The parent controls on devices is terrible. Android won't let me block hotspot at all (which they have turned on so their can use their school device after I turn the router off for the night). I can limit a game to only 5 minutes - but they have a dozen games like and that is an hour between them all (both not enough to really get into the game, and way too much time when they really do need a study break). I can block youtube, but if there is an educational video they need I have to unblock everything not just that one (or a limited selection). There are new play a game websites popping up daily, and when they to every kid in school is playing until we block it (or more likely the school blocks it as they are all playing in class on the school device) - but trying to block all but a whitelisted set of websites is no better since there are so many legitimate ones teachers really do need kids to see.
When you read the above remember not only do I need a solution it needs to be one I can figure out. My degree is human-computer interaction and I'm not sure I can design something I as an expert could make work - but I still need something.
Again, this problem is not new. However parents are still mad about the situation and governments who don't really have any better ideas see a need to solve it.
When my dad told me to stop doing something, I stopped doing it. Because the consequences were guaranteed, and not fun.
But I also see, the new generation of parents taking gentle parenting to an extreme raising feral iPad kids who call their moms a bitch.
I really don't think there's an optimal framework for proper parenting but a firm hand delivered gently and logically seems to be a good starting point.
Kid isn't supposed to make a hotspot but does anyway? Lost that phone. Kid is playing games on the PC? Remove the games. Etc.
If the children aren't listening to their father, the problem isn't android parental controls.
It seems to me that giving young kids devices is a bad idea in general?
I'm not sure what the age is when not having one becomes a greater liability for them than having one but I really feel strongly that creating laws around this is clumsy and the issue is still generally poorly understood.
Let's not create laws around stuff we don't really understand well yet?
I'm not a parent so I wish I didn't have a dog in this fight but legislation like this forces me too.
Which is IMHO my take on what should be done.
1. require functioning parent controls (here its also worth considering the abuse of parent controls). A problem here is the absence of a proper competing market of (phone) operating systems...
2. use parent controls to "anchor"/set the age/age category. I.e. NOT age verification, just age indication.
3. propagate them similar but not the same as with the Californian law, where possible do the decision before starting a program/fully loading the website etc. (1)
4. allow exception to be set (incl. per "origin" i.e. app, but also sub app e.g. browser:<domain>), it's a parenting tool not a state enforced
5. make it explicitly a non goal for this to be "hard to hack" or anything like that, it's a parenting tool not a banking tool. Proper trust management in a parent child relationship still matters and replacing it with "technology" is unlikely to end up well.
6. where possible leave the decision to the parent controls
7. Age categories are geographically/standard/age scoped, for most apps/site they only have one age gate and can just list them, potentially with content group hints, e.g. `us:pg:13,horror;de:fsk:12,horror` if the the user is in idk. uk the parent controls can make the decision, which might involve parent settings. E.g. a German parent probably wants to treat `us:pg:13,violence` as 14+ and very conservative people in the US want to treat `de:fsk:12,non-erotic-nudity` as 16+. For apps which serve content on a feed it's more shitty as they really want to be given the age gate instead of providing the contents age on access. This doesn't mean that they can't check the age gate for every peace of content "when serving it" (pitching back control to the parents controls) but still need a general age category, which will leak parent controls country, most times that will happen anyway by IP country of origin. So should work?
8. IP country of origin != age gate law which should apply. While legally not fully wrong to treat the same parents would be very surprised if their parent control allow/forbid things when they are on a holiday trip or because their child connected to a VPN tunneled hot spot... This loops back to 6. to give the decisions to the parent controls instead of the app/site/service.
9. criminal liability for intentional miss-classification of age gates (the "intentional" part matter a lot here).
Which is not to say it shouldn't be wholeheartedly opposed, but there's going to be pushback on that and it's going to be difficult to overcome.
Speaking from personal experience, To leave bad habits, I think that kids need identity change. Maybe one can try changing Identity with incentives and environment but perhaps maybe one can try changing Identity with having a thought process as well.
It's like, "teach a man how to fish and he can eat fish for the rest of his life" My point is, teach kids how to think and yes, even then, these addictions will happen but have faith within kids and give them support systems. Every addiction ultimately derives from a form of insecurity and sometimes its circular because the addiction becomes the point of insecurity and this is why addiction can be hard to get out of too. Ultimately, A kid all wants to know is that even with his flaws, he's accepted within society and that they can be successful (whatever-it-might-mean for them)
That being said, One of the best things the world can probably do is give a life of abundance-in-general to us. Not riches just "enough". Poor kids feel like they are helpless so they get addicted, Rich kids feel like nothing matters so they get addicted, the middle class kids are uncertain about their future and they get addicted as a form of gaining control (in my feelings)
Though, If I have to sum up everything that I wrote, it would be that please try leaving a better world for the next generation (us) and we will appreciate it and hopefully trying doing the same for our next generation too hopefully and many of those actions are individual, often-private. The world is feeling quite chaotic nowadays so I feel like nobody is prepared to deal with it and as such each generation copes up in one way or another and taking control from one another which is also relevant to the article.
The whole discussion is way too nuanced. One can write so much about it and this can also lead to action-paralysis. I had even written more words somehow responding to ya[0]
[0]: My Original Thoughts that got quite long also showing the action-paralysis/nuance of the problem too in a way [Took the most relevant points of discussion from it]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260312223938/https://privatebi...
This Illinois law seems to be based on the California one, which is the completely unintrusive one with no mass surveillance or anything like that. It says every operating system must have a parental controls feature, to be enabled or disabled by the device owner, and every app must respect it.
In addition, unlike the California one, the Illinois one specifies certain specific things that must be parentally controlled, such as financial transactions, and addictive feeds. All of it can be overridden by the device owner without providing ID or anything. It also clearly specifies the penalty for a violation: it's to be treated as consumer fraud/unfair trading practices.
Nobody actually cares about children, they're just political weapons used to justify everything they want to do. Everybody knows only literal child rapists would ever dare to argue against child protection laws.
Even if this specific law isn't doing that right now, it's quite easy to see how it will eventually. Without surveillance, the law is ineffective. All you need to do is generate some moral outrage at how the children are supposedly bypassing the insecure system and bam, instant scope expansion.
Look at the metagame being played over the long term. It's got nothing to do with children and everything to do with control.
This junk has even showed up in my country. They used the exact same rationalizations. It was an obvious attempt to regulate social media in order to consolidate political power.
I'm watching, whoever you are. You can't hide forever. Your ego will eventually betray you.
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rr3f3n/followup_to_...
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the...
Legal/political means will also be required.
I also want to know how they think this assinine system will guarantee no one can lie to the computer about how old they are.
If you build your own operating system out of open-source parts, then of course you don't need to comply with consumer product law, since you're not making a consumer product.
If you import an operating system from outside of the US and sell it, responsibility for compliance is on you, like any other imported consumer product.
NixOS does not plan to comply.
OpenBSD will not comply.
Gentoo devs don’t seem to believe it applies to them since they technically just provide a blueprint for you to build a system from source.
FreeBSD seems to be leaning against compliance.
System76 PopOS seems to be willing to comply with California but no states that require attestation like the NY bill.
Omarchy is aggressively noncompliant.
There will be many options.
>During the legislative window for AB 1043, none of the major open-source institutions submitted formal comment or testimony.
https://www.linuxteck.com/california-age-verification-law-li...
What do people think the chance is that someone from the OSI, FSF, or Linux Foundation WROTE this bill? Curious where people's mental models are at.
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rr3f3n/followup_to_...
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the...
Or maybe he's just anti-free-speech because people keep criticizing him. Hard to tell.
I would not be surprised, but I think it is more likely these organizations are staying quiet due to "donations" from large corporations. Or tax deductible bribes. I know OSI and the Linux Foundation is owned by big tech, but the FSF surprises me.
Are OSes going to ban sales in Illinois?
Are the 8,000 flavors of Linux going to comply? What about adduser?
Will we be using bootleg or foreign OSes soon?
What an asinine law.
But yes, as tptacek points out, proposed legislation is off-topic here, unless it's effectively certain it will pass.