The Internet was never meant to be exposed to children. No one would let their child go to an effectively unmoderated random place to converse with anonymous strangers that are knowingly grooming children.
Country wide ban on Internet access to minors is necessary to significantly mitigate the negative impact the internet is causing youth today, and the destruction of legitimate adult spaces on the net.
The solution is simple - any user interfaceable computing device expected to be sold to a minor must be child locked by default. This lock identifies the device as a minor, blocking most ads, "social media" apps, in app purchases, other maliciously sold apps, and filters the available domains in browser to a simple whitelist.
Remove any kind of parental "monitoring" and control nonsense that are so often abused. Don't make it necessary in the first place! It's only a scapegoat so they don't have to do the right thing.
The whitelist is simple, buy it off of one of a dozen existing commercial solutions.
Unlocking a phone is also simple and non invasive by showing ID during purchase. Same way you have to do any other kind of business with malicious business practices.
>The solution is simple - any user interfaceable computing device expected to be sold to a minor must be child locked by default. [...]
Kids aren't heading to the local Apple Store for their iphones. They're getting them from their parents. Parental controls exist today. The problem is the lack of willingness from parents to monitor their kids' behavior, not the fact that you can buy an unrestricted communications device without photo id.
this. generally speaking i remember being exposed to questionable material on bbs' via a 2600 baud connection and xmodem "ui". i believe i was around 11 at the time. i remind/routinely impress our progeny several times a day (quite candidly as well, my SO and i are very honest and frank w our offspring) that "the internet" is both impressive and dangerous and to essentially never assume good intent. sop i had and i made it through. gl out there parents
A jpg that you thought was a Star Wars poster but turned out to be Pamela Anderson, is a manageble situation. Talking with someone one IRC and starting to get the creeps after a while, manageble.
It's a lot harder these days to teach kids that pretty much everything they see online and on TV, has a narrative and should be considered deceptive, even though you might not be sure why. It really takes the fun and natural interest away when you have to look at everything trough your Black Mirror glasses or filter.
i dont really struggle with it. Neither does my family. like comedy: its all in the delivery. plenty of fun and wonder out there, its just important to test for pattern matches
When they buy the phone the default option is unrestricted. The default should be restricted, including when resetting. Including when setting up other accounts. This is a solved problem, but it would cost big tech billions in lost revenue from malicious markets.
What age do we decide is appropriate? At the dawn of ubiquitous cell phones, I got my first one at ~15. Still very young and very impressionable. I'm 35 now, but I feel like the world has moved on in that regard. I'm not totally sure a blanket ban would solve more problems than it would create. I am, however, admittedly out of touch.
Ban smartphones! There isn't a need to take the internet with you. Put it back to the old days when you actually chose to go online by sitting down in front of a computer and cyberspace was definitely separate from meatspace.
This is just an equal-magnitude "tock" to the "tick" the article painted of a monstrous world for young children. It's disgusting this happens, but I'm not sure this is the play.
Life in prison? What do we lose by giving these people lethal injections? They would die relatively painlessly and nothing of value would be lost. Taxpayer money wouldn’t have to support them. Unless we’re studying their brains or something, I say get ‘em out of here. Not every criminal serving life deserves the death penalty, but these guys sure do.
If we go under the definition of "Life in prison" as it stands, with no real effort on rehabilitation, sure. Kill 'em. Otherwise I'm paying taxes to feed a sadistic child molester and killer.
But I think there might be another way. With refocusing on rehabilitation, a society could glean 'n' years of insight, understanding, and ideally: a changed human. The staunchest of advocates against what they used to practice.
Considering there are now articles about them online, I doubt their little "enterprise" will remain active for much longer. If they are not stupid, they will cease everything before Feds knock at their door.
I am genuinely curious what a run-of-the-mill SWE or data scientist can do to help fight this (and human trafficking, etc.). Are there any volunteering opportunities?
There is an interesting question here why major platforms have such a hard time stopping violent groups of people from joining together and committing violent acts. Our current, corporately-decided approach to online moderation is clearly not up to the task. It does make you wonder if government intervention would be more effective.
I doubt so, pretty much every US government based system is inferior to it's private sector equivalent. Even regulations on this would be difficult because you're not just fighting against the sheer volume of posts constantly needing to be checked, but also against privacy concerns, since "this corporation is constantly watching everything you post" is both a mandatory requirement and largely seen as bad.
> pretty much every US government based system is inferior to it's private sector equivalent.
I don't think this holds as a rule. I see as many counterexamples to it as examples, anyway. But it does seem true that there are certain things the private sector tends to do better at, and there are other things the private sector tends to do worse at.
Country wide ban on Internet access to minors is necessary to significantly mitigate the negative impact the internet is causing youth today, and the destruction of legitimate adult spaces on the net.
The solution is simple - any user interfaceable computing device expected to be sold to a minor must be child locked by default. This lock identifies the device as a minor, blocking most ads, "social media" apps, in app purchases, other maliciously sold apps, and filters the available domains in browser to a simple whitelist.
Remove any kind of parental "monitoring" and control nonsense that are so often abused. Don't make it necessary in the first place! It's only a scapegoat so they don't have to do the right thing.
The whitelist is simple, buy it off of one of a dozen existing commercial solutions.
Unlocking a phone is also simple and non invasive by showing ID during purchase. Same way you have to do any other kind of business with malicious business practices.