The whole thread is worth exploration, however the attached is my longest contribution to it:
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There are no such things as “adult places” or “child places”, so much as places which are intended for an adult or child.
In the real world there are fast cars, and dangerous spikes, and toxic chemicals, which may make a place unsuited for adult, child, or anyone between.
This may create an obligation to keep people out for their own safety; but by and large we do not bother to make real-world *spaces* child-safe unless they are intended for a child. To require such would be onerous.
In the online world, there are words and pictures and sounds, as opposed to crushing wheels and arsenic mine tailings and drowning ponds. The risk profile is very different, yet somehow the argument is made that the web needs to be “child safe” because a child could access it.
This is an extraordinary imposition, and one which does not account for intent. The results will be disaster.
The reason for the disaster is very simple: in order to gatekeep access to digital data, it is necessary to have a concept of identity.
The concept of identity, however, is not hard-coded into the internet, nor should it be.
This breakpoint is observable in American libraries, where librarians have a duty of privacy, anonymity & of providing access to information, but would likely guide “apparent children” away from less suitable content, towards more suitable content.
In the real world this is easy
Online it is not possible without invoking enormous & fragile, likely privacy intrusive, identity mechanisms. “Proof of claims” are entirely possible to achieve in an academic context, however practical deployments are untrustworthy because of metadata linkage in the real world.
This is also apparent in the self contradiction where, for platforms to “collect less data about our children”, it is first necessary to collect more data about them in specific (age) & then robustly track them & everything they do everywhere, to assure that data is not collected
Not to mention, as an aside, the sudden and extraordinary obligation to track the age and identity of everyone else, in order to separate them from the children whose data you have to avoid tracking – for otherwise inadvertent data collection might occur.
In short: 1/2 the entire concept of making the internet somehow “child safe” is utterly is liberal and based upon misconceived notions of how the internet works and what is possible without building vast infrastructures of totalitarian data collection.
And: 2/2 I would much rather that my daughter does not grow up having to endure and circumvent a oppressive, Orwellian, “papers, please” internet that was ostensibly created in her name and for her safety.
And be assured, I shall be teaching her how to circumvent all this stuff. Not least that level of facility will guarantee her a job and make her better-positioned than her peers.
Originally tweeted by Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) on 2021/09/14.
Update
When you challenge people who promote this idea, you will risk accusations of poor argument practices:
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Any “sleight of hand” is not on our part, but instead on yours, by your own admission: YES there are roads which can be repurposed to include play purposes (attached) but that doesn’t mean that “all roads are play spaces”, nor that we should aim for that.
Same goes for “The Internet” and “The Web” – by virtue of being potentially child-accessible, does not mean that a space is intended for children; adoption of precautionary-principle / attractive-nuisance thinking that “it should be”, builds an illiberal, totalitarian world.
Originally tweeted by Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) on 2021/09/14.
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