I do not have children but I could not imagine my parents leaving me with unfettered access to a TV at age 4. If the Internet had been around, they certainly wouldn't have given me an internet-enabled device and left me by myself.

How is playing games online where you can communicate with random people across the world without any sort of parental supervision possibly a good idea?? And why is it someone else's problem?

I don't mean this rudely, but how about actually doing some parenting?

I used to work with a guy who said the schools should be doing more to make children behave better, as if he was somehow absolved of any input. Absolutely baffling.

I'm also not a parent or a teacher. And I try my best to not give parenting advice to actual parents.

It helps to remember that life is complicated and there are limitless factors that can contribute to a family dynamic. Growing up my parents barely knew what the internet was and just associated it with "the computer". They attuned it as a "toy" and nothing serious. This allowed me unfiltered access to anything that was on the internet at the time.

You'd hope today's parents are more knowledgeable but I bet the majority of parents are just trying to get by and aren't ramped up as to how everything works today. They may be pressured to go with the technological flow head first due to society without fully knowing or controlling everything.

Anyways, back to my point, telling someone to "go parent right", especially as a non-parent, maybe you can approach it better.

I sympathize with parents, but I can only accept the naiveté argument up to a point. It's one thing to be naive. It's another to make your naiveté a problem for everyone else. At this point, it is simply not reasonable for a parent to be completely oblivious to the dangers of the internet for little kids.

Yes that's a good point that people aren't necessarily clued up on the intricacies of the technology they're liberally giving to their children, but that still doesn't negate actual supervision. It's like handing a handsaw to your child and then wandering off.

And my main point that supervision and parenting go hand in hand doesn't require me to be a parent to know that, in the same way that I know that a handsaw can be dangerous yet I am not a carpenter. You don't need to be Parent of the Year or a genius to know that leaving children unsupervised with something can go very badly, like leaving them to play with plug sockets... My parents didn't need to get to their second child to learn that - it's obvious.

I'm not sure how else I could possibly word it to make such an obvious point more palatable, even though I am no expert in parenting. (I do have cats though and I know not to leave ANYTHING out because they wreck it.... That also doesn't take much to work out even if you don't own cats!)

At some point we have to consider it the parent's/guardian's responsibility to restrict a child's access to any service that provides access to online, user-generated content without supervision.

Despite all my problems with Epic, I agree with OP here. This should not be Epic's problem. This is a problem for parents/guardians and the ESRB/PEGI. The ESRB and PEGI rated the game for 13+ and 12+ respectively, which I'd argue is appropriate, so IMO it should be entirely a problem for the parents/guardians.

Translating what FTC is saying to plain English, FTC is saying Epic didn't do enough to move liability away from them (Epic) and onto the parents/guardian. The liability ball was still in Epic's court, so FTC fined them.

If Epic had some form of age verification in place, past that point it's the parents'/guardian's problem whether the kid lies or the kid asks them to give their authorization. The liability ball would be in the parents'/guardian's court.

It's why all software and websites that handle data coming from underage kids always verify age or straight up don't handle that data (eg: Youtube Kids videos' comments, the lack thereof) at all.

Obligatory IANAL.

I’d recommend reading the complaint. To my surprise, regardless of the ratings, Epic was explicitly marketing to 10+. Like there are written statements to that effect.

> Epic was explicitly marketing to 10+

Translated to english this means they were marketing to 6-14 year olds.