Comment by azinman2
20 hours ago
Would be a nightmare to implement and achieve the goal, but I have to say I think it’s more right than wrong. All of the data is very clear about the harms.
China has restrictions for social media and screen time for kids — how do they implement this?
I actually think this would be easier to implement than many of the current ID verification methods I've seen being pushed. We already have the infrastructure for selling age restricted goods, this is nothing new. Manufacturers that are unable to restrict their hardware in a "child" mode don't have to do anything and could simply continue selling to adults only.
It's obvious we're moving in a direction where we are going to get these restrictions in one way or another, and this is the only way I've come up with that doesn't come with serious privacy implications.
Most importantly, this solution would be simple for anyone to understand. You don't need to be a cryptography expert to understand there are child safe devices and then there are unrestricted devices for adults.
Would the parents comply though? Many of the restrictions work because most adults agree is OK. For example for alcohol, children could drink as much as they want at home, if adults would permit it.
If most adults would be convinced there is an issue, one probably has enough lock-down modes even nowadays, not sure it is a "technical" problem.
I strongly believe that most would actually. All parents I've talked to have had issues with parenting their children's online activity. They know there are harmful things they want to prevent them from accessing but it is simply to hard to configure and set up existing tools for it. (Besides every single friend they have don't have any restrictions so it all seem pointless.)
I can also see also large support for uploading ID to various services when talking about kids, but when you re-frame the question to adults, most seems to really dislike the idea immensely.
Sure there will be children with access to unrestricted devices, just like we had kids with porn mags hidden in a forest somewhere back in the day, or how that one sketchy guy was buying alcohol, etc. But I think this is an acceptable level of risk for whatever harm people want to prevent.
Definitely makes it easier for parents. It also normalizes screen time limits for kids. When none of your kids' friends have screen time limits, it's harder to enforce. When at least there's a few of them, it's easier to get buy-in from your kids.
At that point it's on the parents. We can't stop parents from giving their kids alcohol or drugs either. (Not saying internet access is necessarily on the same level as that but you get the point.)
> Would the parents comply though?
Consider that even with something as divisive as covid lockdowns and vaccines, the overwhelming majority of people complied with government instructions.
There are a minority of people currently refusing to vaccinate their children properly, and their fucking around is being found out with measles outbreaks in various countries.
Why would this be different? Why wouldn't it be a minority of parents permitting their children to drink, to smoke, to use unrestricted computing resources?
Children are not the property of their parents- the government can and does take over parental responsibility.
I don’t understand how id-ing the buyer helps? What is the age restricted good here?
Are you saying that kids now buy their phones with pocket money without their parents knowing?
> It's obvious we're moving in a direction where we are going to get these restrictions in one way or another
It’s not obvious, it’s just sad. I still hope reason will prevail in this.
The age restricted good is an unrestricted computer.
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The new California law requires all operating systems to have a child mode.
It's a nightmare to some extent to prevent underage people from consuming alcohol if you want to phrase it that way. But we don't try to ban stores from selling alcohol because of concerns children will be drinking it. Instead we require the store checks for ID.
Why on earth would we be looking to China as a template on how we should run free societies? Are you mad?
Good ideas can come from anywhere. Shutting yourself off only does a disservice. You don’t need to replicate 100% of another society to recognize individual strengths.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/08/09/1077567/china-ch...
That describes something very similar to what the OP suggested.
Yeah, sounds like something from an authoritarian police state.
> Essentially, this is a cross-platform, cross-device, government-led parental control system that has been painstakingly planned out by Beijing.
> The rules are incredibly specific: kids under eight, for instance, can only use smart devices for 40 minutes every day and only consume content about “elementary education, hobbies and interests, and liberal arts education”; when they turn eight, they graduate to 60 minutes of screen time and “entertainment content with positive guidance.” Honestly, this newsletter would have to go on forever to explain all the specifics.
We don’t do this in free societies. Let the parents decide.
> how do they implement this?
Centralized power and being unafraid to use authoritarian tactics. Also the general cultural ethos of the people.
> China has restrictions for social media and screen time for kids — how do they implement this?
China is much more socially conservative, and less likely to abandon their kids to latest thing.
Passport /citizen ID linked to your WOW account, etc.
Which has never worked. Korea had a system to prevent kids from gaming after midnight for something like 15 years. All it did was make Korean kids very good at memorizing their parents ID.
In China they link the ID to a phone number (via mobile carriers) and the online services require you to authenticate using the phone (SMS etc.) Unless the kids are able to secretly access the parent's phone there's no low-effort way to work around the system.
I don't know about Korea but if memorizing an ID number works, then that's just a badly designed system.
I'm not sure what your argument is really, unless you're saying there's technically and absolutely no feasible way to securely verify the age of a person before allowing them to access an online service (even if you allow the government to be authoritarian)
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Maybe it does work exactly as intended. It gives parents more leverage to restrict their kids gaming but many parents just don't care. And it's ok I guess, the society probably needs some flexibility in raising the next gen.
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