90% of all childhood sexual assaults are perpetrated by close family and friends[1].

If stranger danger is a motivating factor here, statistically, you should side-eye your close friends and family much, much more often and never leave them alone with your kids.

> But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime.

You can say the same thing about social media interactions.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/child-abuse-neglect/about/about-child-se...

> I don't make them roll around in poison ivy, either.

My parents taught me what poison ivy looks like so I did not roll in it.

Likewise teaching your kids what a skinner loop is and how scrolling a feed is putting yourself in a skinner loop is really surprisingly effective. Kids like having agency, when you show them that tiktok does things to take your control away they listen.

And that's the root cause of many, many issues.

It's a pity so many of these issues get simply patched up through other means instead of properly addressing the real root cause.

If you have kids it is your responsibility. If you have kids and are not interested or present enough, this is literally the problem.

FYI “cope” is closer to “delusion used to help you cope with reality” rather than “superficial fix”

Also, I think that some strategies, such as “comfort asking a parent for help navigating a situation” are timeless defenses against strategies like blackmail. There are probably some street smarts that change and some that stay the same.

This assumes there is no added benefit to being able to reach your kids/be reached by your kids easier than it was historically. While I agree it's probably not as critical as many parents might make it seem, there are tangible benefits. Off the top of my head:

- Before cell phones, we were also in an age of far less mass violence in American schools. I completely empathize with parents wanting their kids to have an emergency contact device, given the relative increase in violence at schools.

- There is a long history of kids being abused, sexually or otherwise, by authority figures in their school. Having a lifeline like a quick text to a parent can easily be the escape hatch from a predator convincing a kid to do something unsafe.

I know few countries that reject poisonous US social media in favor of better platform that is safe for children, safe for news and information, and safe for society and for Democracy itself: the peoples democracy of North Korea, the democratic republic of Iran, the not authoritarian society of Russia, etc

I see tremendous correlation between restriction of access to some websites and straight up dictatorship that pretend to protect it's population from the evils of foreign influences.

Them being platforms is most of the issue. Protocols (like Mastodon or PeerTube), not platforms.

I agree but this sounds harder than it is. Not every parent is an expert in arguing against these actors that have very deep pockets.

Ok that's been tried and didn't work. So clearly something new needs to be tried.

> Nintendo

For online gaming, that's 5ish game lines ?

Then Splatoon communities are pretty active, with third party tournaments, discord channels especially during fest flourish. Private matches are a pretty core component of getting good at the game in team events, and Nintendo rightfully limits how much it wants to deal with that side of things.

As a result, if your kid gets into the game, they'll be looking at that from the sideline while other kids get a lot more support.

> game wikis

In general any wikis that allows for limited scope communication, like a discussion between two users in some obscure thread where only the two will be notified of updates, is ripe for abuse. Then game wikis are where kids will be found.

While moderation teams are usually doing a stellar job, it's a cat and mouse game with utterly motivated attackers and highly valuable targets. So stuff will happen.

That kind of stuff won't surface outside of very egregious incidents, but working in an adjacent field to gaming communities, it's definitely a thing.

You would get them used to the more intimate and private interactions first ?

While doing small talk at the bus stop, telling someone you go to the middle school over there is small talk. Doing the same online is asking for problems.

Online interaction require a completely different mindset for a kid, it's a big enough gap IMHO to be treated as a separate thing that can be learned in parallel of offline interactions.

You can learn to swim while learning to walk.

To look past the "give up" post, it did have a good point about how children will get into contact with such feed monsters.

I think it will be a good idea to try and get other parents on board. Other parents of the kid's classmates. Maybe they are struggling with this too, but don't see the way forward. And you can show them the content of feeds and shit that kids consume. You can come up with some minimum age or other idea, which you suggest for children to have, before you as a group of parents allow them to access things. Or you can come up with a once a month special lesson or something, where you show what can go wrong to the kids, and cooperate with the school.

I dont think that comment materially undermined your position, if anything it supported it?

> That depends on the implementation.

Not really. Either you have freedom of speech or you have restricted speech. The more restriction, the less freedom you have.

> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites you have proved age to or when you have done so.

As long as the broker in the middle can be trusted, cannot be extorted by government power or private wealth... in other words: unpossible.

> Do it right, like the EU is doing

Doing it right like the EU? You mean like the EU, scan everything that is sent through anybody's phone in the name of protecting the children?

> the site you prove age to gets no information other than that you are old enough, and your government gets no information about what sites

That is the case for now. What happens when the lobbies get in there and decide that this info is actually very valuable and that they should have the right to know who is visiting their client's websites and apps, will the anonymity remain? I think not.

And what about the defense industry who in the name of fighting terrorism will demand that users that identify themselves on "suspicious" sites now need to have their data recorded?

The issue is that once everyone is using this system, then it's very easy for any government to come and start expanding the scope of the data recorded and as always under the cover of good intentions.

This is how it goes: - In 2025, they record nothing - In 2026, they start logging IP addresses and passing along suspicious log ins to the cops - In 2030 they start recording more and more data until all anonymity is gone

I wouldn't touch the EU's identity wallet with a 10 foot pole and I certainly wouldn't use anything that the EU is doing now as a benchmark considering what happened with the Chat control law recently.

The EU is very double edged though. It has great projects, undoubtedly. For example GDPR was a gigantic step forward, even if many people here, who are US-centric mostly, don't want to hear that. But on the other hand the EU also has loads of shit that members and lobbies try to push, like for example chat control.

Let's hope that this project you mention works out, if indeed it works like you describe.

> If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?

My face is not my identity. Do I have to tell you my full name and address when I talk to you? I sure hope not!

Beyond that, what about the threat of violence for saying something? As another commenter points out, this is a real issue for marginalized groups, but also could easily become an issue for your average citizen sharing their political opinion.

While I agree it would be nice having some level of assurance that you're talking to a human, particularly going forward, the only way I could support such a system is if no party involved would be able to track what I visit or pin an actual identity to me as a user - but, perhaps more importantly, it also needs to not be easily broken by those actors who it's trying to stop. Otherwise it's useless and just hurts your actual citizens.

Just thought I'd share the EFF's take[1] on the importance of anonymity and its long history with free speech:

> Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A frequently cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads:

> > Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.

> The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius " and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment.

> The right to anonymous speech is also protected well beyond the printed page. Thus in 2002 the Supreme Court struck down a law requiring proselytizers to register their true names with the Mayor's office before going door-to-door.

To build on that, the Fourth Amendment protections against general warrants stems from the fact that general warrants were used to identify and persecute anonymous authors, many of which were founders and framers.

[1] https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity

Probably only works for as long as you are not living in a dictatorship, authoritarian state, utterly corrupt country, or similar. Then suddenly we would want our anonymity back.

While anonymity comes with its own issues for society, I am not convinced it would be worth it getting rid of it.

While what you're saying sounds like a reasonable enough stance on the face of it, keep in mind that this would deeply fuck over closeted queer folks among other marginalized groups.

> For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked.

I’ve seen more than one begging for his life getting blown up by a grenade dropped out of the sky. The killers then post videos glorifying these executions complete with music and motion graphics.

> What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking?

I haven’t done anything, and that’s the point; there is nothing that will compel me to treat my fellow man in the way I have seen men treated in this footage.