I don't find it particularly surprising that a company tries to influence legislation influencing their business.
What the headline is missing is that, according to the article, Meta is paying influencers to advertise for existing parental controls.
If the issue is not that there are no controls, but that parents don't use them because they don't know about it, then I see hardly any evidence to support such a pretentious title.
Parents are supposed to care about what their kids do. The government can only mildly reduce this burden. To be honest, I think that there might not be enough information on how to effectively parent on the internet and this seems like a low hanging fruit to try. In the end a ban might be the best option, but exhausting other options first seems worth a shot.
One of the main arguments pro-Meta is that they at least try, even though a strong argument can be made that they don't try hard enough. I find it difficult to believe that preventing children from interacting online via social networks is achievable. As long as adults demonstrate the availability of these things kids might want to imitate/have the same interactions. I'm glad I don't have any stakes in this topic at the moment - foreseeing evasive behavior from either side is going to be a nightmare.
I'm a parent, and Parental Controls are garbage across all services I've used. They seem intentionally confusing and their options feel disconnected from the usage of the products at all. Since nobody uses these controls there is very little support available, so every permission issue I encounter requires me to deep dive and often still fail.
Parental controls for EA games are shit.
Parental controls for Amazon are shit.
Parental controls for Netflix are shit.
Parental controls for YouTube are shit.
Parental controls for Roblox is especially shit. They have games like "Gay Test" and "Femboy Test" marked as All Ages which is bananas to me.
The end result is that my kids can't use these services without an adult present, which defeats the purpose of having Parental Control in the first place.
I don't find it particularly surprising that a company tries to influence legislation influencing their business.
What the headline is missing is that, according to the article, Meta is paying influencers to advertise for existing parental controls. If the issue is not that there are no controls, but that parents don't use them because they don't know about it, then I see hardly any evidence to support such a pretentious title.
Parents are supposed to care about what their kids do. The government can only mildly reduce this burden. To be honest, I think that there might not be enough information on how to effectively parent on the internet and this seems like a low hanging fruit to try. In the end a ban might be the best option, but exhausting other options first seems worth a shot.
One of the main arguments pro-Meta is that they at least try, even though a strong argument can be made that they don't try hard enough. I find it difficult to believe that preventing children from interacting online via social networks is achievable. As long as adults demonstrate the availability of these things kids might want to imitate/have the same interactions. I'm glad I don't have any stakes in this topic at the moment - foreseeing evasive behavior from either side is going to be a nightmare.
I'm a parent, and Parental Controls are garbage across all services I've used. They seem intentionally confusing and their options feel disconnected from the usage of the products at all. Since nobody uses these controls there is very little support available, so every permission issue I encounter requires me to deep dive and often still fail.
Parental controls for EA games are shit.
Parental controls for Amazon are shit.
Parental controls for Netflix are shit.
Parental controls for YouTube are shit.
Parental controls for Roblox is especially shit. They have games like "Gay Test" and "Femboy Test" marked as All Ages which is bananas to me.
The end result is that my kids can't use these services without an adult present, which defeats the purpose of having Parental Control in the first place.
Tech Transparency Project’s report shows whenever governments mull platform regulations, company recruits influencers to promote its safety features
The DC metro is full of ads for Instagram's teen "safety" features.