[TeMPOraL]

I strongly agree with your entire comment. That said, I think this:

> that everything they read and write should be surveilled 24/7 by teams of strangers, for their "own good"

Are actually two separate problems with our society.

Problem 1: denying privacy to children, various forms of helicopter parenting. This you've covered, and I agree this is our era's way of mistreating children.

Problem 2: "by team of strangers". as a Service. This is a much broader topic to cover it all here, but constrained to the context of data processing and children - social-wide, we're too eager to entrust sensitive matters to random strangers, giving them too much leeway, as if they weren't incentivized to abuse it in every way they can get away with.

People are having ridiculously inconsistent "trust functions" here. You wouldn't give this level of access to a small shop from your neighborhood that offered you a service, but you give it to a random tech startup from far away, just because the guy looks kind of creepy and the startup has a shiny web page. Even though a realistic threat model would suggest the former can be trusted way more than the latter (less incentives and less capability to screw you over, and they live near you). It's like most people can't internalize the lesson, even though they're being repeatedly screwed over by almost every business they interact with.

What pisses me off more, is when it's the other party that inserts some third parties into the process. When you have a kid attending a school, there's a degree of trust and responsibility shared between you and the school. But then the school outsources data management or remote learning to some random vendors, vendors who absolutely cannot be trusted. And as a parent, you can't do much about it.

One day in the future people will look back at our times and think about all of us and most of the market the way we today think about literal snake oil salesmen and people duped by them.

[lamontcg]

> What pisses me off more, is when it's the other party that inserts some third parties into the process. When you have a kid attending a school, there's a degree of trust and responsibility shared between you and the school. But then the school outsources data management or remote learning to some random vendors, vendors who absolutely cannot be trusted. And as a parent, you can't do much about it.

I don't understand why the parents are letting the school into their kids heads while they're at home to begin with. School administrators shouldn't be parenting (and we should ask ourselves why this seems reasonable for them to explicitly assume parenting roles over all the kids), and they should probably be more concerned about what kinds of porn their teachers are watching. They should never, ever be concerned with the question of which kids are watching which porn unless it somehow literally cannot be avoided because the kid drags it explicitly into the classroom.

[TedDoesntTalk]

I’m guessing the article leaves out the part where this monitoring occurs on school-issued devices that children use at home.

If so, this is no different than your employer actively monitoring your activity on their devices.

[ClumsyPilot]

"If so, this is no different than your employer actively monitoring your activity on their devices"

When I was 12, I didn't sign an employment contract with my school and they didn't pay me. Have times changed so much? Why would you imply that two relationships are in any way comparable?

Owning a device does not grant you a right to violate people's privacy - if you lease a car, is it okay for the rental company to install cameras in it and record you having sex in it?

[ziddoap]

Surely you understand why a school-owned and school-provided device is monitored by the school, and why this scenario is not directly comparable to a car lease (with a lease being quite a different contract, with different goals and legal mechanisms)?

Whether or not you are being paid is irrelevant - the key part is that some other entity is providing hardware that they own and allowing you to use it under certain conditions. Those conditions are: use it for the purposes agreed upon, and the device will be monitored to ensure it is being used for only the purposes agreed upon.

I certainly don't think we're doing our kids any favors with the constant and forced surveillance 24/7. But I can understand why an organization wants to keep their hardware managed.

[ClumsyPilot]

Not at all, I do not see how a school's interest in monitoring a measly $300 chromebook outweighs a child's privacy. Meanwhile sportscars are used to break the actuall law, not T&C, daily, and occasionally kills people, yet company's interest in monitoring their $150,000 vehicle doesn't seem to matter.

The only difference here is that kids are powerless, unlike customers renting sportscars for $$.

[ziddoap]

I'm having a really hard time following the thought process here.

For one, I already said I agree that children's privacy shouldn't be invaded - that's not the point. The point is that Organization A is providing their owned device to Person A, and they have a right to monitor its use.

Secondly, you first talked about a lease and now you seem to be talking about cars in general? But also companies which issue $150,000 sports cars? (Which company provides $150,000 sports cars, by the way? So I can apply.)

For what it's worth, every corporate fleet vehicle I've had the pleasure of using has been strictly monitored by the company who owns it - just like they monitor the other hardware that they own and lend me.

And if you're not talking about corporate owned vehicles - we're back to square one. Leases are different contracts with different expectations than loaned devices.

[jjav]

> Surely you understand why a school-owned and school-provided device is monitored by the school

Not at all, no. Ownership of the device (worth very little, maybe I'd feel different if it was a $100+K instrument on loan) should morally grant no spying rights whatsoever to the owner.

Privacy of the person, but particularly a child, far outweighs the importance of any cheap gadget.

[lamontcg]

The fact that we think that either of those are okay is wrong.

The fact that you're sitting there wondering how I could possibly object to something so normal and obviously correct is precisely the entire fucking problem.

None of these invasions of privacy should be allowed or considered normal.

[iainmerrick]

I don't understand why the parents are letting the school into their kids heads while they're at home to begin with.

Homework, no?

[lamontcg]

Deliberate misreading of what I meant. No.

[interpol_p]

I value the privacy of my children and have trusted them with their devices for the most part. I avoided parental controls and blocking applications, I don't monitor them or know their passwords

But once my oldest (9) started disappearing with his iPad for too often and too long, I did browse his YouTube history (I had to ask him to unlock his iPad, as I don't have or know the passcode). And after that I blocked YouTube, as there was just too much adult content for a nine year old. I have also made it a rule that computing and screen time needs to happen in family areas

I still feel like I violated his trust. But I also feel like I can't responsibly allow him to have access to YouTube or the full Internet without experiencing negative effects to his emotional development. I am unsure if I am a helicopter parent in this situation, and if I went too far

[VRay]

ah, your parents probably didn't let you rent whatever you wanted from Blockbuster or buy porno magazines at the convenience store, seems like it's basically the same thing

[shantnutiwari]

> And after that I blocked YouTube, as there was just too much adult content for a nine year old.

Did the same for my 6 year old. Yes, there is a lot of stuff I dont want my kid watching.

He used to watch video game videos, mainly by other kids, so I didnt mind.

Then one day, I heard him swearing. Looks like some (a lot?) of these kids swear, even in games like minecraft. And they use sexist language; again, these are videos by kids, some just a few years older than my son.

And now Youtube is banned.

I dont understand where this "helicopter" parent thing comes from. Like another commenter says, will you let you kids eat anything they want? Watch TV till 11 in the night?

[leppr]

I'm curious what do you mean by "adult content" on YouTube? Like sexually explicit or suggestive things, music videos, etc, or rather some other too mature topics?

[interpol_p]

There are a lot of sexually explicit videos on YouTube. I didn't realise and it was totally my fault for not looking into it as soon as YouTube usage started going up

[leppr]

Ok, I guess some slip through because they should normally require age verification. Even medical videos like breast cancer screening are classified.

[TeMPOraL]

Does Google have a reliable way of doing age verification on YouTube these days, or is it still as easy as creating a new GMail account?

[MomoXenosaga]

In EU you need to upload your passport.

Or steal your parent's credit card. Its an American company after all they use their CC for everything and a CC is completely normal for identification for some ungodly reason that I do not comprehend.

[hkt]

For what it is worth, I have a son a little younger than yours and have decided I will do the same.

My reasoning is that these platforms (as we've recently seen) know full well that they cause harm. That gets verified pretty regularly by independent researchers. Standing by and letting a preteen deal with that on their own has predictable enough results: my job is to Sherpa kiddo through life and part of that involves deploying myself as a kind of surrogate sense of self regulation when his fails. I'm pretty liberal and allow privacy on most things (I would never read a diary etc) but draw a line between what he consumes and produces. Privacy is for production, at the moment. Private consumption can come later.

tl;dr you did right, imo.

[TedDoesntTalk]

> results: my job is to Sherpa kiddo through life

Yes and also to protect him from the adults who author addictive, compelling content that a 9-year old can’t be mature enough to protect against.

If you don’t regulate his internet activity, why do you regulate his diet? Why not allow him to eat whatever he wants whenever he wants?

[asddubs]

I think it's kind of a reverse anthromorphization, where you don't really think about the specific thing that's happening (some random person getting access to your kids private communication), but think of it as just some abstract thing

[streamofdigits]

Alas not enough people are "pissed off". Societies, in particular the US, are now taking unprecedented risks, dissolving long-standing practices, trampling on moral standards, pursuing massive violations of trust, all in the name of profit making (that - in the scheme of things - is actually quite puny).

Now, it is clear that the diffusion of digital technology invariably takes us to different pastures. We are not in Kansas anymore when everybody carries a connected supercomputer. Both parenting and education will be impacted and will never be the same again. A new equilibrium must be found. But what is happening in the past decade or so is just an unwarranted wild west that capitalizes (literally) on ignorance, inertia, confusion, regulatory capture and political dysfunction.

[bryanrasmussen]

>(less incentives and less capability to screw you over, and they live near you).

Most services do not have the direct and easy to apply capability to physically harm you or your family.

[ClumsyPilot]

They do, someone got a loan in my friends name and racked up debt, and they probably got his data from a data leak - ofcourse its impossible to prove.

[bryanrasmussen]

the words physically is generally not considered synonymous with financially.

[judge2020]

> the former can be trusted way more than the latter (less incentives and less capability to screw you over, and they live near you).

How is this remotely true? The stranger, after you stop paying them for the service, might spread lies about you, treat your child badly, show your child things you wouldn’t want (guns, drugs, movies, etc). The faceless corporation directly profits off the information it gains, but you can be sure the access control and security measures taken by them mean it’ll never be used to oust something embarrassing about you to your community. Only a dozen or so engineers at Google have direct database access and all of that access is logged and audited.

[ClumsyPilot]

"you can be sure the access control and security measures taken by them"

How could you possible write this, did you live under a rock for the past 10 years?

Big Co's have literally extorted people and leaked their sex tapes, Vigilante placed bounties on people's heads, Equifax left national databases unsecured, phone operstors have sold realtime location to the highest bigger and left the website to access it unsecured, the list goes on an on. Unbelievable!

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-shells-out-millions-of-d...