US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

You pretty much have to whitelist. I think we're heading towards a future where we give kids only devices that restrict internet access to known good content. There's more than enough known good content out there already to keep kids occupied until they come of age.

There will be managed whitelists that your kids can access, which sites must apply for and demonstrate compliance with the policy of, and you will be able to trust, so that you or other guardians in your family don't have to manage the minutia, which is effectively impossible for you to handle.

And your children will be able to access only these, and any other exception that you personally whitelist them to have.

And we other adults won't let kids, yours or anyone else's, have open access through us as proxies, just as we won't buy them cigarettes or alcohol if they asked us, because we all agree doing so is wrong. And we will have punishments for those who break this rule, just like we have had for generations for pre-internet vices.

We won't need to bother trying to censor the whole internet anymore. We'll just take away children's unlimited unsupervised access to it, just as we have come to a social and legal consensus to exclude them from other parts of the physical world we all agree they are not ready to handle.

I predict this will happen, major device makers like Apple will lead it, and everyone will eventually agree it is appropriate and in best interests of everyone.

Back to curation, back to whitelisted web rings, yes I think this is the only option

The most difficult part is getting parental enforcement. Because a lot of parents:

A. Aren't tech savvy enough to set up rigorous controls.

B. Don't feel like dealing with setting up the controls to keep their kid quiet.

C. Allow things that contain the content anyway. (Twitter, Discord, Reddit, etc.)

And D. Assuming their kids don't learn to bypass it anyway.

I'm sure with the locked down nature of devices today, good parental controls are easier to come by. But when I was a tech savvy teen, the controls on my machine weren't much more effective than wishful thinking.

I'm a very, very "tech savy" parent, raising a non tech savy child.

Parental control software simply does not work. It just does not. And even worse, it is advertized as working!

The only solution is to deprive them of devices that access the Internet. But even that does not work, because schools often require Chromebooks to use with Google Classroom.

Did I mention Google Classroom has workarounds that let through tons of inappropriate content, and there is no way for the school to know?

When the schools are literally requiring software that allows inappropriate, what can you do?

Nope. Schools require Google Classroom, and that contains workarounds.

Some of the worst stuff I've seen was via Google Classroom.

Go to a school board meeting early, before it starts. Bring up the issue, and say “if any of you doubt that this can be done, I will happily demonstrate just how easy it is - privately, and with content that is legally available to adults.”

If they aren’t responsive, call a local TV reporter.

I have strongly explored such options, and decided against this approach.

There are kosher phones that have all kinds of restrictions on Internet access. Mostly used by Orthodox

The Mennonites have nice phones too.

Heh. This among other reasons is why parents who care a lot put so much effort into homeschooling or so much money into private school.

It would be nice to have sane defaults but when you have so many people with so many opinions that's not really possible.

excellent example of convergent evolution

I would be interested to know why, if you don’t mind sharing.

Not the parent but I raised 5 and spent lots of time with their educators.

A school board meeting comes with limitations on what can be communicated. It often isn't a good fit to introduce new factors because there is no time learn and evaluate them properly.

School boards are commonly composed of non-technical people. They will be limited in their ability to judge the risks that are presented. Besides time, they'll need to have access to (and trust) qualified people of good judgment. It's a lot of prequalifiers.

And all of the above aside, school board positions have recently become appealing to agenda-driven bad actors. If they happen to be on your board, whatever you present will be viewed thru the lens of their agenda. Good outcomes tend to starve in that environment.

I know the school board members and local reporters. It’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody.

School board meetings are already filled with too many folks putting on partisan displays.

I think the message would be combined with other messages, and would not make anything better.

That was why I said “before it starts”. I wouldn’t put it on the public agenda for that reason, at least until you had discussed it with the members privately first.

Edit: but in a small town I could see why you would be extra-cautious.