Maybe you should try parenting???
Australia says platforms like Steam and Roblox have 'significant' child safety gaps
Submitted 14 hours ago by Orwi@programming.dev to games@lemmy.world
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjvgygzzy6lro
Comments
DudeImMacGyver@kbin.earth 3 hours ago
Baggie@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
Oh fuck off. You can’t build a foolproof solution and you know it, you’re just asking for more power over our data and I’m so tired of it.
wuffah@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
SUPERVISE
YOUR OWN
FUCKING
CHILDREN
zlatko@programming.dev 14 hours ago
It’s not Australia saying it, it’s a specific person, though.
CameronDev@programming.dev 14 hours ago
Who is american…
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
Does she even know what she is talking about? Steam isn’t allowed to be used and registered by childs (note, “Subscriber” in this context means Steam user account): store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/
You may not become a Subscriber if you are under the age of 13. Steam is not intended for children under 13 and Valve will not knowingly collect personal information from children under the age of 13. Additional age restrictions may apply in your country.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
Oh it just occurred to me why Minecraft and Roblox aren’t on Steam (besides the 30% price cut). They can’t, because the games allow children to login and play, while this is not allowed in Steam.
caseofthematts@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
For anyone that doesn’t know, currently because of stuff like this, people in Australia can’t even access their Steam games that they’ve already bought unless they have a credit card, which I’ve learned most people over there don’t. Valve isn’t allowing the third-party ‘steal your data’ options like face scan and government ID, so Australian folk without a CC are out of luck.
Australians, please fight back against these anyi-privacy laws. If these are successful, they’ll come to other countries.
IEatDaFeesh@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
This is being said in a world where parents just give their kids tablets so they can keep quiet/busy. IMO the real danger is kids having “smart” tech at a young age. I almost think it’s borderline child abuse to get them hooked on tech that early on.
fonix232@fedia.io 4 hours ago
I fully concur that the onus is on the parents first, not the platforms.
However I also think that there should be proper tools made available for parents to simplify managing what their kids can access.
No, not the Orwellian surveillance crap most politicians try to push. Those don't help.
But having a proper parental control system that has pre-made filters and is straightforward to use would get us ahead quite a lot.
About ten years ago I had to be the "parent" for my youngest brother on a number of platforms because our parents speak no English and parental controls were all... only in English.
Just last year I did the same for my nieces. And let me tell you... in ten years there was exactly zero progress made in parental control systems at Google, Microsoft and Apple. No ways to make it easier to control what your kids can access, no improvements in UX, it's still a hidden, tucked away, third or fourth thought menu.
Maybe start focusing on that instead of trying to use your incompetence to strongarm governments into handing you even more data? Just an idea.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 5 hours ago
In my age it was the TV. So not really much changed. We had this discussions decades ago.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Yeah but research shows that even TV isn’t great for young kids. Especially if it isn’t supervised and time limited.
Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 14 hours ago
Bet these are the same people that put the pressure on the porn games a bit ago
Zahille7@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
From what I remember, I believe it was an Australian “moms group” that pulled that stunt.
ChocolateFrostedSugarBombs@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Collective Shout.
Fucking cunts and the payment processors that went along with their bullshit.
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
I gotta be honest, I understand this position. I have a real difficult kid. We’re working on building trust, but it’s a process. The fact of the matter is that he seeks out inappropriate content and he can’t seem to help himself, just too impulsive.
There’s a reason for these behaviors, and like I said, we’re working on it. But in the mean time, we’ve had to completely lock down all technology in the house. And most of it is complete garbage when it comes to parental controls. Stay away from Roku for instance, that device is fucking horrible, just the worst.
Anyway, the thing is, sometimes parental controls are in fact necessary, but as long as they exist, things are fine. Steam for instance has a great system, you can control what aspects of steam a kid has access to, multiplayer functionality, the store, online content, etc. a all that can be switched on or off. And for games you can use their general rating system (which is imperfect) or you can manually whitelist individual games. Finally, you can lock it all behind a simple pin code. Honestly, this is how all such platforms should work, it’s manageable.
I don’t think there’s really any legitimate reason to complain about the systems steam currently has in place.
Roblox on the other hand… That’s a shitshow. We don’t touch Roblox.
Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus 4 hours ago
These people are NOT talking about parental control, they are talking about taking control over what children have access to regardless of what specific parents think. If your child were less impulsive, as most children are, you wouldn’t have to be that restrictive - some common sense rules and limits would probably suffice, and these things are important to both build trust and develop responsibility in most children.
But they want to do the same with children online as they did with public spaces starting decades ago - taking away the possibility of experiencing the world on their own terms in adequate environments for those children who are capable of it. They are already taking away their communication channels on a large scale in addition to deanonymizing their citizens on the internet, and now they are still pushing for more.
The parental controls on Steam are absolutely fine, and there’s even the possibility of setting the account into offline mode or needing approval for every single login on the parents phone if they want to. Roblox… is a completely different can of worms, and i would never allow my child a roblox account, because normalizing what is going on there is a very bad idea.
Don’t let yourself get fooled. They want to decide how much you can trust your children, regardless of how good a parent you are or how well behaved you child is.
spacegoat@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Australia is pathetic when it comes to freedom of speech. The media censorship is outrageous, meanwhile the far right has captured journalism
Baggie@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
I was going to argue but actually yeah that’s about right. That’s a real shame.
spacegoat@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
You have my sympathies. My country is worse, I’m sure.
carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
they’re not wrong, but cutting kids from the internet will do nothing to prevent their abuse, quite the contrary, because it will force kids to be even more dependent on the people who are most statistically likely to abuse them…
I_Jedi@lemmy.today 11 hours ago
Agreed! The solution is so very simple. All Australia needs to do is assign one jack booted thug to each child in the country, with orders to hold the kid’s head underwater for a few seconds if the thug thinks the kid is visiting Steam or Roblox. If the parents object, hold their heads underwater too. As a bonus, the kids will learn to fear opposing the Australian government. It couldn’t be easier.
OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
They want the government to raise their children. Not parents. Goodness me, that would be silly.
chunes@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
I bet she used the internet as a girl when it was 100x less ‘safe.’
Now wants to pull the ladder up behind her.
Beacon@fedia.io 12 hours ago
Look at her picture, based on her apparent age i doubt that's correct
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 5 hours ago
The article also says:
After graduating from university in the early 1990s
Yeah. Out of touch old person not getting how important the Internet is for young people and their happiness and social development. Can we get people like that out of positions of power finally please?
Murse@slrpnk.net 11 hours ago
…well if we’re going to legislate something out of gaming ‘fOr tHe kIDs’ let’s start with the slot machine bullshit and other gambling mechanics seem in things like loot boxes.
At the very least, the presence of that stuff should be an automatic Adult rating. With less predatory (but still predatory) things like subscriptions being rated as Mature.
Guessing that’s not what the dickhead in the article is talking about, but I’m not gonna bother reading another rant from some pearl-clutching cunt imagining a bunch of fake problems caused by video games.
badgermurphy@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
I fear this may be some of the same thinking that got us mandates for manufacturers to put warnings not to suffocate yourself on plastic bags.
Chozo@fedia.io 12 hours ago
I mean, child mortality from plastic bag suffocation dropped after they started printing those warnings so I'm not sure why that'd be something to fear.
badgermurphy@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I hope, for the sake of our species, that the statistic you’re citing was a spurious correlation. It’s just this side of “water is wet”.
ms_lane@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Yankee go home.
the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 38 minutes ago
People will do anything these days to avoid actually parenting.