US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law

I have kids and try very hard to keep them from inappropriate material online.

The real dangers aren’t dedicated porn sites, but poorly managed social media sites. You can’t just block the domain.

In many cases, the bad material comes from peers. Kids have always talked about “bad” things, but the internet super charges it.

I generally support these efforts, but I’m also very cynical they help.

Politicians focus on the problems they control, like rules for sites that rigorously follow the laws and fit in a clear category. They care far less about the grey areas where the most harm is often done.

I think this is a good thing. I’d feel a lot better if these efforts were combined with rigorous privacy protections.

For example, third party identity verification services should be civilly liable for privacy breeches, and required to carry insurance to meet the obligations.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.