[ndriscoll]

Why is it stupid to require devices have parental control settings that are default enabled when you indicate during device setup that the user is a child and, when enabled, turn on a "generally accepted and commercially reasonable filter", with a password for the parent or guardian to disable/re-enable?

Or is it stupid that it's illegal to turn off parental controls for someone else's kid without the parent's consent (the article author is upset about this one for some reason)?

Or what part of the policy is stupid?

[scmkr]

It’ll be expensive, complicated, unenforceable, and won’t actually prevent anyone from seeing porn on the internet. This solution isn’t based in reality in any way. Its purpose is to signal virtue.

[ndriscoll]

You know that these features already exist, right? Here's Apple's[0]. It looks like it goes well past the requirements of this law. Is it expensive to prompt whether the user is a child during device setup, and if so, enable parental controls by default?

It is trivial to enforce. Realistically there are two operating systems for these devices. Do they prompt for the user's age during setup? Do they enable parental controls by default when the age is under 18?

No one thinks it will prevent people from seeing porn. That's not a goal. The part of the law I quoted specifically says you just need to make a good-faith effort to enable a generally accepted, commercially reasonable filter when the user is a child. Likewise, no one thinks turning children away when they try to buy alcohol or porn in person will keep them from getting those things. But it's an easy, reasonable step to cut access, and as far as I know everyone agrees that we want to restrict access to those things to children.

The bill might be about virtue signaling if phones already meet the requirements anyway. But then it's not a bad policy; it's just codifying what's already done. Or phones aren't meeting the requirements, and it's not a virtue signal. Asking trillion dollar software companies to have a parental control prompt is not unreasonable.

[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201304

[cchance]

How do you enforce a kid disabling the parental settings by resetting their phone, and getting caught later watching porn... how do you now deal with the parent fine them the 5,000, 50,000$?

What about for kids/parent combinations where the parent isn't technically adept and just gives the kid devices to setup as is the case 99% of the time, lots of parents have their technical kids do the tech setups on devices cause they don't have the time or desire to learn to deal with it.

The issue with laws like this are that it's not going to be a rich guy getting in trouble for his rich son watching porn, it's going to be some poor kid getting his parents in trouble because the parent was busy working 3 jobs and didn't have time to screw with their kids parental controls, and end up screwed.

[uberman]

Does everything you just said apply to firearms as well?