What 3rd spaces did we have decades ago that we do not now ?
It’s not necessarily that they’re entirely gone, but there’s fewer of them, and they may not be as accessible. Off the top of my head, a few examples might be things like:
Some communities are managing to hang on to their third spaces, or even create new ones, but it seems to be very uneven.
Ublock origin does a pretty solid job, I’m always mildly horrified when I have to use a browser without it. Is that really what other people see when they browse the web?
Thank you for this, it makes for a nicer reading experience than their own website! Is the code open source by any chance?
Don’t pooh-pooh the idea unless you’ve tried it. It’s pretty cool.
I think that’s only usual for entry level positions.
Ah, that frission of excitement when you come to restore! Will it work? Does it contain that very important file? Is it up to date? How much will future you hate past you if it isn’t there?
Have you tested your backups recently? Having them complete is one thing, having the data you need for recovery is another. Have you backed up your vm configurations and build scripts?
Go test your latest backup!
That’s a thorny question. The main ways we currently got either involve the sites in question collecting personally identifiable information, such as government issued ID, and making a determination as to what to serve based on the information that contains, or the sites adhereing to a voluntary code, such as RTA, to include an identifying header, and parents installing, configuring and maintaining the software or services to restrict access. The former method is obviously dangerous as it requires handing over your ID, and the latter is all voluntary and so there is little impetus to do it, and the complexity will also act as a deterent for parents. Turning it around and just having the computer send a flag for the age bracket gets rid of the need to transmit personally identifiable information and makes the parents’ setup job much easier with a one-shot, tick a box and carry on, process.
Again, I’m only going by the Californian bill, but that one is pretty clear that the person setting up the account should either supply the user’s birth date, or the age bracket they are in. There is nothing indicating this should be validated in any way. I’d agree that, if the machine was compromised, and the user’s birth date was used, it would be possible to leak that data, but given those preconditions, it would be one of the least interesting things leaked. I’d certainly prefer to just store the age bracket, and have a way for the computer admin update it as the user grows towards their 18th birthday.
I’ve responded to your duplicated comnent elsewhere, could we take this thread there to avoid duplication?
Not really, please see my response to towerful’s sibling comment to save me duplicating it.
These age band laws basically work in the opposite way to the usual parental controls. Rather than having to install and maintain the control software and having the filtering at the client end of the connection, parents need only set a flag and filtering will occur at the source end of the connection.
Will these laws provide perfect protection that eliminates the need for parental oversight of childrens’ internet access? No. Will they help stop kids accidentally stumbling into unsuitable content, reducing harm overall? Yes. As a parent, one of the things I worry about is my kids browsing sites such as youtube. Even if they’re using it for research for school projects, I can never be certain it wont prompt them to watch an unsuitable video. With a simple “this user is a child, don’t show them anything unsuitable” flag, I wouldn’t have to spend so much energy monitoring everything and could spend more energy talking to them about what they’re actually watching.
One of the key parts of the Californian law is that if the client machine sends the flag, the service must treat it as authoratative, and should not use other means of checking. That is good news, as it means there is no incentive for sites to integrate more intrusive measures such as third parties scanning givernment issued ID.
I don’t think there would be any difficulty with a kid setting up a computer, as in most juristictions the parents are responsible for their childrens’ actions until they are adults themselves. So the oarents would still be responsible for what the kid did with the computer in the same way they often are now.
That’s one bit that I do think could do with clarifying. As written resposibility seems to be split between the developer and the controller. From the rest of the bill, it seems like the developer is in the clear if the system functions, and it’s down to the computer controller to ensure users are correctly set up.
I’m not sure what you mean by “massive leak able tracking” in this case. It’s literally a flag that indicates the user’s age bracket, and means sites don’t use the really invassive options.
No, and this wouldn’t be impossible to bypass either. I don’t think the aim is 100% perfection, so much as harm reduction, and I don’t think you’ll get more than that no matter how onerous the law becomes. Most kids, most of the time, are not going to be trying to circumvent it, and it would still be up to the parents to look out for cases where they were.
The current proposal requires storing and transmitting a flag that can take one of four values (under 13, 13-16, 16-18, 18+), and prohibits sites using other means of age verification. It’ll work adaquately to stop kids accidentally seeing pornography, and hopefully things like andrew tate, giving the parents some space to do their part to help their kids learn how to understand what they migjt be exposed to.
Yet, with the way the California bill is written, so long as that data was collected at account creation, it would be adaquate.
The burden is still on the parents, but this would actually provide a useful tool for them to address that burden.
There’s fairly clear evidence at a societal level that access to, for instance, hardcore pornigraphic material is harmful to children, but that is very different to having evidence that a particular child is currently being exposed to it.
Yes, this is precicely why a client side flag is so much better than a server side “send your ID documents to a third party” system. As I said, the Californian bill seems to have no requirement that the OS account creation process actually checks the value entered, just that it requires it at setup.