

We need the phone hardware companies to open-source their device firmware, drivers, and let the device owner lock/unlock the bootloader with a password, so that we could never have a situation like the current one where OSes come preinstalled with bloat like TikTok or Facebook, and the bootloader is locked so you can't even install a different OS and your phone becomes a brick when they stop providing updates. If we allow software competition, then child protection would have never been a problem in the first place because people would be able to make child-friendly toy apps and toy OSes, and control what apps and OS can run on the hardware they purchased. Parents would have lots of child-friendly choices. This digital parenting problem was manufactured by the same companies trying to sell us a "solution" like this Cali bill or in other cases ID verification, which coincidentally makes it easier for them to track people online.

kelnos2mo ago

> instead of forcing platforms like Facebook to be less evil, we should give parents the ability to simply uninstall Facebook, and prevent it from being installed by the child.

Isn't that how parental controls already work?

There are problems, though:

1. The kids want to use Facebook. If parent A refuses to let their kid use Facebook, then kids B, C, D, E, F... all use Facebook and kid A becomes a social outcast. This actually happens. (Well, now it's other apps; kids don't use Facebook anymore.) This is similar to the mobile-phones-in-schools problem: if a parent doesn't let their kid bring a phone to school, and all the other parents do, that creates social isolation. When the school district bans the phones, it solves the problem for everyone. (So it's a collective action problem, really.)

2. Web browsers. Unless the parent is going to uninstall and disallow web browser use, the kid can still sign into whatever service they want using the web browser. I don't think parental controls block specific sites, and even if they do, there are ways around that, certainly.

I am very often the person who says that parents should actually parent their kids and not rely on the government to nanny them. But in this case I think there actually is value to the government making laws that make Facebook (etc.) less evil. And as a bonus, maybe they'll be forced to be less evil to adults too!

txrx00002mo ago

1. The current norm of social siloing apps was created by these tech companies in the first place. What regulators can do is discourage anti-competitive practices that lock users into specific software and hardware platforms. If there's plenty of competition for every kind of social app, and competition for OSes, and users could freely choose and move between them, then not having a particular app would not result in social isolation. This affects adults as well.

2. The OS has a firewall. But it's currently not user-controllable on your phone. Phone companies have decided you don't need that feature. But actually, they can easily implement a nice UI in the settings for the firewall and lock it behind a password, then parents would be able to use it to block individual websites. We can even make it possible to import/export site lists as a txt file so that you can download/share a curated block list that you or other parents made, to block many things at once. You could also do this for your entire home WiFi network in your WiFi router's settings, if your router's firmware has that feature.

And yeah, I agree that we should make the platforms less evil in general. But I think the way to do that is to give people the ability to easily ditch bad platforms and build new ones. Let the platforms actually compete, then the best will prevail. Right now, they don't prevail because of layers and layers of anti-competitive barriers. It would take great technical effort to regulate all the tricks these tech companies use, that's why I propose dealing with it at the root: make it so that all computer/phone hardware manufacturers must open-source their device drivers and firmware, and let the user lock/unlock the bootloader and install alternative OSes. If we do this, then the entire software ecosystem will fix itself over time along with all the downstream problems.

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wolvoleo2mo ago

> The kids want to use Facebook. If parent A refuses to let their kid use Facebook, then kids B, C, D, E, F... all use Facebook and kid A becomes a social outcast. This actually happens. (Well, now it's other apps; kids don't use Facebook anymore.) This is similar to the mobile-phones-in-schools problem: if a parent doesn't let their kid bring a phone to school, and all the other parents do, that creates social isolation. When the school district bans the phones, it solves the problem for everyone. (So it's a collective action problem, really.)

If so many people give their kids phones and so few don't, why ban them in the first place? Clearly the vast majority of parents are fine with their kids having one.

You're just inventing a problem then. Or worse, implement a conservative talking point.

amenhotep2mo ago

It's possible to mandate effective parental controls and then say "it's illegal to give your child access to facebook" and then just see what happens. You don't have to jump straight to making it technologically guaranteed by construction, maybe it's enough to just give parents the tools and an excuse to say no.

We don't need DNA testing locks on cans of beer that won't let you drink from them unless you're an adult, do we? It's perfectly possible for a parent to buy their child all the beer they want, and there's nothing stopping the children from trying to peer pressure them into it, and in many countries it's not even generally illegal to let your child drink beer! And yet almost all parents are able to almost completely enforce a reasonable level of restricted access, simply because society frowns upon it.

pyuser5832mo ago

Had this problem with my kid - social media caused serious mental health issues. Toxic content in kids areas.

But taking it away was worse.

Once “not using it” isn’t an option, government intervention becomes reasonable.

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