RobotZap10000
@RobotZap10000@feddit.nl
- Comment on Airlines Are Selling Your Data to ICE 12 hours ago:
What else bothers you? I’m curious.
- Comment on Developer interview: my Q&A with the Heroic Games Launcher team 2 days ago:
Great to hear that they’re working on more game stores. Also, is it true that Heroic earns a commission if I buy a GOG game through them?
- Comment on Showing your ID to get online might become a reality 3 days ago:
You’re entirely correct, I discussed this with someone else after writing my comment and they raised the exact same points. Banning and blocking won’t solve the problems, only education will.
- Comment on Showing your ID to get online might become a reality 4 days ago:
I once remember reading either an article or a comment here somewhere about a different solution that could be easier for nearly everyone.
Despite every country having their own laws/standards about how old people must be to view certain things on the internet, we can all at least agree on what categories we may want to restrict (e.g adult content, social media, user interaction, etc.). After defining all of these categories, we could add a HTML tag in the header of all of our websites that tell us which of these categories apply. The only thing that would need to happen on the user side is for them to instruct their browser which of these tags should not allowed to be loaded. Instead of each of these websites needing to collect IDs and face scans to verify an age, they could simply tell the user which categories of content they are, have the client device compare it to the list of restricted content and act accordingly.
A quick example: Client connects to Instagram -> Instagram’s HTML header contains the tag “social_media” -> Client’s browser sees that “social_media” is in the blocklist -> User only gets a restricted content screen
While the technical side would be easy, this solution still relies on the websites to be honest about their category and for the user to enforce this blocklist. The Australian government would not have a hard time making sure that Instagram and other widespread social media websites are honest about their website content, but the sheer volume of other websites on the internet would be impossible to enforce. This would either require trust in the goodwill of others (which is not easy to find in an enormous anonymous space) or to have automated crawlers try to guess the tags or just to rely on the many public blocklists to fill in the gaps. The second half of this solution is for the tags to actually be blocked by the browsers. Since these restrictions only ever apply to children, we should task their parents with ensuring that their children can only use web browsers with these blocklists enabled. I assume that any operating system worth their salt has options to restrict installation of other software, so the only change that would need to be made is for browsers to also come with parental controls that allow parents to set these blocklists and prevent them from being changed without permission. “User interaction” and the names of the other tags are likely alien phrases to many parents out there, so the browsers should probably offer simple blocklists that state their purpose, e.g “Australian social media restriction for children under 16”. If parents really want their children not to be on social media, they shouldn’t expect technology to do all of the parenting for them. We can give them simple, safe and secure tools to allow them to control their children’s access to their devices, but they should still be responsible with actually using them and ensuring that they aren’t being circumvented.
What do you think about this? Can we rely on websites honestly tagging their content, devices coming with working parental controls and parents properly using them? Or must we really scan everybody’s face and ID before letting them use social media? My solution does place a lot of (maybe misguided) trust in websites and parents, but I think that this is the easiest way for every restriction on children using certain parts of the internet to be enforced, while still respecting people’s privacy.
- Comment on HP adds 15 minutes waiting time for telephone support calls 2 months ago:
I had a little argument with one of my parents about a certain Linus Tech Tips video that compared the customer support of certain pre-built PC sellers. They simulated a stick of RAM becoming slightly dislodged during shipping, preventing the computer from powering on. Then they got one of their less-versed employees on the line with the PC’s respective phone number. The guy at the desk at the computer store down the road solved it in 10 minutes, while Dell had the poor LTT employee getting whiplash from being transferred between every Indian call center worker with a pulse, while constantly being pestered about extended warranty and whatnot, for 45 minutes. I made the point that I would not buy from Dell after seeing the state of their customer support, but my parent did not seem to be able to imagine a customer support line that wasn’t outsourced to the other side of the planet.
- Comment on Google's slow Chrome Extension reforms anger developers 2 months ago:
The advertising company’s web browser doesn’t allow you to block its advertising? Color me shocked!
- Comment on Xbox boss confirms a handheld console is in the works 5 months ago:
“We” probably did, but I don’t think that Nintendo would ever license their games to another handheld manufacturer.
- Comment on Microsoft looking to restrict kernel level access after CrowdStrike incident might help us with our current Anti-Cheat dilemma 9 months ago:
I read dilemma as diarrhea and didn’t think much of it…
- Comment on Linux user share on Steam breaks 2% thanks to Steam Deck 11 months ago:
I, for one, welcome our new penguin overlords.
- Comment on Let's get Disturbed 1 year ago:
That ain’t no emerald city, that’s zaza city!