Looks like some have to the come conclusion that the problem in “1984” was the dangerous lack of surveillance. This is a left-wing (Labour) government, btw.
Stuff like this is why I no longer want regulations to protect us from big tech. Thank you very much.
Yeah, since it’s the UK, I have a hunch that will include scanning your ID and uploading it to 5 different “international parners” aka American companies. To be tied to all online activity… Why not simply mandate parental controls be implemented in all phones and tablets, and we can do it without all the privacy invasion?
The privacy invasion has been the whole point from the start. PrOtEcTinG thE ChiLdRen is just the pretext.
Hmmh, sure. That’s usually 300% of what this is about. Though they have some “genuine” attempts at filtering the internet over in the UK. From what I gather, ISPs are supposed to filter pornography, copyright violations,
gambling, weapons and violence and all sorts of stuff(Edit:??) per default. So there seems to be some wish for a “family safe” internet mixed in with the usual exploiting children to manifest some surveillance dystopia… Which definitely is the major reason why this is pushed all around the globe.There’s really not much filtering here. A couple of torrent sites is pretty much everything. Sure, porn got stuck behind an age check but that’s about it. There’s no restriction on gambling, weapons etc.
Huh. And how do these age checks work? Is that something you’d call your internet service provider to remove for you? Or is it just the average “Are you over 18? Y/N” popup?
But doesn’t sound too different from what we got. My ISP here in Germany has some secret list of forbidden piracy sites. So I switched to a different DNS server and I’m all good. Is that what they do in the UK as well? Sorry I’m lacking a bit in first hand experience. Haven’t been there in a while. An when on vacation, I rarely try to watch porn or read about automatic rifles 😅
It wouldn’t surprise me if the list was the same tbh.
As for porn, they want you to do the age verification thing on the providers site. Probably involving some third party checking what your face looks like, or something. Most people I know just use a VPN to a more civilised nation.
The children and also teenagers/young people are just a tool to them. Their freedom is dispensable, and they want everyone to think that.
Most of them actually want kids to do that too, and worse. If that weren’t true the island wouldn’t have been a thing.
Your responsibility as a parent is to make a best effort to protect your children. Giving them a phone with a camera, microphone, and unrestricted access to the whole damn internet is like handing them a loaded gun. Stop IDing everyone and fine or lock up neglectful parents.
If this was actually about protecting children then they could simply ensure phones had an ability for parents to enable a firmware lock which added these protections to their child’s device. No need for people to provide age verification credentials to the government. Of course, it’s not really about kids it’s about normalizing explicit tracking of adults’ internet use.
There’s already plenty of tools out there. Parents don’t use them, but that doesn’t stop them from whining about the problem. You can lead an idiot to water, and all that.
Yeah, I mean they do have to be able to communicate with their friends, listen to audiobooks… Do their homework assignments, look up the bus schedule or text/call mom to pick them up, read/watch stuff if they like… Learn about the world. So there needs to be some sane way to do these things.
But it’s not like anyone needs to send in their ID to Google to accomplish that.
While I’m 100% on your side here and I make a point to champion the actual values of these anxiety riddled glass boxes, I do want to point out that we can do all that without them. My kid didn’t get modern electronics until he was competent with paper books, dictionary, and offline only tech.
That said, the added stance here is that we can have both. My kid’s phone is locked down to the point that he can’t even message contacts that I didn’t approve. It’s all operated in house from his phone, my phone, and the shit box excuse for a server I run. I have a curated plan for how he’ll earn his way up to full access and planned strategies for teaching him the safety and independence he needs. I know exactly fuck all about tech, can’t remember any commands for Linux, struggled to understand Docker, but still managed to make it happen. If I can pull it off, the only thing stopping literally anyone else is the choice not to do it.
Hmmh. Is there good Free Software to do these things with a Linux server at home?
Right now I’m using a combination of Home Assistant on the server, GrapheneOS on the phones, a pihole set up as a DNS whitelist, and an app that escapes me from F-droid that locks other apps bases on screen time. Took me maybe 10min to find everything and 2 months to set up but that was mostly due to my sheer incompetence when it comes to anything that isn’t physical. Along the way I even got a jellyfin server going age appropriate music and video sectioned off for him. When he’s responsible enough for it I’ll be teaching him how to pirate his own content.
Awesome!
My first computer of my own was a wiped surplus machine my father brought home from work, with a pack of Redhat floppies and an 800 page user manual in a binder. I was allowed to do whatever I wanted on it as long as I could figure it out myself.
So like, now I have a PhD in engineering. Weird how that works.
Schoolwork aside, none of those things are critical. I haven’t used Facebook since like 2009 and I turned into a successful, relatively well adjusted adult. I suppose there was even a good bit of porn thrown in there from time to time.
Idk. That’s a bit of a treacherous point in itself. I mean first of all life isn’t supposed to be just the bare essentials. But than that argument gets abused a lot, the usual stuff being “a bit of beating didn’t harm me”… but it probably did. At least I’ve rarely seen it been used in a good context. I’d say it depends. Some things used to be better, or simpler back in the days. Some weren’t. I think a lot of things (in society) improved in the 20 years or so since I’ve finished growing up. I don’t think the internet did. All the social media stuff got way worse. But it’s complicated. I don’t see any reason to be on 4chan at 13yo. But at the same time we also don’t want some “clean” dystopian society like in the dark sci-fi movies. Sexuality is part of life. And so is making mistakes, experiences…
Five 👀