Kids Online Safety Shouldn’t Require Massive Online Censorship and Surveillance: 2023 Year in Review

Maybe parents should treat it like the real world and not leave their kids unnatended in it? It's literally full of malicious people and scams

Imagine if we applied that to the real world, the idea that every single place has to be safe for unattended children to visit and not get hurt in any way, physically or mentally.
- I mean we don't usually allow children to walk around by themselves. They need guidance and mentoring. Its no different online.
  Giving your kid tech is like giving them the keys to the liquor cabinet because its a constant stream of dopamine on a young brain that hasn't developed yet.
Honestly this is the right answer. I know its hard for some parents who work but letting you kids brain rot on all of these various platforms is not an answer.
Yeah they should also know the internet isn't a dump truck and just say no to drugs
- I would prefer if they didn't get drug offers online. Same goes for a bunch of other behavior.
Exactly.
It's not the world's job to parent your kids, people.
That's censorship. You dont try to treat STDs in kids by telling them not to have sex; that doesn't work. Instead you teach kids the risks and how to mitigate those risks

I'm surprised by the number of people ITT arguing for censorship who clearly havent read the article

KOSA will compel even the smallest online forums to take action against content that politicians believe will cause minors “anxiety,” “depression,” or encourage substance abuse, among other behaviors. Of course, almost any content could easily fit into these categories—in particular, truthful news about what’s going on in the world, including wars, gun violence, and climate change. Kids don’t need to fall into a wormhole of internet content to get anxious; they could see a newspaper on the breakfast table.

The world is depressing, but we won't fix this world by shielding children from the reality of climate change and war. In fact, we need them to be aware of these issues, or history will repeat itself.

Censorship is not the solution.

I signed up for EFF newsletters when they were fighting the V-chip and DMCA. I was a teenager and couldn't suss out all the legal language in their letters. I was always unsure if I was supporting the good-guys or the bad-guys.

EFF are the good-guys. We need them fighting for our rights online. Thank you, EFF, for standing up for us. And fuck the politicians who keep trying to strip them away, either through ignorance of tech or by deliberately trying to control us.

Too real

It doesn't require any of that

There are so many useful tools for parents to take care of this. Those who do not feel comfortable need to become informed. Imagine if every parent who didn’t like the idea of teenagers driving a car refused to teach their kids how to live around cars and streets.
Parenting is a lot of work, but that’s the game folks. Prohibition culture doesn’t work and the government can only do so much. At some point you have to step in and be a parent, because the Internet is part of our lives for better or for worse. The best you can do is teach your kids how to navigate responsibly, protect themselves, and come to you when they don’t understand something/see something potentially traumatic. Because they will lol.
- Plus, relying on the government (basically offloading your risk management to anyone else) is a great path to undesirable consequences.
  I don't trust that other cars are going to stop for a red light before stepping out - I trust my own assessment.
  Trust, but verify.
To be fair, I think it does, I just value the privacy of literally every internet user over the mild consequences faced by most about children. You have to break some eggs sometimes, and it’s better the children draw the short stick rather than everyone else.
- You should simply not use invasive tools for monitoring children. There are private alternatives.
  Also I would be careful just giving a child a device. It sends the wrong message and if you are monitoring it all the time it teaches them its ok to be watched.
- Ehhhhh I value privacy as well, but I’m not sure I am so blasé about unrestricted access for minors. I just think that’s more the domain of parents - with some government oversight, of course, but not nearly to the extent they want. And definitely not via the methods these bills are pushing.

Fucking authoritarians ruin everything

99/100 arguments from "what about the children" are stalking horses to control the behavior of adults.

Excellent, concise, and very accessible as always. Sending this around to my family for sure. Their overview of KOSA is particularly good.

it does when "kids safety" is just code for "ban lgbt content from the internet", which is what the stated goal of kosa is, per marsha blackburn

We spent much of the year fighting these dangerous “child safety” bills, while also pointing out to legislators that comprehensive data privacy legislation would be more likely to pass constitutional muster and address many of the issues that these child safety bills focus on.

Because they don't actually care about child safety. massive online censorship and surveillance is the goal here - kids are the excuse they are using to try and get it to pass as it has no hope in hell without some sort of mask on it. The only things they ever do for children is banning abortions and erode privacy. Never anything that would actually help, like feeding them in school, or better prenatal support and leave at work, or medical insurance for everyone. Instead they fight against these measures and for things that won't help children in the slightest.

I don't think the motivations behind KOSA are necessary bad. (At least compared to other 702) I think that people have seen minors be encouraged to do really dumb stuff like eating Tide pods.

That definitely won't be be stopped by KOSA or any similar law as they are missing the problem with some of these platforms. Instead the youngsters will find darker content from other sources and the valid users will be forced to identity themselves and a new level or extreme censorship will be enforced.

If that happens you won't find me giving my id.

This is really crazy

The concept of "World wide surveillance and censorship in the name of kids' safety" sounds really unreasonable

Or like a very very very lazy way to solve one of the problems on the internet

When i was 14 i was shopping on silkroad pretty much a lot, and the problem was not pedos on the social media, but the society and the kids themselves (although, i turned out to be a good person anyway, so probably even the silktoad was not that dangerous for a kid)

This is really ridiculous to even consider privacy and security of the world's population as a price for staying away from guys that get turned on seeing a minor

Especially considering all the laws and three letter agencies doing all kinds of really nasty and contradictory stuff. It feels like living in a corupted country whose talking heads are regularly get cought on bribes, lies, then they invade a neighboring country and continue saying "everything is alright", and the people believe it

... and if it did, fuck them kids. The gross side of the internet won't kill you.

Honestly banning kids under 14, 16 or maybe even 18 from social media I wouldn't be that opposed to but they way these laws are framed and the shit required from tiny sites is stupid. Just have an age gate and done.

ferda

But that would miss out the large amount of government control over the masses! Think of the kids, not of your rights being trampled on! /s