[weeznerps]

HN is so crazy sometimes. Literally the only two comments mentioning the actual product in question are positive and discuss the features and why they are useful for kids. Everyone else just uses the headline as an opportunity to sound off on why FB engineers should be taken behind the chemical sheds and beaten with electrical cords.

[drnonsense42]

I think your take is the crazy one. I’m not sure if you remember how this whole thing works with Zuckerberg, but it sounds like they’re in the “let’s gather a lot of 6 year old users” stage. The “let’s make billions of dollars off them now that they’re all on here” stage comes later. Most of the people on here (not you) aren’t falling for the same crap.

[f6v]

Haven’t corporations always targeted children? Toys, movies, food, etc.

[WickyNilliams]

Toy companies aren't systematically eroding privacy at every opportunity. A child is not able to understand the implications of using FB.

Hell, outside of technical circles, I doubt most adults are able to truly understand the scope of what FB does!

[drnonsense42]

Do you really think toys or food or comparable to Facebook? You go into a store, you see the product your child wants, and 99.9% of the time you know exactly what it does. You cannot walk away from a child eating a happy meal for 5 minutes and come back and see them watching a porn video hidden in the hamburger.

[raxxorrax]

Many skills they develop with digital products will be bound to a very small amount of companies. That certainly can be a problem.

This is of course to set up a pipeline for new Facebook users. Doesn't have to be bad, but it is what it is and there shouldn't be naive illusions about it.

[TheRealNGenius]

I agree with this sentiment. HN lately has often seemed a reactionary cesspool where anything and everything is scrutinized based on the headline alone. The vast majority of highly upvoted comments are always negative critiques in this regard, with few comments coming from people who may have actually clicked the link. This holds true of Show HN's, Launch HN's, or anything else about anything.

[crossroadsguy]

HN was also this. I think you, and a lot of people, probably hold HN in some weird kind of high regard. HN is just another anonymous forum frequented mostly by techies.

Also being a constant contrarian is a special flavour here.

[weeznerps]

Yeah this is true. Probably the level of discourse was never really that good, especially for non-technical threads. I suppose it’s just become more apparent to me.

[LordDragonfang]

It's still better here than most other pseudonymous public forums, with the exception of carefully curated feeds (and such curation has a fairly high opportunity cost and difficulty)

[gatlin]

Some of us aren't as enthusiastic about the idea of giving these amoral companies access to our children, regardless of how polished the product is or how many times I reread the article. I hope I am qualified to dislike this service.

[waste_monk]

Maybe we could have kid-safe apps that don't also funnel them into being products for a privacy-invading advertising behemoth.