Andy Carolan :prami:
@neil I think we all realise that eventually that verification data will be leaked/‘hacked’… photos, names, driving licence details etc.
It's not always as simple as it could be but the tech which children use should be as locked down as possible. Parental controls blocking search for example. Perhaps efforts should be focussed in improving those controls + educating parents?
Then there's the whole VPN issue. Those are easy for anyone to install, use, and get past these rules.
13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
@andycarolan @neil I've been testing parental controls for at least 15 years, and I've yet to encounter a system that is sufficiently nuanced to give teenagers in particular access to things they should have access to while still blocking actual pr0n, mostly due to scope creep that tends in specific ideological directions (such as homophobia built into service).
More worrying still, pretty much all of them have massive scope for abuse by parents/guardians and include features such as tracking, usually implemented in ways that violate the rights of the child.
I don't have any great answers at scale to this - as an individual parent, I have a solution, but its success depends on my being extremely hands-on and technically/culturally knowledgeable about the internet, and it still reflects my biases about appropriate content.
13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
@andycarolan @neil (I also think anti-porn crusades are something of a Trojan horse in general. Sure, there's some porn that models harmful behaviour, but it's always so strongly emphasised as a danger over models of violence, for example, or even gambling.)
13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
Yeah, I'm doing something similar, but with a computer. We're leveraging a supervised YouTube account (more or less the last Google service standing since Small Owlbear made the shift to Firefox) and I'm manually restricted some games from the family Steam library.
But most of my approach is being available to talk about stuff, making computer use a shared family experience (which my mum did for me when I was growing up), and explaining what the blocks are for.
I've shown them how to use private browsing to circumvent the adult content restrictions I put in place, but that's also something they come to me to discuss, and we've talked about what kinds of adult content they'd rather not see (the boring, the horny and the too-scary) and the kind of content I'd rather they didn't see (bigotry, extreme violence, animal cruelty, exploitation).
Some stuff, we had to talk through with extensive explanations (why I'm not comfortable with a lot of military content, for instance) and reach a compromise (obvious pretend play only and some explainers about how military propaganda works and why it's bad).
It's definitely a labour (and to some extent expertise) intensive approach, but given that I don't want to still be managing a content filtering system when they're 13, talking stuff through is the only sensible option I can think of.
A combination of adblockers, strong network security and a relatively untargeted OS choice (Pop!_OS Linux in this case) take care of the malware threat side of things.
But none of this scales evenly. I have the privilege of time and expertise, but as with so much of online life, a lot of people have just been chucked in at the deep end and told to start swimming, with it pitched as somehow being their own fault if they drown.
Andy Carolan :prami:
@HauntedOwlbear As you said about your own solution, I think it has to be very hands on. My solution here is very much reliant on iOS parental controls on a case by case basis. I have whitelisted some apps however. I imagine that tween/teen ages are more difficult because there's a need for more access to social apps and services, and that brings with it it's own problems. @neil
13 barn owls in a trenchcoat
Microsoft Family Safety really is best-in-class for this stuff, I agree.
Probably because Microsoft is under so much scrutiny in various places, their parental controls come closest to actually honouring the Contention of the Rights of the Child (still kind of amazing, given that the US is one of the few countries that isn't a signatory to the convention).
I really like the emphasis on consent, and the fact that there are certain restrictions that cannot be imposed once a user is past a specific age.
On the downside, Microsoft is a data sucking monster, but collecting data on children is one of those things that genuinely seems to be regarded as more potential legal trouble than it's worth as far as the big players are concerned.
But yeah, even the best site blocking is very scattershot.
Ben Tasker
@HauntedOwlbear @andycarolan @neil
I have similar concerns about parental control software. So many of the offerings involve location tracking and similar - it's not *right* for a parent to give up their child's privacy like that.
The middle ground I settled on, of all things, was Microsoft Family Safety - they *can* do location tracking but it's off by default (and needs opting into on device).
But it still suffers from over/underblocking like everything else.
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