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Toys Privacy

Should Parents Shun Toys That Track Their Kids? (cbsnews.com) 191

Posted by EditorDavid from the knowing-when-you're-awake dept.
An anonymous reader quotes CBS News: Parents are realizing that it's not just Santa who's keeping tabs on their kids. Many popular high-tech gadgets that may end up being given as holiday presents can actually track, monitor and record children. Because of that, there are some gifts Felicity and Alden Eute won't have under their Christmas tree. Their mother, Emily, has banned all tech gifts this season. "My husband and I both agree kids don't really need to be on technology or on social media," Emily said. "None of these extra gadgets that just expose you to things kids shouldn't be exposed to at their age."

While federal law requires a parent's permission to track and collect data on children under 13, a Federal Trade Commission complaint filed this week alleges widespread violations through apps that "send persistent identifiers to third parties without giving direct notice to parents." That means things like location data, phone numbers and contact information could be exposed, according to Serge Engleman of the International Computer Science Institute. The institute's surveillance system, under the direction of Engleman, collected evidence that is now before the Federal Trade Commission.... It's not only apps where there are potential violations. "Any kind of interconnected robot-type toys...interactive games that you may play online are collecting data," said Scott Pink, a privacy and cybersecurity specialist.
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Should Parents Shun Toys That Track Their Kids? More

Should Parents Shun Toys That Track Their Kids?

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  • Depends on your values. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @03:42AM (#57848486)

    If you think it's okay for a soulless corporation to have as much information as possible about your child (which they will sell and exploit to the fullest extent) then go ahead and buy them the spy toys. If you think this is abhorrent behavior that should not be supported in any way shape or form then you should not only shun them but condemn them and ensure your friends and relatives understand the problems with these toys.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by inking ( 2869053 )
      You must be one of those really popular people at family gatherings. One can already feel the condescending, self-righteous glance seeping through the letters of your post. It is that IT guy who uses DuckDuckGo and must absolutely tell everyone with a broken power supply why they should stop using Google, whether they asked for advice or not.
      • You know I thought you were okay then you turn around and chastise someone for sharing their opinion that might just inform someone who has been so thoroughly indoctrinated by nosy corporations and nosy governments that they aren't even thinking about whether their privacy is being invaded. Of course people aren't going to ask about things like this because if they can ask the question themselves then they're going to have the answer themselves without anyone elses' help, so when we talk about things like t

      • "Nice" people make the best followers, the best apologists for evil. The average Nazi was "nice" and popular at parties. You know who wasn't "nice" and who was shunned and hated? People like Stauffenberg and Sophie Scholl, who dared speak the truth.

        Get over yourself -- better to be "that guy" at a family gathering than to remain silent in the face of evil.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        OK, how about this. Consider your children as adults, do you think they will be happy that their entire life from birth to their current adult age, has been monitored and analysed and they have been subject to targeted manipulative advertising and many corporations know exactly how to manipulate them. As adults knowing their deepest fears will have been exposed to corporate manipulations, the most vulnerable psychological weakness spread open to be raped by corporate greed. Seriously what kind of individual

    • Re:Depends on your values. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @06:38AM (#57848714)

      Part of the problem is these spying toys, offer so many features because they are spying. Alexa knows your voice and your buying habits, Netflix can make good suggestions. The more information you give it the better you are at.

      Guys like us to try to keep private, we need to suffer via bad suggestions and annoying adds. For some reason YouTube thinks I am a die hard republican. And keeps on showing me adds to support hurting and excluding people, because now that seems to be the popular republican thing

      • Re:Depends on your values. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @07:37AM (#57848836) Journal
        Trust me, the "targeted" ads are not a whole lot better.

        I'm not against such information being collected per se, if it benefits me directly. That most certainly doesn't include better ads, but things like better suggestions from Netflix and Siri or Alexa understanding me and perhaps anticipating some of my habits. That's all fine. What I do have issues with:
        - How that information is being used for other purposes (ads)
        - To whom that information is being sold
        - How well that information is protected
        - What laws are in place to safeguard against misuse, and what penalties apply

        The problem with many companies who are after my data is not that they collect the data, or that they might be tempted to misuse it. If they say they collect the data for benign purpose X, and the law says they can't use it for anything else or the CEO ends up in prison, then I am willing to extend some trust towards their good intentions. But there are no such laws and no such promises, and for most companies, abusing my data is the core of their business model.

        • Trust me, the "targeted" ads are not a whole lot better.

          Indeed. Targeted ads are horrible.

          Regards
          Your local penis enlargement company.
          Why punch the monkey when you can spank the big one instead.

        • RE: 'Targeted ads':
          As anyone who reads the news daily can now see, so-called 'targeted ads' could just be 'targeting' you for purposes of trying to subvert you or even radicalize you, and the way things are structured, there's no way of telling for sure anymore what the true source of any advertising actually is. Therefore it is my contention that ALL 'targeted ads' should be considered bad and avoided at all costs.
          • Much of advertising is trying to subvert your better judgement of keeping your precious dollars in your pocket and radicalize you into a rabid fanboy showing off your new fashion accessory/tech toy/luxury car to all of your friends. The problem is that targeted advertising works so much better than the age range & gender categories of yesterday.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dcw3 ( 649211 )

            The targeted ads are bad enough without the hyperbole of "subvert" and "radicalize". Use of that kind of language needs evidence of such extremes.

      • Ads are always annoying, whether you allowed tracking or not.
      • If someone I know asked my advice on the subject, I'd tell them "If you must have these 'personal assistant' devices in your house for whatever reasons, unplug them when you're not actively using them, don't leave them turned on 24 hours a day, because they do listen to everything, and no one can guarantee the microphone 'mute' button actually means it's not listening at all anymore." But I'd also recommend they not buy them in the first place.
        • Have a 2-way switch feeding the microphone. Either feed it ambient sound when you actually need it, or feed it a loop of a pr0n audio track. OH! ALEXA! HARDER! YESSSSSSS! SIRI! WOW! HARDER!

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Sure, but we're adults. We have the ability to find out what's up and decide if the trade-off works for us or not (but note how often corporations deny how much data they collect because they suspect we would object). Kids aren't there yet. Many think when they tall their doll a secret, she keeps it. That was true for for all previous generations, dolls didn't betray trust, ever.

        So much so that dolls that betray are a significant sub-genre of horror.

    • Perhaps the information collected on children isn't of much interest or value to their parents. If something has no value to you personally then what do you care if someone "exploits" it?

      I do think it's problematic that there is little to no disclosure on these tracking schemes, what is done with the date, who it is sold to, or how to get your data permanently removed from the data set. Consumers are unable to make an informed choice right now because of a totally unregulated market for data collection.

      Fina

      • Perhaps the information collected on children isn't of much interest or value to their parents. If something has no value to you personally then what do you care if someone "exploits" it?

        Well, I'm not a sociopath and I wouldn't want it to happen to me, so yeah, I care.

      • Do you have children? If you don't then perhaps you don't have the perspective to understand the mindset of a parent. I don't have children but I understand why they'd feel this way: anyone spying on your kids, whether in person or remotely, is automatically a threat to them in some way, and you can say that's paranoia all you like but it's a parents' right to control access to their children. 'Molestation' can take many forms.

    • Well, thank you for the pathos, but besides the function you described do not forget the function written on the box.

      Of all the things that spy on you the thing where spying actually does some good is certainly not the worst

      • do not forget the function written on the box.

        It's irrelevant because it's merely a toy. There are lots of toys that don't spy on you.

        Of all the things that spy on you

        Unlike many, I do not subscribe to the idea that things that spy on you are a good even if they do nice things. I'm not dumb enough to own a smartphone or use social media. I aggressively disable all the bullshit that advertisers use to spy and while I may not stop everything, I'm no longer interesting to them with so little data.

        • Actually, when I wrote my comment, I did not realize we are not talking about special toys that spy on kids for parents to make sure kids are saved.

          They are just plain vanilla creepy spy toys for kids.

  • I even read TFA (Score:2, Informative)

    by Harlequin80 ( 1671040 )

    and there is not one actual example. Not one.

    I mean, fear mongering is fine. But seriously could you not find even ONE example of the abuse of privacy for a kids tech toy?!?!?!?!?! FFS.

    Pick up your game click bait shite.

    • Re:I even read TFA (Score:5, Informative)

      by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @03:50AM (#57848502)

      I do not know of any direct physical toys either, but there are plenty of phone apps geared quite clearly at children, that do extensive tracking and advertising.

      As a blanket that also includes this latter category, I would whole heartedly assert that "Yes, parents should snub such things." with an additional "People in GENERAL should snub such things."

      So, that fitness tracker? Yeah... You shouldn't use that. There is no justifiable reason for it to report your use data to some mothership. The exact same functionality (to the end user) could be accomplished by the device logging GPS pings, then that data being given to and parsed by an offline application, which then reconstructs the jogging path. The potential perk of "I dont have to worry about data backup!" of this "clearly critical" /s data is not suitably wondrous as to make it trump the major bad of advertisers knowing where you jog, how often, and what stores you pass every day.

      Similar story with nearly all such "Oh yes, our tracking is 'essential' to the function of the device!" bullshit devices. As such, people should shun the ones that report to a mothership.

      Of course, that will never happen, because in the real world convenience is king. (doubly so to idiots that refuse to learn better.)

      • Fitness tracked I can get. As it could potentially impact future insurance or medical aspects.

        Apps on a phone that report clicks or usage time to better target ads. They get a pretty big meh from me. My kids have no purchasing power, and they nag me to buy them shit constantly. So a change in what shit they are nagging me for is a pretty nominal outcome tbh.

      • I do not know of any direct physical toys either

        We've covered this topic on Slashdot before. We've talked about the Furby Connect, the Toy-Fi Teddy, on separate articles we covered the German government warning about My Friend Cayla wifi connected doll.

         

      • Depends on the tracker. There are some lower-end devices that work strictly locally -- they talk to an app on your phone (if that) but don't require creating an account for them to work. They even work WITHOUT a phone in some cases. They're basically pedometer/watches.

    • Re:I even read TFA (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @03:56AM (#57848510)

      I mean, fear mongering is fine. But seriously could you not find even ONE example of the abuse of privacy for a kids tech toy?

      That's the problem with big data: the threat is so massive and so diffuse that it's both very hard to find clear-cut evidence for it, and it's often too big to believe.

      With "localized" dangers, it's simple: for example the pervert neighbor watching your child with a pair of binoculars. Easy problem to identify. Catch the perv in the act, problem solved.

      With surveillance IoT toys, it's a lot harder to identify the problem. The toy maker could be building a database on your child's habits and behaviors in good faith. But what tells you they won't sell it to Facebook who'll get to "open a file" on your kid early? If the toymaker's database gets stolen and sold on the dark net, pervs can buy it and use it. And gee, do you want even a benevolent company virtually living with your child?

      The problem is, there hasn't been a clear-cut crime committed. If there was, you can't tell because database owners are totally opaque and unaccountable. How do you do about proving something illegal is, or will be going on?

      You only get to see the effects of corporate surveillance in the news when it goes spectacularly wrong. But in reality, it goes on all the time and there's nothing you or the law can do about it.

      • Re:I even read TFA (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @04:02AM (#57848516)

        Agreed, which is why the consumer is the one on the line, as the one and only line of defense.

        If the device communicates with a mothership, you should not use, nor buy it.

        I would go on a limb, and say 90% (or more) of the use cases for IoT devices, DO NOT actually require a mothership; The user's home computer, with a local app, with local map data, would be MORE than sufficient to handle whatever "connected" services the satellite device offers. (Fitness trackers, etc.)

        The reason the use a mothership for the communication is because a big corporation finds that data use^^ I mean PROFITABLE.

        Remember when people were horrified at the idea of giving corporations personal information? I do. I want those days back.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

          "If the device communicates with a mothership, you should not use, nor buy it."

          What does this mean for G-suite for Education?

          • It means that the chromebooks should not talk to Google, and should be managed completely offline by the management suite installed by the school's IT coordinator, on the IT Coordinator's designated hardware.

            While technically true that such a dedicated machine is in fact a mothership, it is not an internet facing mothership with serious privacy risks associated with that. It is something that parents have some measure of direct control over, and has significantly more oversight. The data the machine conta

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by inking ( 2869053 )
          Or, you know, because collecting data actually allows you to improve the service. Do you even for a minute think that Google’s search would be anywhere even near as good as it is now if they didn’t collect data for the past twenty years? The same thing is happening with (home) assistants now, which are kind of the center piece of IoT. You need usage data to make those things better.

          • That's what customer surveys, with OPT-IN is for.

            What you really mean, is that those services would be significantly less accessible for vertical integration, and thus far less lucrative, without the NO CHOICE collection.

            But you already knew that before you wrote anything. Didn't you? :P

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by inking ( 2869053 )
              What do you mean less lucrative? They are all equally lucrative, because it is an even playing field. You could very easily start playing the privacy game and be “more lucrative” by gathering less information. Apple has been doing this very thing since the FBI investigation. Let’s see how well that works out for them in the long term.

              Can we be a little more precise when it comes to how these businesses are generating so much money—they aren’t, they are actually shit in a dre

              • There are significant reasons for item 1.

                Namely, IPv4 is exhausted, and nearly everyone lives behind NAT, which prevents immediate 2-way communication. (needs to have a stateful connection created from inside a network) The only people that can realistically afford a direct, uninhibited connection on the IP4-bone are corporations. Hence, motherships for things that in the past, really did not need them.

                Adoption of IPv6 will negate this issue entirely, when combined with sane IP stack software, and quality

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by inking ( 2869053 )
                  You are fooling yourself if you think that end users want to control any kind of server. How many people do you think even know what a server is? Joe Doe wants things that do things and do them easily. That’s it.

                  • You are fooling yourself if you think the server component cannot also be a discrete device.

                    "This plugs into your router--- This amazing device is now able to do its thing! Like MAGIC!"

                    Simply because it happens to just be a dumb server with its own hardware to do server side things, does not mean it has to be "WOOOO!! SO TECHNICAL AND DENSE ONLY A CHESSCLUB NERD COULD DO IT!" in how to set it up.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by inking ( 2869053 )
                      That’s amazing that you think so, but I am yet to see a popular product that actually has the characteristics you are describing. I guess everybody, including yourself, just hates money and doesn’t want to ship one.

                    • AGAIN, because you seem to be an idiot.

                      1) There are significant technological barriers at the moment, because IPv6 adoption is low. This inhibits the ability of such devices to function.

                      2) Adoption of IPv6 will fix this problem, and allow the devices to be deployed in exactly that manner.

                      If you want an example of an attempt at such a product-- How about a Western Digital MyCloud NAS?

                      It's a consumer grade device, that claims to be able to give you a personal cloud storage platform, on a consumer grade price

              • As for what I mean by "Less Lucrative", you know exactly what I mean, so dont play coy.

                There is significant value in sample size, because sample size increases confidence of a statistical sample being demonstrative of a demographic that is being targeted. Advertisers are VERY aware of that. They *DO* in fact, "Care" about the sample size, and thus DO care that there is a difference between "mandatory collection" and "voluntary collection."

                The former is more predictive than the latter, and thus of greater

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by inking ( 2869053 )
                  No, I do not understand what you mean by “lucrative” and you are still not making a lot of sense.

                  Lucrative means that someone is making money. To make money through IoT, they need to deliver products to the end users (even if they do so for free and live off ad revenue). The company that offers a more appealing product ships more products than its competitors. Thus, if shipping products that are collecting data is more lucrative than shipping products that do not collect data—according

                  • Re:I even read TFA (Score:4)

                    by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @08:48AM (#57849012)

                    You are being obtuse, so I will spell it out for you in very simple terms.

                    An advertiser is interested in getting money from retailers, who wish to sell a product.

                    They offer a service to those retailers: "Hey, we know about your customers, and can help them to know about (pssst-- no really, we know how to kajole them into buying!) your product, so that you do more business! For a nominal monthly fee, we take care of it for you!"

                    The retailers, of course, do not want to spend money they do not have to. They want the most return for their dollar spent, so they go for the advertising firm that is best able to translate dollars spent into positive dollar increase in sales.

                    The retailer, thus-- has a natural motivation to maximize the predictive qualities of the data they collect/obtain. The more predictive, (and the less they have to pay for access to that data), the more money it makes them, because their service is more valuable to the retailers.

                    Like the retailer, the advertiser is very picky about whom they purchase or obtain their data from. Paying to get the data they need to make predictions about consumer spending, so that they best can target them for their client's products, is a cost center for them. They want to get the best possible data, at the lowest possible price. They themselves are a business. They want to make profit too. These people are already masters of statistics and statistical analysis. It is kinda "their fucking job" to be experts in that. As such, they are VERY much aware of how sample size, and bias in collection affect the predictive qualities of the data they seek to obtain.

                    An average site operator, or IoT creator, necessarily creates and stores data about their users. Advertisers are interested in that data, because more data points that can be cross-referenced create useful inferences. (This is what "big data" really is. Knowledge of when you go to the loo, can have predictive effects in otherwise seemingly unrelated activities, such as who you will vote for, what kind of meal you like to consume, or even what you like to watch on TV. Having access to *ALL* of that data, to look for associations, is how big data works. Advertisers know this. This is why they want that data.)

                    The IoT company may or may not be itself an advertiser. (GOOGLE!!)

                    The IoT company often operates on a shoestring, as you state. As such, they are looking for additional ways to make income. Advertisers say "Oh, that's some interesting data you have there. Would you be interested in... Selling it to us?"

                    The kind of data collection that the IoT company collects (Voluntary vs Mandatory-- Selective vs Comprehensive, et al) determines the value of that data to advertisers, and thus dictates the market value of that data-- EG, how much *more* money the operator of the service for that IoT device COULD be making, by partnering with an advertiser.

                    Thus-- "More lucrative."

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by inking ( 2869053 )
                      Oh boy, I think you are a lost cost. If a company operates on a shoestring and finds a way to make additional income, thus increasing their margin, other companies copy that behavior and reduce the price until it reaches it minimum sustainable value. At this point it stops being lucrative. Effectively the customer is choosing this product over others because it offers him more (value proposition and functionality) for less (data collection). This is the reason why people use free webmail instead of some pai
          • Of course, you have a point in saying that collecting data allows for service improvement. However, the example you chose is pellicular. Do you really think that Google search results have improved so much in the last 20 years ? Personally, I do not. Granted, the web is a much bigger place now than it was 20 years ago, and with the way social networks are linked today, the old pagerank algorithm would not be as effective now as it was. Nevertheless, the collection of a aweful lot of data seems to be require

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            YES. Google has not improved the results that it returns to my searches over the past decade, so the collection of data hasn't helped. (Actually, Alta-Vista did as good a search, often better, but was a bit more of a pain to use.)

        • If the device communicates with a mothership, you should not use, nor buy it.

          That kind of blanket statement is nothing more than an advertisement for an armish community at this point. I guess I'm going to have to move. oh wait my car connects to the mothership too. Damn!

      • My thought is you always need to show me how that data is can be used in a manner that causes risk or harm.

        One reply above talked about a fitness tracked for a kid. If that data was sold to an insurance company and that then affected an individuals premium then I can absolutely see an issue.

        Or if there was an app that would upload photos to a general database, timestamped and with a location.

        But I am trying to understand how a physical toy, which is what the article referred to, that might potentially repo

        • Re:I even read TFA (Score:4, Interesting)

          by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @04:50AM (#57848568)

          I take the pessimist view;

          If the company does not have a truly legitimate* (as in, the operation of the device cannot be accomplish reasonably in any other fashion) reason to collect the data, they should not collect it.

          Again, say a fitness tracker. This thing just needs lots of inexpensive, slow ram inside it. It just needs to log accelerometer and GPS data over time. It can store this internally in whatever encoded form it wants. It has no real need to be in constant contact with the internet. (Dont try to tell me that a complex bit of SoC like an antenna is inexpensive, compared with very slow, mass produced RAM chips.) It can communicate over a wired USB port (which is likely to be there for charging anyway), and deliver its data to an offline only application. At no point in the device's operation is it unavoidably necessary to communicate with the internet. As such, I feel such devices SHOULD NOT communicate with the internet.

          By that line of reasoning, nearly everything that is IoT, should not actually BE "IoT". I am perfectly fine with that pronouncement.

          • Maybe.

            But I'll be honest and that sounds like a massive pain in the ass.

            I don't wear a watch / fitness tracker anyway, so it's a bit irrelevant. But my wife has one of the garmin watches and if it had to be plugged in to download data it would be instant game over. Perhaps time will show me that I'm the fool, but I don't care that her heart rate, gps position or whatever else is available to garmin. I feel that the risk of someone stalking her or trying to do her harm via that data is such a small risk a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        It's not even that simple. Companies go bankrupt all the time, and when they do their assets get sold off, regardless of whether or not they promised to keep them secret, and how honorably they intended to keep that promise.

    • I mean, fear mongering is fine. But seriously could you not find even ONE example of the abuse of privacy for a kids tech toy?!?!?!?!?! FFS.

      Is it really fear mongering if something is already known? This topic has come up on Slashdot several times with several separate articles. Examples: Furby Connect, Toy-Fi Teddy, and My Friend Cayla (the latter of which had it's own article due to the German government issuing an advisory on the poor security of its connected features allowing ANYONE to track your children).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I can't give any examples either, but there've been several stories about this over the past year. Also prior to that, though less commonly. E.g., a Barbie doll that sent ongoing conversations to a central location, where who knows what actually happened to the data. (The claim is it wasn't processed outside of feeding back conversation fragments. But who knows. And even if that's all the company did with it, it was transmitted unencrypted over the internet [though I'm assuming in a preprocessed and co

  • Toys? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by aglider ( 2435074 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @04:13AM (#57848534) Homepage

    If it's your kid to play with it, then it's a "toy".
    If it's it can play with your kids (and your family), then it's not.

    A computer (or a smatphone) disguised as a toy with full networking ISN'T A TOY!
    It's a computer on the internet with microphones, cameras, GPS, wifi ... you name it.

    Go buy dolls, Lego bricks, books (from dead trees), card games and the likes.
    Your kids won't feel "different from the others".
    It's you that who thinks you kids could feel different.
    They are kids, they need real friends, runs and scraped knees.

  • Yes, There is more than enough snooping going on already

  • How about just buy proper toys? (Score:3)

    by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @06:46AM (#57848726)
    If the toy can do anything as sophisticated as tracking people, then it is not a toy. Give the kid something that will actually stimulate their minds instead of yet another over-hyped, pre-built, can't-take-apart boring piece of crap.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      If the toy can do anything as sophisticated as tracking people, then it is not a toy. Give the kid something that will actually stimulate their minds instead of yet another over-hyped, pre-built, can't-take-apart boring piece of crap.

      Or there's plenty of "offline" toys that don't need batteries or screens or network access or anything. Though batteries aren't specifically excluded since some great toys use them.

      I got my friend's kids stuff that is useful and lacks a screen - books, board games, regular toys

    • If the toy can do anything as sophisticated as tracking people, then it is not a toy.

      I agree. Personally I use My Friend Cayla doll as a manual labourer to fix odd things around the house.

  • Any other questions?

  • These toys are perfect (Score:5, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday December 23, 2018 @08:39AM (#57848990)

    They prepare children early for the upcoming and partially already established surveillance society where the only privacy you have is in your head. Well, until they crack that, they are already hard at work on it. The earlier the kids learn that privacy, freedom, individuality and such things are a historic aberration that does not and cannot last and that they need to hide who they are at all times, the better their chances in life.

    Yes, this new wave of upcoming authoritarianism and fascism is utterly horrible but so many completely stupid people are cheering it onward that it very likely cannot be stopped. Just as before when such catastrophes happened.

  • ... when I was a kid. Should parents shun toys that glorify the military or violence, like GI-Joe, or gun toys (even nerf guns)? Should parents buy toys that reinforce gender stereotypes? Should parents shun overhyped toys for their kids just because their kids say that everyone else has one or is going to get one?

    The answer is always the same: It's up to the parent, and regardless of what you may think of them for that decision, it's still their right, until the kid is old enough to be making his

  • The research shows that children should spend more time with other children being properly socialized and less time paying attention to technology and I for one wholeheartedly agree with that. We seem to have more and more 'awkward penguins' in the world who end up as adults with 'social anxiety' problems and are 'socially avoidant', prefering to stare at a screen instead of seeking out the companionship of other people. So-called 'social media' is not a substitute for being 'actually social'; texting someo

  • The question should be:

    Should anyone be allowed to incorporate tracking / metrics hardware into devices of any kind without full disclosure that is not buried under fifty pages of legalese ?

    The answer is no.

  • ..buy those gadgets exactly _because_ of that feature.
    They _want_ to spy on their kids.

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