A couple of days ago, Bloomberg reported:

UK Plans Talks With Big Tech to Limit Online Harm for Teens

The proposed voluntary charter may involve tech firms agreeing to alert parents when their children are repeatedly looking up disturbing content, they said […] Government officials are concerned that the technology firms … will oppose the idea of a voluntary agreement, and plan talks with them as soon as this week. Some have already expressed resistance to the proposal, one official said. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-15/uk-plans-talks-with-big-tech-to-limit-online-harm-for-teens

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I’m a parent and it’s right the platforms should oppose this: aside from placing a burden to snoop on user activity and classify it as disturbing or not, such a feature:

1. …can trivially be repurposed to offer political censorship, and
2. …drives actually-vulnerable teenagers underground, where their parents cannot see them, and
3. …the consequence of (2) being that there will be further demands for the tracking and attribution of all online activity (in case it is a child) and the consequent end of the open web

I want my kid to be able to use the internet privately and without oversight, and I’ll be teaching her how to do that; but to do that the Internet has to not know who she is when she’s using it. Until she’s old enough to use it on her own, the burden of her safety is on her parents, not on Apple, Google or Meta.