We have cars, and kids are not allowed to drive them. Yet we do not have mechanisms in place to ensure kids aren't driving cars because the responsibility falls on the parents, and it works. By and large, parents understand the threats and navigate this requirement perfectly fine; outliers are few enough that we can deal with them on an individual basis.
The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unfettered internet access is either that parents by and large don't actually agree with the threat assessment of said internet access for kids, or they ignore it because the consequences of doing so are disproportionately small. Personally, my vote is that they just don't think it's that big of a problem.
To me, the ideal solution would be more granular and better parental control configurations, especially on the web. Pair that with preconfigured devices that have "unremovable" parental controls, branded as "kids/youth phones." If parents care about this, they'll buy those phones for their kids and the problem is solved. If they don't, then this isn't something parents want, and we shouldn't really pursue it further.
> The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unfettered internet access is either that parents by and large don't actually agree with the threat assessment of said internet access for kids, or they ignore it because the consequences of doing so are disproportionately small.
Sometimes parents know their children, and what's best for them, better than faceless politicians (who we've seen are often attracted to said children for some reason).
Growing up in my household there was a time when I was allowed to read and watch whatever I found interesting. My younger brother was not. That was because my parents knew us and judged that at my level of maturity I was unlikely to be negatively impacted, whereas my brother would get nightmares or copy-cat things he saw that he definitely shouldn't.
That's how it should be. Yes, there are bad parents who will decide poorly. That's the cost of freedom.
I sympathetic to this perspective, as a parent, but also, there are just a lot of kids out there with bad parents.
My personal philosophy is that parents have a duty to raise their children but that duty is on behalf of the society into which the children will eventually enter. Consequently, a just society may sometimes impose itself on parental freedoms (in the case of neglect, for example) because, in the end, the child's ultimate guardian and responsibility is the society itself, not the parents. The internet is full of material exposure to which, for children, could reasonably be construed as neglect or abuse, and it is insufficient to leave the entirety of the responsibility to the parents, in that case.
I don't know why Americans are so obsessed with freedom as if were the only social good that a society can pursue. There are many things which make life worth living, that contribute to flourishing, and freedom is high on that list, but its not the only thing.
All that said, I don't approve of age checks of the sort being proposed everywhere now. We can do a lot better at mitigating these problems without damaging privacy so much.
I think that the individual does not raise children on behalf of society, I think that society raises children on behalf of the individual. I also think that when society fails to keep up it's end of the deal, the individual should have the right to walk away from it.
Your stance is also reasonable, and I understand it. I just happen to disagree with it at a pretty fundamental level.
> I don't know why Americans are so obsessed with freedom as if were the only social good that a society can pursue.
It's an interesting question isn't it? The balance between what is best for the individual, and what is best for society and who gets to decide exactly where the balance should be is probably one of the most fundamental problems that face humans.
Personally, I'm so far left that I've almost gone right. I think that others should be able to raise their children however they'd like unless it rises to the level of genuine violent abuse. Just making different moral, political, or lifestyle choices alone should never cost someone their right to parent.
> No. You're still not quite internalizing that the California regulation does not mandate any verification or enforcement or protection of the accuracy of the age bracket data. It mandates that the question be asked, and the answer taken as-is.
That was my read of this as well. OS developers seems not not necessarilly need to make any effort here. Ask for an age as a number at account creation and let the user change it as they please at any given time.
This might be a dumb question, but what actually constitutes an "affected child for each intentional violation"? Violation of what? The text specifies that "A developer shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched."
Am I being negligent just for not checking the age, even if the application is unequivocally ok for all ages? And are children affected by my negligence in any way even though no one was hurt?
It's never going to happen, but I felt we solved all of this with forums and IRC back in the day. I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again.
Group sizes were smaller and as such easier to moderate. There could be plenty of similar interest forums which meant even if you pissed of some mods, there were always other forums. Invite only groups that recruited from larger forums (or even trusted members only sections on the same forum) were good at filtering out low value posters.
There were bots, but they were not as big of a problem. The message amplification was smaller, and it was probably harder to ban evade.
> I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again.
So do it. Forums haven't gone away, you just stopped going to them. Search for your special interest followed by "Powered by phpbb" (or Invision Community, or your preferred software) and you'll find plenty of surprisingly active communities out there.
Yeah, you are right! I have started going down that road the last year or so, but mostly in the IRC sphere. I started hanging out libera.chat, but found a smaller community on irc.inthemansion.com which I really enjoy.
I'm probably just jaded as most of the forums I visited back in the day became ghost towns during the 2010s. I should make more of an effort here
> It's never going to happen, but I felt we solved all of this with forums and IRC back in the day. I wish we gravitated towards that kind of internet again.
IME young people use Discord, and those servers often require permission to even join. Nearly all my fandom communications happen on a few Discord servers, most of which you cannot join without an invitation, and if you're kicked (bad actors will be kicked), you cannot re-join (without permission).
I guess I am kind of describing Discord in some sense, I personally discounted Discord as I've only ever used it as a free voice chat for small groups. But to be fair, I would rather leverage basic HTTP websites for consuming social media content than everything being that boring discord client.
I think that supporting a wide spread of newspaper on the local level will alleviate all these issues in aggregate. This is what we do in Norway and I think it works quite well to be honest. My municipality of around 250k inhabitants has 4 newspapers that I am aware of, none of which feels very overtly influenced by activists nor political or financial pressures.
There are quite a few newspapers who are political and receive subsidies, but overall I think our system works quite well at providing high quality local reporting at affordable prices.
I felt pretty much the exact opposite. I was immediately drawn to some of the abstract art while not particularilly enjoying the traditional paintings. I found them too uncanny and "lifeless".
That being said, if I had a screen that could reasonably pass as a framed image on the wall, I would love a version of this where I could have a well known picture on it that would primarilly be static but sometimes have subtle movements or shift about a bit as a fun novelty to trip over guests. The typical, blinking, repositioning. Like hoppers nighthawks, but the clerk serving a drink or two. The couple lighting a sigarette or someone walking past the diner.
I think the "surveilance capitalism" and centralization of companies like Meta, Google etc has made many of us very sensitive to any systems that will leave traces of us against our will, be it porn, flock cameras or anything else that is similar.
I think we would have a lot less of a pushback against such policing efforts if governments had done a better job at reigning in tracking on the internet from the start. "Porn websites should check your age" is not that radical, but in a world where it doesn't feel unrealistic that much of the information about you is correlated and processed in ways that are not in your personal best interest, then it becomes another loop in the proverbial noose that can be used to hang us all.
I've tried many times to find a nice UI for beets and somehow never come across this. It is exactly what I've been searching for all these years... Thanks for sharing!
I think 'restoring the ability to wiretap' is misleading as this is not 'restoring the ability', its more akin to 'wiretapping everyone all the time'.
Wiretapping requires probable cause and a court order in order to be used chat control does not. It will report thousands daily and no one will be blamed or punished for false reports which turned out did not have probable cause. It was a reactive tool in the police's arsenal, it was not proactive like this is supposed to be.
Wiretapping requires/required significant manpower investment in order to surveil a single potential criminal which rightfully forced the police to prioritize their resources. Chat Control is automated and will enable the same amount of police to police more people.
Wiretapping was not retroactive. This system will create records that can be stored for a long time for very cheap.
This is not restoring wiretapping, this is supercharging wiretapping.
You are correct. I was still basing my post of the assumption that the AI scanning was still in the bill and that the proposed two strikes then chats would disclosed was there as well, which they is not. This provision seemed to imply that messages would have to be stored in order to be able to be provided after the two strikes.
I wasn't very clear in my original post always included an assumption that false positives were involved and that messages being stored were a result of that and not all messages being stored at all times.
The images and links that are scanned and is deems potentially problematic will be stored for up to 6 months or until they are deemed unproblematic. There is still a potential 6 month paper trail here, and in politically turbulent times that paper trail could still be damaging retroactively even if the report contains non CSAM.
I wouldn't necessarily call it comforting fantasy, people change their minds all the time. I think we're all to some extent able to justify some negative sides of any political movement as tensions rise.
I've felt this myself a few times now. Both when Trump was attempted assasinated and now with Charlie Kirk. I am sad that public discourse and our democracies are kind of unraveling these days and that this is just a sad reality of that fact. As far as Trump or Charlie Kirk go, I have no sympathy what so ever.
I'm not sure I really want to blame anyone for things becoming like this, it all seems like par for the course in the world we've created for ourselves. I just wish we were able to stop before this.
I've been thinking about doing the same thing as the OP for a while, but haven't really gotten around to it. I've started scrobbling to last.fm in order to see if their recommendation algorithm can be a replacement for Spotify. The jury is still out on that.
As my financial situation has gone from a place where I felt I could not really care and still save a healthy amount per month, to a place where I feel it is more necessary for me to try to keep up with my finances I've gone from really liking Spotify to a realization that I've probably spent enough money on spotify over the last 15-ish years to buy a cheap car or quite a sizeable music collection, had I just spent that money on music directly.
I have gotten my money's worth from Spotify for sure, I listen to it a lot and have probably gotten to hear magnitudes more music than if I merely bought an album or something every month instead, but at this point I can't get over the fact that if/when I unsubscribe to Spotify, I will have nothing and will have to spend a lot to get access to the music I actually care about again.
In a sense, I wish there was an audible style subscription for music. Give me the ability to sample music as a replacement for spotify radio, or/and some playlists like discover weekly and a few personalized ones, and a credit to pick something to buy permanently.
The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unfettered internet access is either that parents by and large don't actually agree with the threat assessment of said internet access for kids, or they ignore it because the consequences of doing so are disproportionately small. Personally, my vote is that they just don't think it's that big of a problem.
To me, the ideal solution would be more granular and better parental control configurations, especially on the web. Pair that with preconfigured devices that have "unremovable" parental controls, branded as "kids/youth phones." If parents care about this, they'll buy those phones for their kids and the problem is solved. If they don't, then this isn't something parents want, and we shouldn't really pursue it further.