I don't understand why this is getting downvoted. As another response mentioned, we wouldn't tolerate this in any other industry.

If a restaurant served food that harmed people we wouldn't say, "it's on the parents." I don't get why so many folks are willing to say that with harms caused by tech companies.

Scale is no excuse either, "at our scale we just can't handle all the content." If anything it makes the problem more pressing to address.

> If a restaurant served food that harmed people we wouldn't say, "it's on the parents."

But we do! Acute harm is bad but chronic harm is, apparently, fine.

> If a restaurant served food that harmed people we wouldn't say

Is sugar in your country restricted? Or meat? I guess alcohol is, as it's everywhere. But restaurants server many harmful food which is only tolerated because harm comes from time and serving-sizes. But the same can be said for dark patterns in software, they are usually not obvious and in your face, but sneaky enough to fly under the parent's attentions.

This sounds good as a sound bite. But barely any investigation cracks it. We don't police companies much because we have entire divisions of law enforcement who are supposed to be doing that job.

1. If a restaurant serves food that harmed people the health department is the avenue used to investigate and punish.

2. If a game company enables endangering children the FBI is the one responsible for investigating it.

etc etc.

I don't understand why people love the nanny state so much. We can't continue to make companies be the police, the stewards of truth, and justice. They demonstrated just recently, during COVID, that this was an absolute disaster. Over the last 30 years we have watched freedom erode because the average American wants to foist all responsibility onto someone else.

The nanny state is wrong which is why the OP is being downvoted.

1. It is the parent's fault for not monitoring their children. It is absolutely a reflection on poor parenting-by-proxy via video games. I don't understand why we continue to absolve parents of responsibility for everything.

2. We have legal avenues with which we have used and continue to use for the investigation of harmful things produced by companies.

3. If we cannot use (2) we should ask why - the answer is almost always follow the money.

4. Corporations should never, under any circumstance, be turned into police via lawfare.

I've come to the belief that there is a larger than we assume portion of the population that is either complicit in these things, or doesn't think that these types of behaviors are "that bad". (some of the comments here are, sadly, exactly that) It's the only reasonable explanation I can think of why these things are so hard to root out. Some of these people perhaps never had children, which might be part of the disconnect. But if I was the CEO of a company harming children in this way, I'd make it my life mission to stamp it out and find and prosecute the individuals involved.

What else must we think goes through these executives minds? It's got to be things like "It's not my kids, so I don't care?" or "It's not that bad, people are too sensitive", or "I don't care what happens to kids because I have anti-personality disorder (psychopath) and only care about making money"

Yes, it's absurd how tech considers "but we're too big" to be a legitimate reason for inaction. That would get handcuffs clapped on you in any other industry. What happened to "too big to fail" being a sign of deep corruption requiring immediate action and breaking up companies?

> If a restaurant served food that harmed people we wouldn't say, "it's on the parents."

Isn't that how moralizing about the health benefits of a McDonalds-based diet go?