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What are your thoughts about today’s show? We’d love to hear from you!
I think there are problematic aspects to @Leo’s suggestion regarding the parental toggle. For me - mobile devices are not the only way someone accesses the Internet. Desktop/laptop devices do as well, as well as set-top boxes like Google TV, Kindle Fire, Apple TV, and so forth.
So, Leo’s suggestion would likely have to be applied to those platforms as well. Just looking at desktop OS’s - we have Windows and MacOS. But ChromeOS is also there and so are all the various Linux distros. Are we saying that these solutions would need to be incorporated there as well?
Forget the problematic aspects of requiring this in a Linux distro - let’s consider Windows. This would have to be something that can be managed by Group Policy. Otherwise, who’s going to stand in for the parents or OS owner? But if it can be bypassed by Group Policy, then that hack will become widely distributed, rendering the whole thing worthless.
I think Amy Webb would be a wonderful person to whom this question could be posed. Let her game this out and see if she can identify the possible 2nd and 3rd order consequences.
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The whole idea of parental control and decision making really does seem ideal at face value. However, I think it breaks down somewhat in the face of real-world circumstances.
Many parents today are not as steeped in technology as us. They live their lives in their chosen profession and are dealing with so many tangential things - like grocery prices, the stress of their occupation., school and education for their children, health issues, psychological issues, marital and familial stresses, and a whole multitude of other things that they do not have the time or even the cognitive space to take on the additional load of managing their technology. It’s the whole reason why Apple devices, in part, are so appealing - “it just works” is the mantra, even if it’s not entirely accurate, it’s perceived as such.
Modern operating systems have had parental control options for a long while now, and the evidence is that they are largely not being used. People aren’t necessarily stupid or dumb - they just don’t necessarily have the cognitive space for one more thing to deal with. Yes, it’s their responsibility to raise their children, but a parent must access what really needs addressed now, what needs addressed later, and whether it’s really a problem. Much like profanity among the youth, pornography can be seen as one of those things that “they’re going to see eventually” so it can be less likely to be addressed - especially if the parents themselves viewed porn while underage themselves.
Our society needs a substantial cultural shift if we’re going to address some of these problems in a way that has lasting results. I don’t know the answer, but maybe we need to first agree on what are symptoms of the problem vs what is the actual problem.
I’m not saying it’s perfect but it’s a damn sight better (and undoubtedly more effective) than a law requiring age ID.
What’s your suggestion? Is there ANY perfect solution.
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Hey @Leo - thank you for the reply. First of all - I hope I didn’t come across as attacking your suggestion. If I did - that was not my intent, and I apologize.
Second - I don’t have a better suggestion at the moment. That doesn’t necessarily invalidate my concerns any more than the challenges I see invalidate your proposal. But it does mean that your suggestion may be less straightforward to successfully implement than it may appear at face value.
For example - you used the example of a parent who feels their 18-year-old isn’t responsible enough to handle adult material. Once a child reached 18 - they are no longer a child in the eyes of the law, so a parent loses that particular right. And I can foresee some 18+ year old suing because they were being denied access to something permitted to them as an adult, notwithstanding the merits of the lawsuit.
At a fundamental level - any proposal which is not enforced by a law will have to be voluntarily implemented and adhered to. And any proposal that allows for a bypass will be bypassed by those seeking to avoid it. And maybe that’s enough - but then again, those dialogs that ask you “Are you 18 or older” don’t seem to be enough, so it’s going to have to be stronger than that.
I don’t have an answer that does not involve legislation of some kind, but I don’t even know what form such legislation could take either. It’s a good discussion. But if your suggestion moves forward to become more than that - we have to discuss those aspects of it which may be issues that need addressed.
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@Leo’s idea is the best I’ve heard, but the first thing I thought when he first mentioned several weeks ago, was that it doesn’t stop anyone just using a browser.
But considering the law makers are only going after apps, such a toggle would be the easiest solution to implement and still keep anonymity for Internet users. In fact, it might even appeal to some adults, to get less advertising coming their way, as there are strict limits to what and how much can be advertised at children, if they aren’t interested in adult content…
Parents should be responsible for the upbringing of their children. They are the front line for shaping their children. For all to long in many countries, parents have been handing off their duties and responsibilities to surrogates, that in itself sets a bad example.
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There is no easy answer to this, and my biggest issue with the law is that it’s not just about hardcore porn. It’s an attack on all things (and people) they don’t like. We have age restrictions on porn for years. Video stores would check IDs for that for example. So on that level requiring the same on the internet would make sense. I always hate when we treat the internet and technology as some bigger than life thing that should be above the law.
Real life problem is that we don’t have the tech to do this in a safe way. Apple has this now with their IDs in wallet and you tap to confirm age without giving away personal information. They just know you are 18 or not for cigarettes for example. We would need something like this to be more mainstream and for every state in US to support the technology. Until that happens it’s unworkable.
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I didn’t think about wallets as a way to do some of this. But I agree with all of the issues you identified.
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Real life problem is that we don’t have the tech to do this in a safe way.
Agreed, and I think a deeper problem is a lot of the decision makers in both technology and government don’t care about doing anything safety or correctly. Security now covers those design failures almost weekly - and there are never any consequences for the companies and governments responsible.
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I do think the toggle is the easiest and simplest solution. And for the argument of Apple TV, YouTube on TV and such. Require those apps on the TV to be scanned from the app on said phone. If user under 18, protected content. If user over 18 according to said phone All content available.
I manage my the family apple account and I have chosen based on child maturity as to what they can and can’t access through their phone using the Apple settings. The 10 year old can’t access Snapchat yet, but the 13 year old can. When the 10 year old matures, I’ll up the restriction to allow her to download Snapchat.
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Couple thoughts on this weeks show.
- Leo kept talking about whether or not AI has a right to read or ingest information. Under US Law the way it works now, AI does not have “rights.” AI is a product, like a Ford pickup truck, which also does not have rights. People and companies under US law have rights. In that case, anthropic is arguing that they should have a right to use books or the New York Times. I expect a lot more split decisions leading to Supreme Court challenges.
- Cathy frequently says that laws should be narrowly tailored so as not to infringe rights, but I was surprised that she could not define a scenario where children should not be allowed access to porn. I was also surprised at Leo as devils advocate, trying to find a boundary at which speech could be curtailed if it threatened the existence of the nation. I agree with Leo in this regard - free speech is crucial, but we must recognize when adversaries who mean to do us harm seek to use our freedoms against us. Rights should rarely be curtailed, but there are many legal scenarios where rights are restrained when they start to inflict harm on the nation or on people.
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I’ve been waffling back and forth on leaving Audible because i don’t listen as often as I used to. What’s the de-drm’ing tool used for removing DRM from books I already own?
Also, regarding Amazon. What about the small business that actually utilize Amazon to sell their products? Thoughts? Or are most of those folks migrating away from Amazon to something like Shopify? IDK.
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I have tried to de-Amazon myself as much as possible. I think I order Amazon maybe once or twice a year. Usually it’s Amazon that has the item cheaper and in desperation I order from them. But haven’t ever been a paying prime subscription member. It never made sense for me.
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@Leo I spend about half the month on the road for work. Self hosting has been essential, and I really hope you enjoy going down that rabbit hole as much as I have. Right now I have a home built NAS running a bunch of docker containers, ranging from LLMs to media servers to metrics for my Tesla.
At this point, with a little mental elbow grease and keyboard time, you can replace most of the web’s cloud hardware with your own self-hosted solutions. I’ve found myself re-implementing RSS for certain sites just to get around all the algorithmic BS which gets in the way. One can even convert Youtube Subscriptions into an RSS feed that your host for yourself.
Germany has free speech… As long as it does not harm others.
For example, you have free speech, but you can’t deny the holocaust, promote the National Socialism in a positive light, no hate speech, incitement to cause harm or death etc.
Also, it is illegal for non-Germans to interfere in German elections - so Musk, among others, by donating to an extreme right wing party and making speeches promoting them, were breaking the law last summer.
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Any consequences/accountability for this? Interesting.
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Theoretically, yes, but I haven’t heard anything yet.
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I’m pulling the plug on my Prime account next week after several years. We’ll see how it goes. We’re in a big metro East Coast area, so prior to Prime, I could still get Amazon delivery within a few days because we are surrounded by Amazon warehouses. Not a big loss there.
As for buying from Amazon, I’m starting to make purchases from other places. It may cost a little more, but I can live with that. I’m going to pickup a WD external drive from Best Buy this week, for example. It’s a pretty good price for the size, comparable to anything on Amazon, and I get 5% cash back for using a Best Buy credit card.
For Prime Video, we’ll just subscribe for a month when a series drops and then cancel once that’s done, like every other streamer.
What’s funny is that when I try to quit just about every other online service, they quickly offer good deals that benefit me and I usually stay; Sirius XM is a good example of this.
Amazon, though? Ol’ Jeffy B was basically “There’s the door, don’t let it hit your a** on the way out”, LOL.
If they offered me something like $99 for a year, I might stay. Please note that I’m not holding my breath as I type this.
Try Libation with your Audible books. It’s a horrific interface but it works on Macs and PCs.
Weaning myself off Amazon is next to impossible. But to the degree I can, I do.
My self hosting journey is also a thing of patches. Synology does some of it, but the Frame.work desktop, if it ever arrives, is my last best hope.
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I quit using Amazon Prime back in 2022 because they were rejecting my credit card for no reason(when trying to use the benefits included in Prime! my purchases always went through. it was a weird situation I just didn’t have the patience to deal with at the time). Amazon is one of the few services where if you pay for a year up front, and cancel: you lose your benefits instantly. you don’t get to keep using them for the year you pre-paid for. Which was so upsetting because I cancelled it only 4 months into my subscription.
I haven’t really missed Amazon Prime. I wasn’t a huuuuuge Amazon user to begin with though.
I use Amazon every so often. Less than 3 times a year, though.