Comment by anjiro
4 days ago
Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. And assuming that device parental controls work, which (at least on iOS) they don't [1].
1. https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-cont...
There's a big difference between your kid accessing inappropriate things at a friends house for a few hours a month and having that stuff at his or her fingertips 24/7.
If parents were really concerned about this stuff they'd take the time to set up parental controls, but they don't. Which makes me pretty sure the push for all this isn't coming from parents.
Also, (b)locking at the device level has a crucial benefit: It brings enforcement into a physical realm where parents can detect and manage exceptions.
If Little Timmy has a phone you don't recognize in his hand, then you know that's a problem.
It also insulates every website from needing to support Orthodox Latverian messianism where male children below the age of 17 lunar years cannot see unclad ankles.
> If parents were really concerned about this stuff they'd take the time to set up parental controls, but they don't. Which makes me pretty sure the push for all this isn't coming from parents.
I agree and moreover I cannot overstate how I do not want networks to have any PII about my children.
Same applies to alcohol at a friend's house, cigarette's behind the shop, and any other sort of restrictions when away from parents. Ultimately kid's will either take to heart their parent's guidnace or they won't.
Those things are still illegal for minors. I find that to be a rather weak argument.
They're implemented in a way that people who don't ever buy alcohol or cigarettes get effected by though. I can't feasibly opt out of the entire internet that I use to pay bills, schedule doctors appointments, file taxes, etc. because hypothetical children could use them to access completely unrelated things to those boring parts of my everyday life. The equivalent would be if I got carded every time I stepped out of my house just in case I might decide to buy alcohol later.
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> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.
We could lock every kid and adult in a padded cell to prevent kids from being harmed, so why don't we pass a law requiring that? Because its not a proportional response, just like demanding mandatory age verification for every adult is not proportional either.
You can’t patch every hole. Kids will always find a way.
More technological solutions to social problems.
> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.
Please describe how requiring a government ID in order to use a computer prevents an over-seventeen from presenting their ID to unlock their computer and then handing that computer over to an under-eighteen? An over-seventeen handing over control of their unlocked computer to a visiting under-eighteen seems to me to be an under-eighteen "go[ing somewhere] they could access a non-locked-down device".
The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?
> The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?
The idea that I should have to figure out a mechanism for other people to police their children in order to use my devices that no child ever has access to for things like paying bills and making doctors appointments without presenting identification is absurd. Minors still drink alcohol all the time, but that would be a pretty shoddy excuse for the government making me flash my ID to leave my house and didn't let me in grocery stores because I couldn't come up with any more effective way to prevent underage drinking.