And also VPNs are tools to open doors in the minefield of legislations that they need to create to improve the incoming of some business, not of the people that voted for them.
This is a fairly difficult problem. I think the internet should be for adults only, like many other things. But we've fucked up by giving children internet access and it's going to be hard to undo it. I think rather than fighting these measures we need to work on alternatives because keeping children off the internet is a good idea, we just need to implement it in a good way.
What about just banning phones for children? Could we ever make that work? It would be like cigarette bans except we now have 5 year olds addicted to tobacco and addict parents who don't want to make them go cold turkey.
Public libraries and schools can be used for genuine research purposes, but not addictive shit. And implemented ad blockers at the network level.
Actually with data fusion VPN does not fix privacy. Ad networks does data fusion of Javascript browser finger print. So you are de cloaked any way on a VPN
I hear the UK regulator did want to respond but Mozilla office doesn't have a fax machine. So the grandpas in charge of regulating modern tech just took a nap instead
I have seen some of the inside of this and it's not quite as clear cut.
One side of this is driven by a bunch of not too reputable think tanks behind the scenes who persuaded a couple of fringe academics to agree with them and push for it via the civil service. The government is taking bad, paid for advice. I don't know what the agenda is there but there is one and I reckon it's commercial. Probably a consortium of businesses wanting to create a market they can get into.
However the security services do not agree with the government or the think tanks and actually promote advice contrary to the regulators. They will ultimately win.
Attacking the regulators and revealing who is behind all this is what we should be doing.
I do criticize where individualism and those kinds of societies have gone wrong, but I also think it's going to be very hard for a parent to control that.
I've gotten exactly one response on what that looks like. The parent suggested writing custom moderation rules for his router. He was serious that this was feasible general solution.
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It should be possible for VPNs to only give UK customers UK exit nodes so that sites can still properly enforce the law. Same thing with having VPNs that ban explicit sites. It's not an all or nothing thing.
I think this is a genuinely difficult problem that happens to look exactly like what you’d need for extended surveillance. When I think about it seriously, I end up coming up with the idea of a whitelist enforced on device for local accounts used by children.
This would probably block most of the internet, and allow access only to sites that are validated as being safe. This would put a lot of pressure on sites and service providers to ensure safety, such as children-only walled gardens within their broader services.
We already have piecemeal attempts at something like this through on device private age restriction software, but it’s not organised at the state level, and I think it’s not effective enough as a result.
If legally enforced it could be made into a pretty effective system that would give adults freedom and anonymity and provide safety for children, while pushing the costs of child safety onto the platforms, which is where it belongs. If you want to cater to children, prove that you can make it on to the whitelist. Otherwise that’s an audience you’re just not able to access.
Is the charitable reading of whatever’s going on in Europe right now that European states don’t believe they can hold American tech giants accountable to their laws? I genuinely don’t see why a law banning under-14 year olds from social media wouldn’t be the first step.
It's worth pointing out that some people under some circumstances need to use VPNs. For example, timestamp.apple.com stalls when I call it from my machine, so I cannot sign any executables for macOS. When I use a VPN that changes my IP number, signing and notarizing works perfectly fine. My CI chain would literally not work without a VPN.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 48.2 ms ] threadHistorically they were fairly smart at doing it subtly but the mask slipped during Covid and they never really put it back on.
Also - outside the HN bubble this stuff isn’t even unpopular. Normies supported covid lockdowns and they don’t want their kids watching porn either.
The people yearn to be ruled and nannied
Does Mozilla not understand that this is the exact reason why the UK wants to forbid them?
What about just banning phones for children? Could we ever make that work? It would be like cigarette bans except we now have 5 year olds addicted to tobacco and addict parents who don't want to make them go cold turkey.
Public libraries and schools can be used for genuine research purposes, but not addictive shit. And implemented ad blockers at the network level.
Could you, my wonderful Western friends, do that again?
I mean, all of it is even on video and largely on YouTube.
I am using a fork of Firefox and it works perfectly fine.
One side of this is driven by a bunch of not too reputable think tanks behind the scenes who persuaded a couple of fringe academics to agree with them and push for it via the civil service. The government is taking bad, paid for advice. I don't know what the agenda is there but there is one and I reckon it's commercial. Probably a consortium of businesses wanting to create a market they can get into.
However the security services do not agree with the government or the think tanks and actually promote advice contrary to the regulators. They will ultimately win.
Attacking the regulators and revealing who is behind all this is what we should be doing.
I've gotten exactly one response on what that looks like. The parent suggested writing custom moderation rules for his router. He was serious that this was feasible general solution.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This would probably block most of the internet, and allow access only to sites that are validated as being safe. This would put a lot of pressure on sites and service providers to ensure safety, such as children-only walled gardens within their broader services.
We already have piecemeal attempts at something like this through on device private age restriction software, but it’s not organised at the state level, and I think it’s not effective enough as a result.
If legally enforced it could be made into a pretty effective system that would give adults freedom and anonymity and provide safety for children, while pushing the costs of child safety onto the platforms, which is where it belongs. If you want to cater to children, prove that you can make it on to the whitelist. Otherwise that’s an audience you’re just not able to access.