That's so American. Ban every nipple and every inch of other "prohibited" body parts.
At the same time in Europe you go to a nude beach and there are whole families with kids and literally nobody has problems with it. Clothing is optional. No one bothers nude people, no one bothers clothed ones.
In Germany or Sweden you can get your [banned by Apple] out in a public place not designated for nudity per se and this just normal.
You raise a great point here. I’m born and raised in Europe, still live here now, but I’ve spent a great deal of time in the US, and the differences in how we perceive children might be the biggest gap between the two cultures.
I much prefer the European view of children being raised as young adults, seeing the world for what it is, rather than the American idea of creating a puritan parallel society scrubbed of all the “bad” things.
Looking back on this I’ve found that the European model raises better critical thinkers – partly due to the school system as well – and you end up with a more sustainable parent-child relationship when the children are grown.
In a world where US culture basically shapes the design of the tech products and social media we all use, this scares me.
> In a world where US culture basically shapes the design of the tech
products and social media we all use, this scares me.
This is a key point. Today we are all so progressively aware of
"cultural hegemony" and wallow in the shame of colonialism. But we
don't see its new and more powerful forms.
The prevalence of digital technology means that companies like Apple
and Google imposing their values is a real problem. And let's be
clear, these are often very parochial values.
It could be said that Europe's digital split with US is only about
things like privacy and data control on the surface. Underneath are
more subtle cultural forces at play.
> The prevalence of digital technology means that companies like Apple and Google imposing their values is a real problem. And let's be clear, these are often very parochial values.
And sadly, beneath all the headlines about AI sentience, this is what Blake Lemoine was actually trying to draw attention to, and that executives consistently dismiss these kinds of concerns [1].
What of the consequences when these corporate values become embedded in AI that plays an ever greater role in our lives?
I certainly prefer the non-Bowdlerized world for children, myself, having grown up as such. But if there is any thinking superiority to that technique it appears to not be in action considering that California (not unique in America in cultural puritanism) outperforms most comparable European countries. It certainly beats Germany at innovation, maternal mortality, income, and wealth and has comparable gross product, and life expectancy.
Considering that Californian children are no less sheltered, I find it hard to believe that this effect on thought is meaningful.
It's really easy to confuse pet cause X when it's really a proxy correlation for more fundamental things like being poor or having low intelligence, either due to environmental damage or neglect.
Right, but the US is happier than most European countries by the last measure I saw https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/happiness-benevolence-... (comparable to Germany, better than France) and when you take a state like mine (California) it beats all but the Scandinavians, which, sure I grant you they seem to have a good and happy society.
So, if you take Germany, Californians are:
- happier
- more wealthy
- more innovative
- have fewer mums die
Now, either this means this better critical thinking described isn't manifesting into any life outcomes, or (and perhaps this is a question worth asking), it isn't better after all.
I think another key factor to happiness in California is the weather. It's hard to find a place in Europe that is top-tier economically and has nice weather year-round.
No matter how good life is in other respects, it's tough for some people (myself included) to feel good when the weather is cold, gray, rainy, and dreary for months on end.
Sure, I was asking if it was worth the better critical thinking if it didn't lead to better life outcomes. It looks like, if there is better critical thinking in Europe it's not leading to better life outcomes. So that means one of two things:
* better c-t does not lead to better l-o
* the c-t is worse
If you feel that World Cups are a better measure than maternal mortality rate, then have at it. The measures we choose are arbitrary, so we can just lay them all out. I'm happy to accept relevant metrics if you have them to show. Personally, I think a society with better critical thinking overall would be able to, given resources, reduce the number of dying new mothers but if you believe there is no relationship I am happy to just accept metrics you offer.
California and Germany are both rich and relatively successful. The reasons for it have nothing to do with their respective stance on nudity. It makes no sense to compare metrics here, they are useless, because there is no causation. You just have to look at poorer states from both the US and EU with the same ideas about nudity but wildly different economic outcomes to see that.
Their success is based on cars, an engineering tradition, the US dollar, the biggest local market, DARPA, the protestant religion, competing nation states next door and a hundred other things.
What I personally think the handling and censorship of nudity might actually influence is democratic discourse, mechanisms of what shocks, what should be censored, what works for populism, what is seen as freedom and what ultimately gets elected.
Money is the end all and be all for some people. It's an incredibly harmful ideology that not only hurts citizens but also the environment and ecosystem
I think you'd have to further sub-divide California to get the full picture. LA and the Bay Area are worlds unto themselves in terms of culture, and probably do have more in common with Europe than Iowa. The rest of the state is much more typically American.
Having raised a 3 year old in the Bay Area (SF and Albany/Berkeley), I've anecdotally noticed a lot less of the puritan/sheltering attitude you're talking about than in other places in the US. I'd say a moderate version of 'free range parenting' is actually the dominant trend these days around here.
Picked an appropriately sized thing to compare considering the variance in US-state laws and EU-nation laws causes whole-US and whole-EU comparisons to be noisy. Also I live in Cali and know it better than I do the rest of the US.
The 11.7 is the PRMR measure from CA-PMSS, which is far stricter than the definition used in Germany. The corresponding rate using the same definition as in Germany was ~6 / 100k in California.
Easy mistake to make, though, since you have to be aware of definitional differences.
The easy mistake is taking for granted US skewed units of measures, I simply posted official stats from International organizations that normalize data across different countries and use standard methodologies.
Anyway your numbers are not better than Germany, but also:
What country has the highest rate of maternal mortality?
The U.S.
Key Findings: The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed countries.
Average US mortality rate is 17/100,000
Average European mortality rate is 8/100,000
Remember that in Europe live at least a hundred million more people than in US an it includes much less developed countries than any US State.
Yet the US average is two times worse than EU and 8.2 (EIGHT!) times worse than Belarus (BELARUS!), Poland or my country, Italy.
You know who's got the same stats of US?
Russia. Yes. That Russia.
US maternal mortality rate is the same of Russia, despite spending billions over billions more on healthcare.
Despite being considered a third World country from the American POV.
To put things in perspective for you: Turkmenistan MMR is 10, in Iran is 16, in Tajikistan is 17 (same of the USA).
Can a certain kind of mentality against women bodies considered "unholy" be the cause of it?
It seems like you have written quite a few comments engaging with people here in an attempt to demonstrate that, by your own data, a difference in maternal mortality of 1 in 100 000, when comparing a single American state to a single European country, may be evidence that European nudity-tolerant attitudes to child-rearing may not result in improved critical thinking skills in European adults.
If this doesn't seem like a stretch to you, by all means continue.
I am told it comes as quite a shock to the unititiated. I usually don't think twice about the giant billboards of bible verses and sermon snippets as I drive to work (Northeast US) but when do notice them I am struck by a small pang of dystopian dread.
My biggest shock was in Canada (Ontario), you drive around and you see churches and dentists everywhere, people come talk to you on campus to talk about religion, even my roommates would try to talk to me about religion every chance they got. Definitely a culture shock for a European.
Yeah for some reasons I had not seen as many dentists as in Canada haha, and I think in general this is true of north america: people REALLY care about their teeth (teeth whitening, flossing, dentists scamming you left and right)
Making shameful normal things like breasts seems to go hand in hand with the kind of self loathing bullshit that shapes people into useful corporate or government drones.
Move at the sound of the bell. Punch in punch out. Be ashamed of your body. Loyalty to company/flag is supreme. etc etc
I believe for a large part of the world homosexuality is far less controversial than homophobia, and thus it makes sense that Disney would want to showcase same-sex couples to declare loudly that they are not homophobic.
Whether this is sincere or opportunistic it's open to judgement; one could cynically notice that the large part of the world that really doesn't like homophobia is a very high potential market for Disney.
March 4th, 2022: “Disney to Still Fund ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Backers, Will Support Gay Rights with ‘Inspiring Content’”[1]
March 9th, 2022: “Human Rights Campaign Refuses Money from Disney Until Meaningful Action is Taken to Combat Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” Bill”[2]
March 11th, 2022: “Disney pauses political donations in Florida, CEO Chapek apologizes for silence over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill”[3]
I don’t think it’s the first time, either. Not for them nor other big names[4]. I wouldn’t find it unreasonable to believe they’re being opportunistic.
I'm struggling to understand what exactly is "bad" about homosexuality? Why does a consenting same sex relationship between two adults need "scrubbing" from Disney?
What you wrote certainly calls homosexuality controversial, but then immediately includes it in a list alongside violent behavior and drug use. Rhetorically, that equates it with the “bad” things.
Unless, of course, you’re trying to state that violence and drug use is “controversial.” But that isn’t clearly implied; you have to read much more into it in order to come up with that interpretation.
I was trying to figure out "good multiplications" and I think what you meant is "good products." and this is a lovely mistake to make since multiplication is taking the product of something. Anyway, nothing useful to add just was trying to figure out where that phrasing came from and was delighted.
It's not quoting, it's paraphrasing. The comment was very suggestive in that homosexuality is bad. If that was not what you meant, you might have chosen less suggestive text.
While I understand the criticism - this is not the point of Apple. Unsolicited nudity is usually used for harassment. I assume that also in Europe sending unsolicited nude photos to adult and kids isn't okay.
Apple's new favorite reasoning for invigilation is kids' protection. Ban all knifes because someone can use a knife to harm a child.
They wouldn't do it if it wasn't profitable in some way or another. But would they choose to give other reasons for their actions, there would definitely be more backslash about their snooping.
People in general know that protecting the innocent is a good thing and Apple exploits this to push their agendas under the guise of children protection. Again.
… you mean Apple provides a feature in its parental controls to allow parents to limit nudity being sent to their kids devices?
Like yes: the explicit purpose of parental controls is to allow parents to place limits on what their kids can do on a device, and in America specifically protect them from the concept of people existing under their clothes.
But I fail to see what Apple is doing here that you find offensive? Did you read the article and description of how the feature is enabled and works or did you just decide “Apple is evil and is choosing what I get to see”?
Of course. "Think of the children" is the apex of hypocrisy.
If the US (and American tech companies) cared at all about children, or human life in general, they would do something about guns.
As a European, seeing videos on YT glorifying guns and gun culture is extremely shocking. I would let my kids run around naked all day, anytime, rather than letting them watch one video showing people firing an AR-15 like it's the most normal thing in the world.
Your European country exists as it is today because brave citizens worked with or near guns to defend your ideals. Gun education and gun safety is not necessarily glorification.
YouTube is a cesspit though and I can totally see some overcaffeinated "content creator" churning out videos that misrepresent and pervert the otherwise sane tenets of firearms education.
But - there's the "think of the children" hypocrisy again. Think of the children, and "do something about" (i.e. ban) guns. Or ban videos about guns?
Kids can look at genitals all day but heaven forbid they watch a video about a gun? Or play video games that feature guns? Where's it end? We've exchanged one instance of hypocrisy for another. No thanks!
Free humans own weapons or at minimum aren’t barred from doing so, and can legally defend themselves from legitimate threats when civil authorities are unable or unwilling to intervene in the moment.
Culture is a different thing to discuss, sure, and glorifying violence is bad - which is what some of those videos do, though not all of them.
Still, we see countries like the Czech Republic where firearms may be carried concealed, nearly anywhere, with licensing on a shall-issue basis: there are relatively reasonable conditions not far from US-based shall-issue permit requirements (for the US states still even requiring a permit), as well, and CZ doesn’t seem to have issues.
Education about gun safety, and just general personal responsibility, used to be a thing in the US but the “education system” here fails us these days.
Can you tell me even one possibility for how Apple will profit off of letting parents choose to not allow children to send or receive nude photos? Besides for increasing the chances parents choose Apple devices for their kids, which is really something you could say about any feature.
Apple is one of the few companies - with more money than God, or at least the Vatican - that I’m willing to assume might do something on “principle” rather than “to maximize profits”.
The fact that their principles might happen to be at-least-mostly-revenue-neutral is another discussion, though, I suppose.
Do you realize the irony of saying that Americans are overprotectionists, using Europe as a comparison, when the EU may be the most sprawling, onerous, and protectionist regulatory state to exist on this planet?
From the other perspective: democratically elected representatives banning harmful chemicals used in children's toys vs. private companies reading and censoring your conversations.
I have to assume you're intentionally misrepresenting what is happening here. Why would you do this? Do you not think your point is strong enough to stand on its own without lying about it?
Everything happens on-device, with no use of Apple servers, and this is clearly called out in the release above. And beyond that, this is a feature that is only enabled by the parent, who society already accepts has the power to censor what their child views.
What you said would be like saying that the GNU foundation is reading your conversations when you type something into emacs.
It's reasonable to consider that the majority of well-received (wanted) nude photos may also have been unsolicited.
Pay closer attention to the innocents swept up by generalizations.
Laws which make a just action treated the same as an unjust action are foolish and, themselves, unjust. Anyone who uses "usually" to justify an enforcement which applies always is being disingenuous and careless with rhetoric which revolves around possibility and treats it as hyperbole. There are profoundly important reasons why people are to be treated in a certain, naively trusting manner until proven guilty.
Sending an unsolicited picture of a concerning rash on your kid's butt to his doctor should not be intercepted by Apple.
If this feature were designed to prevent unsolicited nudity, it would be far easier to turn off. It probably shouldn't trigger for people in your contacts at all, and it should have an override button for everybody else. This is not the case, and the feature is even triggered when sending messages with such photos, so this is clearly not its intended purpose.
Start off by reading the linked article. The feature is opt-in, and has to be manually turned on. It only triggers on child accounts where this is enabled. It is designed to protect children from being taken advantage of by stopping both incoming and outgoing nudity.
No idea how one-child sending nude pics to another child can be described as taking advantage of anyone. Who's the perpetrator here? And while the feature is opt-in, it's opt-in by parents, and has no granular, per-message overrides when the child knows what they're doing. While a general dickpic content warning is a good idea, there should be a "see anyway" button.
I'm sorry, I'm no happier about this feature than you seem to be, but...
> there should be a "see anyway" button
If you read the article and look at the pictures, "View photo..." is right underneath the blurred photo. It may not be called "see anyway", and it may not be a button per se, but it has the exact same effect.
Even on the receiving end, I could imagine someone sending dick pics or whatever after having already befriended the child, and already being in their contact list. Better would be a “ignore for future messages from this person” button, but keep the warning for the first time.
I think you need to qualify "in Europe", as a European it is certainly not true of any place I ever lived "in Europe".
That aside, it would be nice if we could survive just a single thread about a child protection feature without endless absurdist arguments and strawmen being offered.
I appreciate the reply to this comment indicating nudity is often unsolicited. That's very true. A productive thread regarding a feature like this might include discussion of how to limit its scope, or how it might be safely extended to other kinds of harmful content a child might want to avoid. A pointless thread might be one where the heart of the tech industry continues to ignore the fact many new parents ban all unsupervised Internet and new media usage for their children well into their teens due to problems like this remaining unsolved for decades now, and the industry being utterly incapable of having a sober conversation about it.
UK is definitely on the American side of things in this. Lived here for a long time now and there's definitely a lot of that "oh no a child might see a nipple, how awful". But yeah, in Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Spain, maybe even France - people would care a lot less. Especially in Czech Republic and Slovakia - you go to a public swimming pool, people just change in the open, children included, no one minds or cares.
(obviously that's just my own travel experience, I don't doubt there are places in all of those countries where that's not true)
The UK is culturally isolated, geographically isolated, and politically isolated. They are about as European as Mexico is North American which is to say it's technically true, but practically false.
Why do children need to be "protected" from nudity? What's so special about nudity?
The reason people try to control children's access to tech and social media isn't because they might see a nipple (lol) but because it's addictive and prevents them from doing anything else.
If we realy want to "protect the chidren" we should start by dismantling FAANGs.
They don’t need to be protected from nudity in and of itself. However if they are talking to an adult or a stranger randomly messages them, it would be nice if the device blurs pornographic imagery.
If they are looking for porn themselves (e.g. are of the age to care for such things), they can download it themselves via Safari.
But generally speaking there’s no need to trade this stuff on iMessage.
This is precisely what I meant by pointless: outside of 20somethings and certain locales (particularly large cities), alternate lifestyles exist where parents simply may not want this for their children.
I'd suggest arguments for or against any particular culture or lifestyle, or attempting to deny they exist, exceed the scope of discussing the feature itself.
I don't let my kids on the net unsupervised not because of things like this, but because of social media and scammers. Honestly, I'm more worried about them getting a call to fix their computer because it "has viruses" than anything else.
> I think you need to qualify "in Europe", as a European it is certainly not true of any place I ever lived "in Europe".
Nudist beaches or naturalists' resorts are everywhere in Europe, even where it's less obvious, like in the former communist block.
EDIT: if we are talking about kids nudity, like changing them in the open, in front of everybody, that's never been an issue in my almost 50 years on this Planet as European living in Europe.
I'm floored this is at the top of the comments. But I guess "I didn't read the article. America bad." is what gets upvotes.
I have a feeling that sending nudes to a child's phone isn't exactly lauded as "natural" in Europe. Of course I'm a prude, unnatural, and I guess violent American though so what do I know.
Not to mention it's an opt-in parental control feature for children's accounts.
In art class in an American high school it was common to discuss and share digital images of famous nudes. I’m sure this system won’t interfere with that at all because of course the only nudity people might see or share is bad, right? In case my sarcasm isn’t clear: of course it will interfere with art classes. Imagine if the art under discussion is photography? Then students and teachers will be sharing real nudes which are completely appropriate under the supervision of adults. Pornography like artistic creativity is contextual and the eye of the beholder. Here we see the eye is a black box of AI. This is horrifying. Likely it will mean this type of education simply won’t happen in these spaces. This is a direct and immediate limitation on free people.
The primary problem with censorship isn’t usually the core motivation. We can all agree that adults shouldn’t send porn to kids, and kids shouldn’t send nudes to anyone, etc etc. Sadly we don’t all agree on what that means - the law is a poor substitute for thinking and understanding context.
Automatic policing will lead to automatic prosecution, we have seen this with Facebook intercepting messages and automatically dispatching relevant authorities. In the case of suicide risks, many agreed this was a public good. Is it a public good when it is done for pot which is illegal federally even though it is legal in California? Do we really want a private company making these choices? Do we really want them in the middle even if it’s “on device” when the device isn’t even open for meaningful inspection?
It is the infrastructure and the corner cases which create a chilling effect on society. Once this is done in one place, it will expand to others.
Do you really think that Saudi won’t push for this on every woman’s telephone? Why limit it only to children? And why limit it only to being opt in?
Do you really not see the future you’re endorsing and that apple is building based on profit motives which are dressed up as “obvious” moral protection schemes?
Remember: the husband in Saudi is the legal guardian/censor of his children but also his fully grown (usually but not always) adult wife.
This can technically expand to textual rather than image censorship as well, we should stop it before that happens. Your device is your own personal space as much as the device is yours or as permitted by law (eg union organization on company time and company computers is sometimes protected).
Providing solutions to do automatic policing on your own device is insanely totalitarian. It isn’t a solution to doing it on company servers which also should not happen. We should not be building this technology and we should regulate the companies to uphold basic civil liberties, especially when they are a de facto monopoly.
I struggle to believe that you read and understood this article before sharing this view. This is an opt-in feature, specifically for use with the existing parental control system, that enables pretty light-touch and overridable prompts if a child receives something that looks like nudity. It's clearly targeted at unsolicited nude pictures being sent to children, and differential cultural views on public nudity have essentially zero relevance to that.
Now instead of an interesting discussion about this feature—why it might be good or bad, the privacy or social implications of it, and so on—we just have a chain of fucking nonsense comments unrelated to it.
So you're OK with your child receiving unexpected messages of erect penises? Because that's what this feature is actually about if you read past the headline. Not "banning" anything but putting users and parents in control.
you can extend this to everything. are you ok your children reciving gore pics, are you ok your kids receiving anarchyst cookbooks, are you ok your kids receiving comunist propoganda? are you ok your kids receiving any random messges from anonymous users? if not i guess just whitelist contacts your kid is allowed to interact. but i myself prefere to talk about world and explain how things work and what you can expect to encounter when growing up rather than growing your kid in petri dish. eventualy they will see errect penis :)
I have a 5 y.o. daughter and two nephews: 6 and 11 y.o. I like seeing them grow in real world.
There will always be perverts sending nudes to kids one way or another. Where I grew (before the internet) we've had them arrested near schools.
Pretending the world is all unicorns and rainbows is not the way to raise your children IMO - the hard truth is going to hit them sooner or later. Talk to them, treat them as young adults, and explain what is good and what is not, and why.
Fun story: I'm into crossfit semi-professionally and I've recently been very pleased to hear my 5 y.o. telling her friends that they should not eat that much fries and coke if they want to stay healthy and suggested they try fish and chicken instead.
>Fun story: I'm into crossfit semi-professionally and I've recently been very pleased to hear my 5 y.o. telling her friends that they should not eat that much fries and coke if they want to stay healthy and suggested they try fish and chicken instead.
I actually find it scary. I believe that children need to experience the maximum of stuff, and as a French they need to taste all the food, whatever unhealthy they are. Schools are a already pushing a lot of propaganda on children about saving the planet. I can see that the next step will be to tell them that meat pollute and they should be vegan to save the planet.
My child is sometimes telling me things like this and I tell him that he is totally healthy and does not need to worry.
that's a good stand to have, and I would argue that the kid tried to concur:
>> eat that much fries and coke
>> try fish and chicken instead
"that much" (!= never) and "try" (!= have to) seem to be key in the dialog here, although from these excerpts only we get a highly decontextualised version. nonetheless to me it sounded like they always indulge in the same food
> experience the maximum of stuff ... need to taste all the food
Now replace food with drugs, how would you feel? coz TBH some food out there borderlines on being drug-like in terms of addictiveness, both when ingested and how they're being advertised.
The way we raise our child is try food, sure, but be mindful of what you eat. we're certainly not opposed to bad food once in a while, forbidding it would only make it that more alluring. also being healthy right now doesn't mean bad habits can't creep in, and healthy habits are tough to instill after the fact once bad habits have taken hold.
For the healthy food you just need to train them to eat vegetable, and that is easy if you start young. My kids have no issue with vegetables at all, with food in general actually, they are not fussy. But I will not disallow junk food, anyway they are not so fond of it.
>Now replace food with drugs, how would you feel? coz TBH some food out there borderlines on being drug-like in terms of addictiveness, both when ingested and how they're being advertised.
Well, I also have a big one, nearly 18, and I don't understand him at all. He is spending his free time at the gym, he tells me he goes with his friends. At his age I was trying drugs and binge drinking. I'm in total disconnect here...
This strongly depends on the age of the child, and their maturity. I have an eight year old, who currently doesn’t even have a phone. Once he does I will absolutely be whitelisting contacts, approving app installs, and turning on functionality to limit access to content unsuitable for a child.
That’s not to say I won’t also be talking about the world, and things they’re likely to encounter. Those conversations are happening even now, he’s not being raised in a petri dish, but equally I’d quite like to avoid throwing him directly into a vat of toxic waste unprepared if I can avoid that. Ultimate children are just that, children, they’re not renowned for solid decision making skills.
to clearify apple feature looks reasonable to me. 4 and 7. ... and now im questioning my previous comment in my head about how certain i am about what i wrote :)
Between 15 and 23. It's easy to live in a utopian ideal where you say "We'll talk to them about all of this, and they'll be rational and see sense", but having spent the last 3+ years firefighting the impact of their spectacularly stupid behaviour (all 4 kids are above average IQ, but all of them have ASD diagnoses, all of them fall into the 'loud, confident and wrong' category) - a lot of which has involved impact with people whose opinions are along the lines of free speech absolutists mixed with 8chan lunacy - whenever I see people crowing about how terrible all these ideas are, I think they probably haven't spent sleepless nights comforting their child's mother because one of the kids has spent another night in a hospital, institution or police custody because of undue influence placed on them whether it's because of social pressure, or because they've been convinced by a nutter to send nudes and use that against them.
I'm well aware you can't protect them from all these things, but a lot of people who have young kids seem to think that as soon as they get to school it'll all be OK. My experience has been that the games get harder and stakes rise drastically, to the point where I often consider that killing myself would be a logical way out.
It is not OK that children have access to adult phones and adult Internet.
Apple should fix this by creating a kid mode, where the user can only contact people approved by parents and visit sites approved by parents or conforming to kid safety requirements. In this case the children will be perfectly safe.
Why Apple doesn't do it? I guess because it is unprofitable, it requires major investments and doesn't promise any returns.
Kids must be banned from the Internet completely instead of trying to patch different issues here and there.
These features exist! Apple includes parental controls under "Screen Time" and they works very well. You can whitelist contacts and websites, and even extend them remotely, as an administrator of a child's device.
You can do everything you said when you manage your kids accounts (manage contacts, whitelist internet websites, define appropriate content ratings and so on.
> You can do everything you said when you manage your kids accounts (manage contacts, whitelist internet websites, define appropriate content ratings and so on.
Have you tried? It's a dumpster fire.
Child requests app purchase > I get notification > It wants my AppleID password > I go to password manager to get password, but this dismisses the notification.
I believe it's getting a bit of love this OS cycle, but it's hopeless currently.
This is not enough because in reality (I guess) most parents do not bother with setting this up (or don't know how to do it) and as a result kids stay unprotected. Maybe there should be a law requiring to setup such settings and a one-click option to switch to restricted mode without having to toggle every checkbox.
They do. iDevices can be setup with a managed Apple account which allows whitelisting contacts, accessed websites, and permission to be granted before installing apps.
Nah, opt in feature like this is better. Because it is actually useable for parents. The all in everything locked kids modes are too much of annoyance for everyone involved to be used.
Maybe the locked mode for children should be required by the law because many parents are too lazy or not competent enough to setup a phone properly for their kids.
If a parent is worried about something like this, then wouldn't it be smarter to go for a phone that has no image sending/receiving possibility?
Or if they are no longer available, shouldn't there be a parental control of a white-list of contact numbers that can show more than just the text in the message? This automatic filtering seems like a slippery slope.
Yes, I'm totally ok with that (I have three kids). What's going to happen? Will they faint? Die? They will probably laugh.
In Rome there were statues of Dionysus sporting a huge erection everywhere. It wasn't a problem.
In Italy today still, you can find postcards of him in the same position. (Granted, they are statues, not images in the flesh, but they're pretty realistic.)
I would have a problem with an adult sending nude pictures of themselves to my kids. But I would confront them myself, I don't need Apple's help in preventing it from ever happening like it's a horrible risk.
It's nothing. Really one of the least important problems ever.
Probably from what follows: “ It's nothing. Really one of the least important problems ever.”
Just because you feel that way doesn’t mean others do. Everyone parents differently. This is an optional feature that you don’t have to turn on and is off by default.
>Just because you feel that way doesn’t mean others do. Everyone parents differently.
The same applies to the parent poster I quoted, who was then told they must support sexual predators because of their different parenting.
They didn't tell you to how to feel or tell you how to parent. They stated how they feel and how they parent. You don't have to agree, but that doesn't mean they support sexual predators.
>This is an optional feature that you don’t have to turn on and is off by default.
Yes, that's been well established, and I don't think anyone in this comment chain has said otherwise.
Firstly, why specify 'erect penis' as though that's where the line is crossed? Does the question only apply to parents of girls, since they're less likely to have seen a penis before?
But yeah, I wouldn't mind all that much; it would raise a red flag for sure, given that many grooming operations work by starting out as raising children's curiosity, but I do not see any inherent issue with my child seeing a penis (erect or not!).
>At the same time in Europe you go to a nude beach and there are whole families with kids and literally nobody has problems with it. Clothing is optional. No one bothers nude people, no one bothers clothed ones.
At least the ones I've seen in Germany have a nude section and a non-nude section. It's usually not mixed.
You can also show your dick in non-nude sections. You have to be sensible of time and place but the likelyhood of someone complaining is very low if you do it near a lake or the sea. Pretty high when you do it in the city center or in church.
At least it was common in the region I lived, there are more prissy places though. I wouldn't do it anymore when everyone has a smartphone though even if taking pictures will get you in huge trouble too.
Europe is a big place, maybe that beach was that way but its definitely not the norm. Naturist beaches are usually separate or there is a section that that is for naturists. In Sweden (where I live), even topless sunbathing is unusual nowadays.
That's weird because in Spain - where nowadays topless sunbathing for women is absolutely normal in every beach - was "imported" by the first northern-European (legend usually say Swedish) tourists during late-Franco dictatorship.
Been to Gran Canaria recently (technically Spain), and every beach had topless women sunbathing (even the big city beach). Don't recall seeing fully nude adults though, as those beaches will be segregated IME.
Whenever the conversation veers this way, there's always people pipe up to talk about how American it is to have any concerns about nudity, and that this is portrayed to be a bad thing. Which seems extremely European or western centric.
Having issues with nudity is absolutely not "American". Nor are Germany or Sweden moral compasses by which everybody else should strive to live like.
Look around the world, there are many countries and billions of people around Africa, China, South East Asia, the Middle East, that are as "prudish" if not massively more so than USA. Even with a European or western-centric myopia, does it really hold? How about Poland or New Zealand?
In any case, I don't see what the point is. USA is overall not as liberal with nudity as some European countries. So what? Germany has blasphemy laws and laws punishing people who talk about things, is that normal or natural?
Photos are not natural. From that basic fact you can extend any activity surrounding them to be unnatural.
Kids seeing themselves or each other nude is pretty normal. Kids are curious. That being said, luckily none of the awkward curiosities we entertained when I was a kid had any chance of ending up on some kind of iCloud permanent record, so maybe this is for the better.
Who's banning anything? This detection is on option for parents on devices that they already have control over. And all it does is blur the image so you have to tap to reveal it as well as include a link to support resources if the child didn't want to see the nude photo.
> At the same time in Europe you go to a nude beach and there are whole families with kids and literally nobody has problems with it.
Well ok: if you specifically go to a nude beach, I'd expect you'd see naked people and nobody going there having any issue with it. That's why it's called a "nude beach" right?
But they're not common. In France where I go the most often, out of 8 kilometers of beaches on the district, there's like 100 meters (1/100th of the coastal area) where nudism is allowed. And it's not even on a beach: it's all rocks. The town hall picked that one spot, far away from the beaches, to isolate the nudists. It's tiny. There may be a few famous nudists spots around the country but they're not common.
Still France: there are only two cases I can think of where a woman showing its nipples in public is considered normal and that'd be monokini on the beach (but not full nudism) and breastfeeding. You don't see women walking topless in the streets.
Monokini on the beaches is allowed everywhere in France as far as I know but it's way less common to actually see women in monokini than it used to be when I was a kid in the eighties.
I'm in Italy on the beach right now and I'm stunned because I did not see yet a nipple. I didn't know they were prude. On the beach in France I would see nipples everyday.
Child abuse is a terrible problem, but big tech and politicians are using it as leverage to erode all of our right to privacy. What's next, let's monitor all text communication to stop perverts texting with your child? It will be hailed as another great step towards fighting paedophilia.
The problem with the "child abuse" angle is that protesting against these changes turns everybody against you, because normal people don't have anything to hide. "Why do you hate the children?"
We are losing all of our right to privacy with a massive applause.
This is the major problem when trying to educate people about anything privacy related... Living in Australia I've watched the government basically grant itself the legal right to do whatever the fuck it likes with computers and communications over the last few years, and its been a horrible outright depressing journey.
Once people internalise the "nothing to hide" argument they begin to reach for the question "what do you have to hide that makes you think this isn't ok" before they are even prompted with the usual arguments about it only being for finding drugs, guns, terrorists, pedophiles, etc
The fact this is on device and off by default is good because that's how this sort of customer feature should be built, like being able to install a DNS filter or other website filtering software. If you're worried, these options should be available to protect your children... but sadly its a small step from "these are available" to "why didn't the government make them turn it on before I bought it for my child and didn't turn it on before giving it to my child"
I'm not getting into the middle of the debate on whether or not this feature is good/bad, but I think this is a pretty easy question to answer.
There is now a feature that scans every photo you receive. There previously was not something scanning every photo you receive. What used to be a conversation between 2 people is now a conversation between 2 people and an Apple blackbox (assuming you turn the feature on).
As with most of these types of tech, the proponents of the "this involves erosion of privacy" aren't necessarily concerned with the exact implementation as described on release, but with how the blackbox works and how the blackbox (and the laws/regulations/obligations around it) will change in the future, and the inability to change the settings of the blackbox, effectively letting Apple become the touchstone for what is 'appropriate', even if it doesn't align with your view of 'appropriate'.
> There is now a feature that scans every photo you receive. There previously was not something scanning every photo you receive.
1) Seen the automatic-text-recognition-on-images features in recent iOS? It's already scanning ~every photo you look at, and not just in iMessage. If you put an image in Photos, it's also doing some object recognition on it (which you can see if you search for e.g. "books" or "chairs" in Photos). Dunno if it does that elsewhere, but the text-recognition thing, yeah, that happens all over the OS in all kinds of apps. Maybe (probably) you can turn that off, but this feature folks are complaining about is opt-in so that shouldn't be relevant for this line of reasoning.
And furthermore:
> Messages uses on-device machine learning to analyze image attachments and determine if a photo appears to contain nudity. The feature is designed so that Apple doesn’t get access to the photos.
2) If you don't like this because you don't trust this statement to be true, then I have some bad news for you about who writes the entire closed-source operating system that runs on iOS devices and are the only ones who can deploy any code they like to them, basically at any time.
I would say a nude photo is probably worse because it could be indicative of some kind of grooming or other sexual abuse.
This is an opt in feature so it’s up to parents whether they think it’s appropriate or not, but I think it’s weird that people are getting mad at Apple for providing a secure, private way to do this when child abuse online is a real thing that happens and some parents may believe that it’s appropriate to trade off some of their young children’s privacy in exchange for some small degree of protection against that.
No, no, I like the feature. It's a nice tool in the toolset. But I'd like for it to allow blocking other kinds of photos. That they only fixed on nude photos plus their policy of not allowing nude-related apps in their App Store reeks of puritanism. That's what I don't like.
This seems so reasonable. Nothing is banned, just blurred. It's optional and it only applies to kids' phones.
When a nudist put their clothes back on, then that's it. When a photo goes out and spreads beyond the control of the kid, then that's just the beginning.
There are places in the US where it’s more like Europe.
In Oregon full nudity is 100% legal everywhere, with no restrictions. Yes, I have seen many penisis I didn’t want to see; sometimes from the naked bike rides, sometimes from people in mental health crisis, sometimes from people who are just too high to pull up their pants.
Technically it’s only allowed for “protests” in Portland, but nudity laws just practically aren’t enforced.
Other natural things I get to see without restriction: smoking meth, shitting on transit stop, lying in pool of own fluids, pissing on lamp post, and having psychotic break. Europeans can only dream of such unbridled freedom.
What an absurd, ridiculous, insane strawman argument. Apple is banning nobody and nothing. Apple is providing an opt-in mechanism for screening for potential nudity for parents that may want to give a phone to a child that they haven't had the talk with. Categorically different.
The linked article explains in detail that not only is this not a ban, it's completely opt-in.
It's just an NSFW screen that you can click straight through. For me, the benefit is that it gives children an extra thinking moment before they view something that may not be appropriate, or send something that they may not feel 100% comfortable doing.
I've lived in Europe all my life and I'd 100% enable this for my kid.
And it isn't just nude or iMessage either. Tim Cooks' Apple have been forcing their American culture / political stuff to the rest of the world for quite some time.
Part of the reason why I wish I could move away from Apple. Unfortunately Microsoft or Google doesn't seems to be competing and they aren't that much different either.
From studying history, I have the impression the normalization of nudity in public started after WWII in Europe.
Could it be that the precarious conditions (families disrupted, lack of intimate space, moral degradation) to which the populations there were submitted during the war shaped this culture?
If yes, what does it tell about the value of this culture?
here in germany the freikörperkultur was well established in the 19th century. Even more so, for most of human history, bathing nude was the norm. Prior to the 19th century there was no such thing as a Freikörperkultur, because there was no such thing as bathing cloth. The Lebensreform, or "naturalism" as the english speakers call it, was a reaction to the industrial revolutions disruption of natural human behavior, bathing, food, family, community and culture and has little to nothing to do with WW2, except that the nazis tried to suppress it as part of the gleichschaltung. As such it obviously rekindled after WW2, but it is not a post war phenomenon and it is most certainly not moral degradation. The very claim is deeply insulting. Please take your false testament about other peoples cultures history and kindly go away.
The safety of apple is absolutely horrible.
Sometimes you can get banned or scammed.
If apple does nothing about it the whole community will be gone.
Its a Seruis point.
As an European I agree. I am a bit afraid of this new feature since I might not agree with Apple what falls into the category of sensitive content and what I would consider as ok. In fact there is a big cultural difference. For me personally a nipple or even a fully exposed breast is not a problem (we even have that on public TV), whereas explicit shots of genitals I would agree fall into a category which should be censored.
It's actually a bit more complicated. My state doesn't require ID to vote, but some do. Some require a full photo ID and others don't. Photo ID is optional at the polls in about half of US states:
Where I live you just show up at the polling place, sign on the line next to your name and address, and that's it. Separately, here's how to vote without ID in California:
In the US, your voting district maintains a voter roll, which in turn is updated based on voter registration. Registering to vote means proving that you're eligible to vote, and your name and information is checked against the voter roll when you do vote.
In other words: in many places, you don't need to present an ID because you've already been identified. But it's a big country, and that's not the case everywhere: lots of states and municipalities do require you to present an additional ID, or at least to present your voter registration (and just your name and address).
The voter roll includes your name, your address, DOB, and maybe a few other identifying points. Depends on the state.
Assuming you know all of those things, you could go vote as your neighbor. But there are strong incentives not to: if your neighbor votes either before or after you, the double-count will be noticed and audited. Your neighbor will be able to prove who they are, and you'll have walked into an incredibly easy-to-prove criminal charge. Similarly, for in person voting, you run the risk of being identified when you come in to vote the second time (presumably you aren't going to vote just once, since there's no point in the crime if it counts the same as your ordinary vote).
Adding photo IDs would not meaningfully change the security model here, but would give pollworkers pretext to exclude lawful voters ("you don't look enough like your picture").
Edit: and, to be clear: this all makes sense because studies have consistently shown individual voter fraud to be virtually nonexistent in the US.
You don't need an ID to vote in Australia either. It works fine. What's hard to imagine? You get checked off on a list which includes all enrolled voters for that electorate.
Yeah and how do they verify that you are who you are? You come to a polling place, say you are X, and they just.....trust you? That's the part that's hard to imagine for me.
Yes. You’re ticked off a list, so that you can’t vote twice, and that helps spot anyone who does attempt to impersonate another voter.
It’s not 100% foolproof, but it turns out voter fraud by impersonation is very rare, so it’s good enough.
When you think in terms of “make sure every vote we count was legitimate”, then “not completely foolproof” becomes a solid argument for voter ID.
Instead, if you take a wider view and think in terms of “getting the best quality estimate of the will of the voting population”, the argument against requiring ID (in the US at least) is that it would distort the results of the election far more than a tiny amount of undetected impersonation fraud does.
This will vary by country. In the US, there are barriers to getting ID for some groups (you need to go in person during business hours, pay and wait an unknown amount of time, and this needs to happen weeks ahead of election days; this is a barrier to someone without transport juggling multiple jobs and childcare, for instance.)
Other countries see the trade off differently, or use different fraud prevention approaches. For example, I know India uses indelible ink stains on fingers to prevent multiple voting, and in the UK, there is no ID requirement (yet) but the ballots are serialised and the secrecy of the ballot can be broken to investigate fraud allegations. Neither of these approaches would be culturally acceptable in the US.
Personally I think voter ID makes sense even if only to quash allegation of voter fraud. Voter ID enjoys overwhelming (>80%) bipartisan support from regular Americans. The main obstacle to new voter ID laws is the Democratic Party establishment. They calculate a marginal decrease in electoral margins if new voter ID laws were to be enacted. Of course then they wind up faced with fiascos like January 6, but politicians are nothing if not short-term planners.
Support is strong when you ask a one-dimensional question ("do you, in general, support voter ID?").
The poll linked from the CNN article demonstrates this: there's also overwhelming support for making voting easier, but voter IDs (without free and accessible ID services) will make it harder. And that's the crux of the common Democratic position: voter IDs are perfectly fine if we ensure access to IDs. But that needs to happen before or with any restrictions on voting, to prevent disenfranchisement.
Right—I'm for it if we had universal free national IDs and services to ensure everyone had one. It'd actually solve a ton of other problems, too, so yes, please, do that and then check IDs at the polls all you like.
But that's a topic the Democrats are very divided on, and the Republicans really don't want, so it's never gonna happen. The result is that I'm not against IDing voters in principle but am in practice, given the current political situation and lack of demonstrated urgency or need that might justify the down-sides of doing it absent universal national IDs.
How hard is it to get a driver's license or state ID, which again, people already need for a long list of common tasks? Go to the DMV once every five years. Make an appointment online if your DMV does that, in and out in under an hour. I agree that it should be even easier, but it's not exactly a major obstacle.
> The main obstacle to new voter ID laws is the Democratic Party establishment.
Propose voter ID laws that include provisions to make sure that it is easy and free for eligible voters to obtain the necessary ID and Democrats won't object.
> Personally I think voter ID makes sense even if only to quash allegation of voter fraud.
I guess I just wonder how likely it would be to quash allegations of voter fraud. When we humans distrust a process, we seem to be able to come up with all sorts of wild stories to justify our fear and anger.
You have to register to vote in the US. Your name and signature are already on a list at the polling place. You can bring your voter registration card.
Voter ID laws are a hard sell in the US because of the extent to which they have been used for voter suppression. There is a recent North Carolina (??) example where the court striking down the law were about 1 inch from using the word "racist" in the ruling.
I didn't realize it was so few. My own state doesn't require voter ID. However it looks like the states that require ID tend to be smaller, and many larger states don't require it. 41% of the US population live in states like California with no voter ID laws, with an additional percentage in states where a photo ID (as opposed to a bank statement or utility bill) is optional:
Yes, obviously that's alright. It's nonetheless also alright to wonder about or even question the reason behind those different cultures.
As a European, it's just really, really strange to see how everything war, gore, death and guns seems to be alright for the kids overseas, but don't you dare show a nipple or say a bad word. I respect your culture, even like lots about it. But sorry, that's weird.
Right, but there seems to be a strange belief that the US in particular shouldn't have its own culture. My objection is to that. That's kinda American exceptionalism at its worst.
Europeans have their own share if strange cultural phenomenon, BTW. E.g. apparently they don't feed their guests in Sweden. [1]
I don't think anyone feels like the US shouldn't have its own culture -- definitely not more so than other places. If anything, the US injects its culture everywhere, due to entertainment being a primary export. And most of it is completely fine. People may shake their heads at certain things, much like you guys shake your head at the thought of not feeding your guests. But that's fine.
It's just that (sorry for using such a provocative word) the entire war/gun-fetishism is weird af for most outsiders. The way I see it, it's at least equal parts culture and excessive lobbying/brainwashing. And it shows in things like being fine with exposure to violence from a young age. Contrast that to people freaking out at nudity, and it makes for a silly juxtaposition.
I don't understand how the video relates to anyone thinking you shouldn't have your own culture. If anything that video claims that "leaving no one behind" and "decency and compassion" are what makes America America.
> Children in Europe don't play with toy soldiers or guns?
Occasionally for sure. But it's just on another level in the US. I can't pinpoint it, but I've spent years in America and visited a lot of toy stores :) we simply don't have aisles full of nerf guns and shit over here. You'll find them, but overall the topic is much, much less romanticized.
And in the context of movie ratings, every war/gory movie/videogame will be rated 16/18+ in most parts of Europe. I know, because I used to get some Star Wars shooters for Xbox rated Teen while on holiday in the US a couple years before I would've been able to get them in my home country :)
> If anything that video claims that "leaving no one behind" and "decency and compassion" are what makes America America.
Well, I kinda think those claims are mostly lies. We all know that Americans are not well-known for their compassion.
American culture used to emphasize frankness, family values, freedom, and individual responsibility. Now, it's rulings class has decided these cultural values interfere with their interests. So, they have decided to pretend these don't exist.
> And in the context of movie ratings, every war/gory movie/videogame will be rated 16/18+ in most parts of Europe.
That's funny. Frankness is not a trait I would have thought is very American. If anything, you guys are a bit too polite at times it seems.
I don't know if it's just the ruling class that has decided this change. I applaud everyone who keeps up "family values", but I will absolutely vote for shutting that shit down as soon as it's a front for "white man, breadwinner, white woman, housewife, two children -- everything else is worth less".
Unfortunately, a whole lot of those who were meant to keep up those values used them to suppress others.
I claim that it's possible to be progressive and still keep your culture intact. Family values can still be emphasized, but why not simply include all families, no matter how quirky they may come?
In any case, I applaud many things in your culture. I've always had a great affinity for the US. No country is perfect, and all will find some aspect about another culture they find strange. What's important is to keep an open mind, and not cling to traditions for tradition's sake.
> Interesting, are those ratings taken seriously?
It depends on the guardians, of course. I know I was not allowed to play games rated 16+ before I actually turned 16. I know friends of mine who played CS when they were 12. We all turned out okay.
It would be alright if one country didn't try to force its culture, prejudice and superstion on all others, because it's economically dominant.
I don't care if the US are obsessed with nipples. I find it ridiculous, but also kind of funny.
But when this obsession prevents people from sharing art on US controlled systems and services, then it's incredibly annoying. (It's not the most pressing problem in the world, sure, but it's grating.)
The average American watches 5 hours of TV each day, 2/3 of the shows are about physical violence. The entertainment industry is a propaganda for the gun industry because people feel that violence is everywhere, and that guns are needed for protection.
Research on the effects of viewing violence found a desensitizing effect, especially for children. People become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others and more fearful of the world. This effect is much less pronounced for video games, which tend to not dramatize violence.
There is a reason we try to curtail violence in the media in Europe. When you engage with a fantasy many hours a day, it becomes your reality.
> The average American watches 5 hours of TV each day
That's an overestimate, it's probably closer to 3 hours per day [1]. Also, if you exclude the elderly (like +55), it probably becomes significantly less.
> people feel that violence is everywhere
It really is though. Right now, there's a war going on in Europe. Curtailing it wouldn't make it go away.
> Research on the effects of viewing violence found a desensitizing effect, especially for children.
Like the vast majority of social sciences, that area is full of low-quality studies.
Puritanism is a distraction here. What Apple implements is a in-depth analysis of all messages between its users and not its users who happen to communicate with iphone users. The message scanner analyses not only text, but also images. This will be used to build more detailed user profiles for advertisers and spying agencies, domestic and foreign (Apple is on good terms with China).
At the same time in Europe you go to a nude beach and there are whole families with kids and literally nobody has problems with it. Clothing is optional. No one bothers nude people, no one bothers clothed ones.
In Germany or Sweden you can get your [banned by Apple] out in a public place not designated for nudity per se and this just normal.
But yeah, lets ban more normal/natural stuff.