I mean, I'm all for forcing big tech to provide better parental control tools. Because right now they provide the bare minimum that often locks you out of control... and it's a hassle to set up, maintain and manage.

Take e.g. Apple. To do any parental control you need an Apple account. Reasonable, to this point. But! To actually have any control, you need Apple devices. It isn't enough to log in through a browser, because you can't properly set rules, limits, block sites or apps, monitor communications, no, you need an iPhone or iPad or a Mac. You can't approve access requests if your child wants to go to a non-allowlisted website for e.g. school work.

Oh and if we're at allowlists and blocklists... no platform at the moment offers ANY kind of automated lists the parents can enable. They need to manually hunt things down and add them. So you either have your kid constantly pinging you to access resources, or you're constantly reviewing what they're visiting, searching for, etc., to block inappropriate content. And with how many porn websites there are out there that are specifically CLANDESTINE porn sites that at first appear generic kids games but if you go the right way, you find porn, is staggering.

Oh and one more thing. When are we punishing Google, Meta, etc., for allowing intentionally child-targeted adult themed ads and recommendations? Or did we forget how YouTube allowed incredibly disturbing content in ads and recommendations FOR KIDS (as in, literally injected into playlists meant for kids)?

If they don’t invent excuses to take tech away from people, for scanning everything , to force us using AIs which tell us the stories they want told, how will they retain power and hide their crimes?

And, because Apple cares about us, they can create the Personal Pictures Privacy Pro subscription. A plan where any compromising images are kept out of public dark web Facebook groups, for the low price of $29.95 per month.

Disclaimer: Privacy and security applied by your Personal Pictures Privacy Pro plan will be generated by mid-tier cost effective AI, which itself was trained on the work of the most affordable people who told us they were privacy and security experts.

If one party decides to make the country an open air prison, all it does is secure political victory towards their opposition party that intend to reverse those changes. The flag might change, but the methods stay the same.

because it's not about the kids, it's never been about the kids. It's about collecting/harvesting user data, IDs, and tracking said user.

Age verification for social media isn't working. why? because people will simply just stop using it. now porn? well they figure everyone gets horny and loves porn so it's the next best bet to continue to try and collect said data.

We all know the EASIEST solution to this issue, it's like you set, parental controls. it's always been the easiest solution. always. but THAT doesn't collect a users data.

Look i'll be honest if all these governments and companies just straight up came out and said "ok, we lied, it's not about the kids we just want your data. that's it. we want it so we can track it and sell it. we need the easy money." I'd slightly respect them more for it.

Seriously how about this "you allow us to collect and sell your data and we'll give you a tax break or a cut of the profits from selling it. we'll make this an opt in thing" just do that. just be god damn honest.

Easy, just send every parent who gives a minor a phone to prison. Problem solved!

The end result is further controlling people and surveilling them. Privacy is being murdered in record time.

Soon every person will have a mandatory telescreen in their pocket, linked to their facial recognition in a Palantir run 'government' database.

With Labour like this, who needs Tories?

Easiest solution is awarness. Teach the parents how to monitor their children and how to use parental control. They can offer classes for this.

On iOS parental controls let you choose to manage the child’s contacts. So they can only communicate with anyone you put in there. You can also block communication in apps. You can also block unapproved websites or let Apple block the ones in its list. You can set age restrictions on everything. You can be pretty heavy-handed if you want to. You can also buy the kid a dumb phone.

He may as well be saying that he needs to put cameras in every car to verify that kids are wearing seatbelts if they’re in the car. That would likely reduce more harm than this, but it’s also more obvious what the problem is.

Actually, yeah. That offloads the responsibility to the parents. I think that solution actually works...

Good riddance then

It actually shows that the government have no understanding of the technology or the culture because no one's communicating with potential paedophiles via iMessage does Google even have a messaging app anymore?

Apple has the same system, just FYI.