[pyuser583]

I’m glad the responses to my comment are personal horror stories, because my comment is a personal horror story. It makes sense.

I’m dealing with a mentally ill adolescent addicted to very toxic content.

You grew up in an oppressive environment where among other horrible things information restriction was abused.

Both legitimate concerns, and both should be part of the same discussion.

But consider: it was librarian cautioning me about what my child was doing in the library. Not quite kicking my child out, but simply saying we can’t guarantee their safety.

For you the library was a safe space. For my child the library is not - according to the librarian.

I’d like to point out, nobody is saying parents should allow their children to access anything. Especially on the internet.

Are you saying that? I don’t think you are - but you are understandably skeptical of parents moral rectitude.

What tools should a parent whose child is addicted to videos of animal abuse or self harm have at their disposal? And I mean pretending to sleep until mom and dad have gone to bed and watching for 6 hours straight instead of sleeping, for multiple nights in a row. Going 72 hours straight with no sleep to watch people cutting themselves and animals being slaughtered (hypothetical).

I’m simply saying the tools parents have to effectively filter are antiquated and broken.

Also keep in mind the original article is one that discusses removing encryption and adopting some type of state surveillance. Something I am quite opposed to. My proposal is far more permissive, and affects child free grownups not at all.

Thank you for your careful reading of my post, and I am very sorry for the things that happened to you growing up. You’ve come a long way and I respect that.

[soulofmischief]

That's a difficult situation to be in, especially when it's someone close to you. Thanks for sharing, and I agree that horror stories on both sides of the aisle are how we find a solution that protects as many children as possible, especially those with less resources and support.

A few questions come to mind:

- Does the adolescent have any diagnoses such as OCD?

- Have you uncovered any specific psychological reasons for why they might hypothetically be seeking such content? Any luck with therapy? When asked directly why they seek out such material, what answer do they give?

- Do they identify the material as toxic, or do they not understand its toxicity? Do they understand why it's not good for them to consume?

- Have you identified if they are being or have been abused or bullied at school or elsewhere?

Six hours straight, that tells me there could likely be a clinically obsessive-compulsive component. I say this as someone who has both OCD and ADHD, which can lead to long bouts of hyperfocus and obsession if coping mechanisms are not properly developed. Medication may also help. I assume you've already reached out to professionals, but it would be worthwhile to find out if they are struggling with any recognized disorders.

It's scary knowing that at any time your child's unrestricted internet access could lead them down dark paths, such as abuse content or far-right radicalization pipelines. Parents shouldn't be rendered completely powerless, but I think the reality of an increasingly connected world means that kids will need to rely on informed parenting (hard, I know, the internet is a moving target) and good peer groups who can keep them accountable, informed and socially integrated.

I don't think absolute surveillance over their internet usage is going to help, because it will never be absolute, and it won't address any underlying psychological issues. The child will find a way to consume this material until their addiction is cured, and just like drugs, they will put themselves in increasingly dangerous situations to get their fix (for example, accessing the material at school).

And eventually, if the root problem isn't found and addressed, the child will grow up into an adult who is no longer supervised and has developed serious addictions. I know this is your fear, but I just don't believe the appropriate or effective battlefield is enabling mass technological surveillance. Studies and personal experiences have shown that invasive surveillance inhibits personal growth. It's difficult learn about yourself and try/learn new things when someone is constantly watching over your shoulder and analyzing everything you do, especially when they lack the correct context and treat everything as suspicious.

If this is a conversation you'd rather continue privately, email's in my bio.

[pyuser583]

The child is mentally ill and being treated clinically. Medication, therapy, etc. I’d rather not go too into the clinical details, because I’m not an expert, I’m a parent.

Roughly they are having difficulty with emotional regulation and processing previous trauma.

They’ve attended treatment camps in the past - which were very positive exercises for them. The approach to the internet at these camps is almost exactly what I am proposing: white lists and immutable history. They have to brew their own software but it’s done. I don’t see why it can’t be offered more widely.

Speaking more broadly, what controls do you think parents should have over adolescent Internet viewing?

Keep in mind most of the really bad stuff is on mixed content domains . Nobody builds a “watch-monkeys-die.com” website. They build a watchMonkeysDie tumblr or subreddit.

My case is not the best example because of the legit mental health concerns. But the principals are the same. As a parent I have decided my child needs granular access to the internet - how does that happen?

[soulofmischief]

I can't help you with respect to the library, that needs to remain a safe space for those who need it. But at home, do you have control over their networks or devices? I agree that the hardest yet most important things to moderate would be mixed content or UGC domains. Outright blocking some of these domains of course does the child measurable social harm, and social isolation is something you do not want when dealing with a problem like that. And the problem with just sniffing the network is TLS is going to obscure what content is being accessed.

If existing on-device controls are not adequate for you, I think one obvious modern approach which compromises on privacy in a situation might involve having a privacy-oriented on-device small language model look at the contents of each website and only alert you to suspect URLs, letting the child retain privacy if they stay away from toxic content. While this approach has many advantages, it also has disadvantages, such as requiring integration on the device level since an add-on wouldn't prevent a child from using another browser. But then we're moving into the territory of platform-locked devices with hardware attestation, age-gating etc. and the problem gets incredibly difficult fast.

Moderation on the internet is such a hard problem from many angles, and very unsolved. Multimodal models probably are the only way out; even now, the only reason platforms like YouTube, Facebook, etc. are usable by the general public is because tens of thousands of relatively poor individuals who are subjected to the worst material imaginable for 40 hours a week. It's a classist system as currently designed. A lot of these problems are very nuanced and need a lot of careful thought.

I do worry that if enough programmers who care about privacy and free access to information don't organize and provide stronger solutions, regulation will come from outsiders and it will suck. But right now, the current efforts to age gate the internet are concerted and not a rational measure against a lack of internal regulation; rather they're just exploiting that narrative in order to push through this legislation with broader public support.