• 7 Posts
  • 238 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

help-circle

  • I think maybe the barrier could be a little higher than just disconnecting from your home’s network.

    If we were to accept the premise that there is currently an issue with child internet safety, then clearly this still an issue despite the existence of router controls. But now the question of if this premise is valid. What do you look at to determine whether “internet safety for children” is adequate? I don’t really know, and so I guess I have more reading to do.

    I was gonna say something about PSAs, but no time.


  • Wrote a comment recently. Age verification? Unnecessary. OS-level parental controls? Possibly meriting.

    https://programming.dev/comment/22589550

    I am still against where all this age verification crap is coming from, and I’m against what specifically “age verification” entails; but here’s the thing: We keep saying, “It should be the parent’s responsibility to secure their kids”—and while that’s true, you can do all the talking and educating you want, but the fact is that the internet is now nigh-fully integrated with our lives, and unless you are surveilling your kid at every moment they are on the internet (don’t recommend), not every parent has the time, resources, or know-how to keep their children safe on the internet without help.

    There are some states pushing for “OS-level age verification,” and I’m not convinced the proponents for this idea know what this combination of words means—but the idea isn’t all bad. An interface for apps to query the device for a simple “can access adult content” value would be helpful for parents to better manage what their kids can access without having to hover 24/7. There is zero need for any sort of identification at any point in the process. The fact that legislation is promoting cumbersome identification collection and not the already existing idea of parental controls is evidence enough that this is designed to surveil.

    This may address the privacy concern, but the issue still remains of a centralized power deciding what is and what isn’t “safe for kids.”

    I don’t think we’re gonna get around the child internet safety conversation, and for good reason; but the conversation should be around how we can do it without jeopardizing individuals’ safety and privacy, including children.






  • I was raised in a somewhat homophobic household. One of my friend groups throughout high school was pretty densely LGBT, and so I grew. Exposure was all it really took.

    I used to hate when Avatar: The Last Airbender aired. The episodes felt like they lasted forever, and I had no interest in anything that was going on. I finally finished watching it about a year ago, and it is one of my favorite shows to date.


  • The thing is, this shouldn’t really be a problem.

    I am still against where all this age verification crap is coming from, and I’m against what specifically “age verification” entails; but here’s the thing: We keep saying, “It should be the parent’s responsibility to secure their kids”—and while that’s true, you can do all the talking and educating you want, but the fact is that the internet is now nigh-fully integrated with our lives, and unless you are surveilling your kid at every moment they are on the internet (don’t recommend), not every parent has the time, resources, or know-how to keep their children safe on the internet without help.

    So to play naive for a moment and ignore the well-understood reality that “child safety” is an atom-thick veil for mass surveillance: Why did we give up so fast on device parental controls? The info being stored on the OS / user settings actually isn’t so bad of an idea if the implementation valued both safety and privacy. Upon setting up the device or account, it is the parent’s responsibility to create a password or biometric or whatever to activate/deactivate the safety mode. No personal information required. It should be pretty easy. Are there technically ways for the kid to get around this? Yes, but that’d be breaking the trust. In the same way you’d deal with your kid sneaking out of the house, you deal with that separately. The existence of websites that don’t perform the check is inevitable no matter what you do.

    And if you don’t believe your kid needs a safety lock on the internet, then that’s your prerogative.

    It’s apparent that many parents need a more convenient tool available to them, but privacy doesn’t need to be compromised in order to achieve a safer internet. I got lazy while writing this, and I’m sure that’s clear in some spots, but I’m just gonna post it. There’s possibly something huge that I’m overlooking, so I’ll just let someone else point it out.




  • Controversial becomes a goal post for some people. Aiming to have ___ opinions with any adjective other than ones relating to how that opinion is formed (well thought-out, logical, hasty (bad for a different reason)) makes for some of the most vulnerable people among humanity.

    I said it very recently, and I’ll say it again. People obsess way too fucking much over labels. Labels are a conversational tool meant to briefly describe something. The more you use them to determine how you should act, the more bogus you are. There are a couple exceptions, but aside from children in the developmental stages where labels play a massive role (I’m not a psychologist, someone correct me here if I’m off base), these are always™ because how you are perceived is fundamental to said label, e.g. hero, leader, representative. Please note that I’m not saying labels are never useful.

    I’m open to debate on this.



  • I played Warframe for about 3 years before I realized it was my favorite game ever. As in I was 12 when I started playing, and at the time, it was just what I had. It wasn’t until I got my first personal gaming laptop and began playing on there that I realized how much I liked it, and started engaging in the community more.

    JoeAAverage, if you’re out there: Thanks, man. It may have seemed like a small gift at the time—especially for an already 3-year player—but now, 11 years in, I still can’t be certain that I would’ve realized how cool of a game I had in my hands had you not gifted me that Limbo set. Limbo may be forgotten by DE, and I may not play him much anymore, but he will always be my favorite frame.


  • Starfield only reinforced my aversion to pre-ordering.

    I had about $100 set aside to pre-order the deluxe edition of Starfield when orders went available, but around that same time, a similarly priced, new limited-time premium cosmetic pack was announced for Warframe, and they did one of those things where “and it’s out RIGHT NOW!” (we typically know at least a couple months in advance before something drops), so I, without hesitation, redirected those funds to the Warframe item and did not order Starfield.

    Still one of the best decisions I’ve made. Starfield, even had it delivered on all its promises, was just not the game I was looking for. I pledged for a Star Citizen ship two months later.

    spoiler

    Those last couple sentences are like a short horror story.




  • DuckDuckGo.

    Like others have said, there’s really no getting around that Google has the best search engine from a functional standpoint. So I use DuckDuckGo for my personal reasons, but if I’m dissatisfied with the results, I will open up a “private” browser and do a Google search.

    Edit: I’ll add that this doesn’t happen very often. The last time I had to do this was maybe a month and some change ago.