This consolidation of power is a dream come true for the Big Tech platforms, but it’s a nightmare for users. While the megacorporations get more traffic and a whole lot more user data (read: profit), users are left with far fewer community options and a bland, corporate surveillance machine instead of a vibrant public sphere. The internet we all fell in love with is a diverse and colorful place, full of innovation, connection, and unique opportunities for self-expression. That internet—our internet—is worth defending.
Ok, so I also hate the “protect the children” argument, and there are certainly plenty of lazy parents around.
However, if everyone 10 year old at school has a phone and a Facebook account, it’s just so much more difficult for parents who are not lazy to hold the line. Its an extraordinarily difficult situation. You’d make your kid’s a pariah by upholding a basic standard of care.
By prohibiting access for kids you set the basic societal standard. Yes it will be circumvented but you enable parents to uphold appropriate restrictions.
Is it worth it? Probably not. Its not a good thing but as a dad I can see the intention.
You make a good point. Now, I have 2 kids (12 and 10), and they use phones (when one of us allow them to). However, and thank God for that, the school they go to has banned cell phones entirely, which effectively reduces the unsupervised exposure to stuff we don’t want them to be on yet. Additionally, I removed everything ‘big tech’ from those phones, so they use Signal to communicate with their friends and family, get to stream content from my Jellybean instance, and have all types of DAV in my server to keep files, contacts, calendars and whatnot synchronized. Plus, I keep them tracked with my own Traccar instance when they go out, and I audit their devices pretty regularly.
I am all too aware we cannot shield them from everything. Some things will fall through the cracks, but that’s been the case even when we were kids (dad playboy mag left carelessly somewhere easy to grab?). This does not mean that I will allow, or even want, the government of any country deciding how my kids are raised. That’s my wife’s and my job, nobody else’s.
Having said that, I wholeheartedly agree with the fact that lazy parents are the ones that help the obscure intent of governments and large corporations drive this kind of shit to spy and control us.
Unfortunately the largest percentage of parents worldwide are just that lazy and irresponsible, and unless they change that, this will be the life and challenge of actually responsible parents. Sadly, I don’t see those parents suddenly caring for their kids,it just doesn’t happen. Why would they drop such convenience?
“protect the children” is such a fucking bullshit excuse. If they gave a fuck about children, they’d stop them being slaughtered in schools every fucking day.
Ah, we dont really have school shootings here.
Yet…
How do you know that won’t change in a week, month or year?
I’m surprised there isn’t more of a crowdsourced solution-- community maintained block/allow lists and pluggable tools.
Part of the reason filters suck right now is that they’re sold to turboprudes and people pushing compliance solutions that will placate litigious turboprudes. So you get blocking all of Wikipedia and .edu/.gov because three pages have an anatomical diagram of a breast. The kids are frustrated, normal parents have to keep unblocking legit stuff, and nobody wins.
If you could pick from easily managed lists sponsored by groups you personally trusted, with responsive appeals systems, people might be more willing to use them.
The ad-blocker ecosystem has a lot of precedent for how to work this stuff.