Looks like Manitoba is a trend setter
Mandate sane, and strong, parental control over devices.
Devices for minors should require, by law, a caregiver’s device be paired with it. That caregiver gets to set access to websites or apps by white or blacklist with a bunch of sane, easy to use, default lists. When the kid hits 16 they can have an adult device, at which point they have hopefully been taught how to safely use the web over the previous decade.
App developers and websites found to bypass these controls face legal action at a federal level, and lazy or negligent parents still have the option to give their kid a blacklist with 0 entries.
This will seriously mess up open source operating systems and simple devices. I think major OS vendors can and should add parental controls to their devices, but it should not ve mandated by law.
I can see requiring ISPs to provide free DNS filtering for parents to use, but again it needs to be put on corporations that are selling, not a blanket rule that individuals need to somehow figure out how to comply with.
Linux based OSs should be able to implement this more easily than Windows. The caregiver user has permissions higher than the child user, and is given a set of special tools for content control. Root remains root. In Android the situation would be similar.
iOS and MacOS can go pound sand.
I like the DNS solution, that’s a pretty reasonable way to provide granular control over web access.
I think the NDP approach is the ideal one. We don’t need to legislate a requirement for mass age tracking and surveillance, but we need to give parents and schools the appropriate tools and a legal reason to keep kids away from big tech, and penalties for companies that through dark patterns entice kids and teens to be addicted to their platform.
I think the NDP approach is the ideal one
I thought the NDP was just going to implement a run of the mill social media ban. Am I missing something?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBvFWXQX-lA&t=540
My information is based on this portion of a CBC Rosemary Barton interview with Kinew on how they plan on implementing the social media ban.
We’re just going to simplify things. I think will help parents too, who are probably spending a lot of heartburn and stress trying to navigate these issues with their parents [sic]. If you know, maybe mom and dad don’t have to be the bad guy, they could just point the finger at the Premier and say it’s his fault - I’m happy if that helps the average family out there.
And then just when it comes to implementation, we’ll be working over the next few months with families and teachers in the province just to make sure we get the message out. To be absolutely clear, the accountability is not to be on the parents or the family or the kid. The accountability will rest on the big tech platforms. When it comes to parents and kids, our approach will be education. But when it comes to the accountability and living up to this ask, that’s where we will be going to the big tech platforms, most of whom are American.
So what he’s saying doesn’t necessarily preclude age verification, but the principal emphasis seems to be on normalizing social media free schools and homes than prescribing a verification policy. We’ll see Saturday if it’s anything more than that. I’ll come back and say I’m wrong if such a ban comes with prescriptive age verification.
How do you have accountability on tech firms and not the parents without the dystopian age verification tools being added everywhere.
Facebook needs a way to verify.
There’s pretty much two options
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Mandatory age verification in the software/os/requiring things like Persona which is a privacy nightmare. Even privacy focused zero knowledge proof systems embed it into our infrastructure which is a disaster waiting to happen and arent 100% private as governments arent willing to properly and truly make them. (yes I know ZKP systems are in EU but they weren’t designed to be 100% private with absolutely no tracking of anything. They still get some info about how the system is being used)
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Put the onus on the parents to set up their computers properly so their kids cant access certain content, and put the onus on the parents to choose what their children should see on those devices. Then make social media companies respect those settings if a computer configured with them tries to connect. If a child finds a device that isnt blocked properly, oh well, to bad so sad.
There could also be preprogrammed kid-only devices, and the responsible guardian has to show their physical ID (but NO recording of data-- like buying alcohol) to prove account ownership as the guardian for the user of that device. That makes it easier for non-tech savvy guardians, while also keeping them responsible.
This person’s comment describes, I think aptly, why we need to do more than just say “ID verification is dangerous”, despite it being 100% true and necessary to say. And some good ideas on ID alternatives from the same thread here to consider: Transperancy on what data was used to determine the kind of ad you’re seeing, clearer marking of sponsorships/ad placement, legal frameworks to have tech companies change to have LLMs cite sources more accurately to reduce misinformation.
Ya, that’s probably a good idea.
The idea of building this into our core infrastructure where we give up the ability to control it ourselves is the really fucking scary part.
In the EU for example they are using single use tokens.
If you want to go to a site that requires age verification, you maybe have 10 tokens, and you give them one.
When you run out of tokens, you have to ask the government for more.
That’s a huge risk built into our system now where the government can arbitrarily stop issuing tokens to individuals, or at large, and just lock that content off like a kill switch, and it would be at their discretion.
e.g Government: Oh, your using too many adult tokens… we won’t issue any more until next month!
Or what if something around issuing tokens is taken down in a cyber attack and everyones usage is disrupted.
It’s a governments wet dream to have this level of control built into the infrastructure, no matter what kind of safeguards they claim to have.
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To me this reads like Wab is saying that the first stage of implementation is getting the message out. He doesn’t seem to be suggesting that this will be the only stage of implementation. So I predict there will still be age verification
How do you seriously put the accountability on the tech companies without age and identity verification? To me, it hasn’t been thought out and I fear a typical poorly executed government plan. One with long reaching implications.
Prosecute bad practices and dark patterns instead of prescribing mandatory age verification.
They want to make the tech companies accountable to enforce it. How would that work?
I don’t think the details are out yet
If the accountability is going to be with the tech companies, the only way to do that is to eliminate internet anonymity. Doxxing is going to be a serious problem.
Doxxing? How about government being able to identify people who are speaking out against it and making them disappear
I don’t think the Canadian govt. is going to be unperson anyone in the near future, but I can see personally identifying information mixed with platform activity being grabbed by bad actors and used for fraud, identity theft, or blackmail.
This type of thinking is wild to me given how quickly things turned on the past decade. So people not realize the left had a near dominant position culturally. It panicked so many people on the right that they funded a take over. Canada today will look very different in the next few years
Neither do I, but that doesn’t mean we should implement a system where that could happen. If you asked me 10 years ago to predict what’s happening in the states today…
Social media is a cancer eating away at children and adults.
