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Comment by igetspam | Hacker News Reader

My kid is 2.5 and especially now when we can't get her out of the house, we're relying on a tablet for some of her socializing (seeing friends and family on video chat). We often use this while we're cooking and cleaning. Amazon looooooves to push ads to her tablet and the kid friendly mode they offer is a nightmare to try and use. I filter content for her because as much as we'd like to, we can't always be watching.

She's 2.5. Lots of things in her life aren't voluntary. It's my responsibility and choice to keep her safe. You can let your kids watch all the lemon parties they want but I'll just keep that stuff blocked.

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At 2.5 you probably shouldn't even be letting her roam the public internet on 1.1.1.3 - you need a whitelist, not a blacklist. And at the age where it becomes suitable for children to be on the public internet, it is no longer ethical to be filtering their content imo.

What you say here makes sense to me at least - but haven't you been arguing against just about any form of parent-set boundaries/rules elsewhere in this thread?

Well, let's say we find a compromise. You're paying for the internet, so you're entitled to set rules as to how people use it. But, if your child wants to pony up to, for example, buy a mobile hotspot, it's up to them to set their own rules for how it's used.

If your 2.5 year old is mature enough to manage that, then yeah, maybe they ought to be able to have unfettered internet access, too.

So parents only get to set boundaries in relation to things they pay for? Got to be honest, I'm struggling to take your arguments seriously.

If a 7 year old saves their money for a knife are they allowed to kill themself with it?

I take it you don't have kids. The stacks of ads in apps for kids is nuts and Amazon will gladly feed them to you. Walk away for 5m to feed let's and come back to your kid watching a trailer for some dumb movie. Take it away because you have to avert your gaze for a moment and your 5m chore becomes a 30m tantrum. It's only been made worse by social distancing and no opportunity to learn how to interact with other people.

Think of it like a child safety lock: you only need them until they can figure them out. By the time they know how they work, you can have a conversation with them about being safe around the house.

On the matter of ethics, while I don't feel inclined to filter the world away from older kids, I'm firmly believe you're wrong. There's nothing unethical about making choices for your kids until they're old enough to make informed choices. The amount of garbage online (revenge porn, sexual degradation of women, red pills) makes easy for kids to find bad information at an age where they can't process is correctly. Parents determine what age that is because that's their role and it's entirely situational.

> The stacks of ads

Found your issue, go and use an adblocker (or dns-based adblock filtering)

> revenge porn

Indistinguishable from normal porn

> sexual degradation of women

Just because you are not into extreme bdsm it does not mean that it is garbage.

> red pills

Your 2.5 year olds won't be able to read it. If they somehow find a way then you simply have to explain to them why you think that it is wrong.

The only "bad information" are straight up lies.

You talk about children as if they were property.

I don't think that kids watching explicit content is something they should be doing, but treating them like property rather than someone you can genuinely influence the views of in a positive way is incredibly destructive.

Why not install an ad-blocker on the tablet and be done with it? If she's 2.5 and for some reason going to explicit sites with intention, you should be fast-tracking her to private schooling, not installing filters on information.

You talk about children as if you don't have any.

> Why not install an ad-blocker

> not installing filters on information.

you're literally advocating opposing viewpoints in the same phrase

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