Or the sadder fact that it's not actually about protecting kids.

Honestly it should be good news because the kids never needed protecting in the first place. If the solution wasn't censorship they would give zero fucks.

Parents are already in control.

A trivial amount of legislation can fix that. Law reads: ISPs must implement implement parental blocks by default, exceptions may only be made on a per-device basis. Parental controls must also be enabled on public wifi. Easy as that. It doesn't matter how lazy you are, actively going and turning something off is more effort than not.

>ISPs must implement implement parental blocks by default

This is already the case in the UK. We discovered another sad fact. Parents will suddenly develop the technical literacy to turn parental controls off because it's inconveniencing them, but won't bother to fine grain the control to make it safe for their children.

This is 100% the response. I work with kids in mental health and the “kick the can to the parents” response is so shortsighted

Apple and android controls aren’t that difficult to understand. Roblox parental controls aren’t that difficult to understand. Could it be simpler by unifying these things under one framework? Sure - I’ve worked with tons of parents who fall under the trap that Roblox is safe because they set iOS parental controls. I feel for them because they aren’t “tech” people and apple conditions them to expect a setting to be universal across the operating system, so it’s quite a shock when they find out their child has been texting with some groomer from Roblox chat.

The parents who are doing that will continue to do that. Improving those controls will help those parents and I agree efforts should be made for them. But for every one of those parents I encounter I get about 4-5 more who don’t bother to set any kind of parental control or filter on their children’s devices. When their 9 year old starts talking about pornhub and I give them resources on setting up parental controls it almost always falls on deaf ears. They simply don’t give a fuck. They can’t be bothered to spend 20 minutes figuring out how to set it up, even if I offer to walk them through it.

It is the new form of parental neglect, the modern version of a latchkey kid

Yes but massive censorship and the constant surveillance of children is also not good for the children ultimately. We need to bring the question of “does this help create a world that we want children to grow up in?”

Are we really going to argue “since some parents won’t adequately parent their children, we’re going to create a massive censorship and surveillance apparatus and the Government will tightly control what everyone is allowed to view or talk about online”?

I might dryly suggest that it is prudent preparation for the computing environments they will encounter in their future jobs. Like the way expensive prep schools have children wearing business casual...

It'll take legal responsibility being placed on the parent, and one parent being prosecuted and convicted for child neglect, in order for that attitude to change.

Android doesn't have parental controls, does it? The closest thing I'm aware of is Family Link, which is a Google service that requires parent and child to have a Google account.

A technolo-- legislative solution to a social symptom.

I disagree that legislation can't help. Fundamentally there's an education disconnect and unnecessary friction in setting up parental controls. Governments can better educate parents about the risks, and give them better tools to filter/monitor content their children watch (eg at the device level). Being a parent is hard and it's possible to make this part easier imo.

eg consider child-proof packaging and labeling laws for medication, which dramatically reduced child mortality due to accidental drug misuse.

Well the law could be simple - “every computer sold must have a prominently displayed ‘parental choice’ screen on first boot that lets the owner specify whether this device will be used by a child and give the parents and option to block adult content”