Comment by mrguyorama
2 days ago
> It targets the apathetic 99% of the population who won't have the energy or knowledge to do anything about it.
It targets the 99% of the population who do not care about your absolutist stance on encryption, do not care about the technical reason you can't have simultaneous perfect encryption and a gov backdoor, and do not care about math.
They care that the world changed pretty much overnight, and they are tired of finding out that their children have been solicited for sex by strangers on the internet and platforms have done everything possible to NOT address that problem.
People are tired of being victimized, tired of not having some control over what their children are able to interact with, tired of being blamed for giving their kids access to the internet while their kids are required to use the internet for things like school
It's utter insanity to think parents wouldn't rather just cede some freedom to have a fighting chance of bringing up children the way they want, of being able to keep them safe from literal pedophiles. That's not apathy, that's a difference of priorities.
The entire history of human civilization is the story of ceding certain freedoms for some sort of stability. Parents will happily run government code on all their devices if it means the government strings up pedophiles every week.
The internet has been the single largest boon to pedophiles and people making and distributing child porn ever, and parents are tired of waiting for Google and Facebook to hem and haw about how they can't afford to fix it and wont even try.
If you want to stop things like Chat Control, give parents an alternative that doesn't take enormous effort to learn and understand, that actually works, that doesn't put the onus on them to magically be able to police every single HTTP request their child's devices make without even giving them the tools to do so. Stop blaming parents for not parenting hard enough. You have no idea how absurd this entire situation is for parents who aren't tech experts.
And no, child parental controls on devices right now are utterly unsophisticated, and utterly useless at stopping this. Parents will turn on as much tracking as they can, and STILL find out their kids figured out a fairly trivial way of bypassing it.
Stop ignoring the very real problems that modern parents are faced with.
> If you want to stop things like Chat Control, give parents an alternative
No! It is not my job to appease your fantasies. It is your job to first and foremost prove that Chat Control will effectively curb child abuse, which proponents of the legislation have completely failed to do. Secondly it is your job to ensure that your solution doesn't break the EU charter of fundamental human rights.
Here is a solution for you: All children must be accompanied by their legal guardian at all times - a child must never leave their sight. Unlike Chat Control, this solution would actually work and prevent all cases of abuse except those perpetrated by the guardians themselves.
> Parents will happily run government code on all their devices if it means the government strings up pedophiles every week.
By all means, I support your decision to run government code on all of your devices. Just keep mine and everyone else's out of it.
Children shouldn’t have devices.
They certainly shouldn’t have always online devices capable of accessing social media platforms.
US father of three here and if they’re younger than 15 just hand them a Nintendo switch… if you hand them anything at all.
You will never win the arms race you’ll be fighting- against both your children and the platforms.
Just opt out.
The Switch has a built in web browser that is "hidden" barely. Ample Youtube videos will show your child how to use it to access instagram, discord, even roblox supposedly.
Does your school not force them to have some sort of laptop? I was using my middle school provided laptop to do things I probably shouldn't have on my parent's network with them none the wiser, and the school not caring what I did, and utterly unable to stop me even if they wanted. In fact, the IT department basically drafted me and a few other students to be repair techs.
I was only superficially technically inclined at the time.
Parents will want control over their 16-18 year olds too, that's kind of a critical time.
"Just don't let them use the internet at all" is a great way to ensure your kid cannot develop any sort of healthy relationship with the internet once they become an age where they can just buy their own stuff, and sets them up nicely to be fresh, naive meat to whoever wants to exploit them.
My family is all experiencing this.
You have simply given parents a lose lose lose lose situation, and then complain when they turn to the only remaining group claiming to offer assistance.
What does that have to do with Chat Control? You need better parental controls offered by iOS, Android, Windows, etc. Chat Control is chiefly about scanning and censoring every private message sent between adults under the guise of stopping the spread of CSAM (trivially defeated by sending encrypted ZIP files or using an alternative non-conforming messaging service).