[pythonaut_16]

I'm shocked by the overwhelmingly negative response here. Honestly I expect better when I come to Hackernews.

Facebook announces a novel app trying to solve common problems with kids using and communicating on the internet and everyone in the comments just comes out with their personal ax to grind with Facebook.

I get it. You hate Facebook, Facebook is a drug, Facebook kicked your dog. All of those might be valid criticisms, and if this was an article titled 'Facebook is destroying everything' I would be very interested in reading those opinions.

But as it is, all I see are shallow criticisms of Facebook as a whole rather than any kind of nuanced discussion of the Messenger for Kids app.

Personally I'm intrigued by the idea. Kids want to communicate using the internet (and before the internet it was phone numbers and texting), but this is the first time I've seen an approach that really helps parents to monitor who their kids are connecting to on the app.

Maybe Facebook is the wrong company to present this app; maybe the connection to Facebook is concerning. But the app itself I think represents the right direction to go in designing apps that minors can use to communicate and helping parents to keep their kids safe online.

[b0ner_t0ner]

> Maybe Facebook is the wrong company to present this app

Of course it's wrong. Why would you continue giving more free data to this evil monopoly?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DK2tcZbU8AA0Trn.jpg

[j605]

I would use Signal instead to communicate with my kid if necessary.

[pythonaut_16]

That works if you need to communicate with them one-to-one. But does Signal let you easily add any other Signal user as a contact? What about when your kid wants to talk to their friends on the app?

To me the appeal of what Facebook is doing here is that it lets you give your kids freedom to use the app while letting you as a parent create the whitelist of who they're able to talk to.

[j605]

Signal works with phone numbers, so you can talk to any contact that is also on the app. There is no parental control but how do you assume kids can't text random people. Blocking/banning makes users highly creative.