May I suggest...
That we extend this right to adults too ?
Ministers have backed a campaign designed to give young people greater deletion rights over the stupid content they generate as youngsters. The campaign wants to give younglings under the age of 18 the right to fully remove data and content they have created due to "errors of judgment, unhappy experiences and attitudes that …
I probably agree with you, but what right is that? The way I read the iRights bulletin is that we should help young people to see the net with a wider perspective and help them disengage when they get too involved. I would hope that parents and those interacting with young people already take on that kind of mentoring. It seems the iRights folk are suggesting that developers play a role in that. I agree.
"That we extend this right to adults too ?"
Why? If you don't want something online don't put it there in the first place. Changed your mind after the fact? Tough, deal. Pissed at the time you did it? Even tougher. Consider it a life lesson. Kids can be excused their naivity and foolishness and be given a bit of leeway because thats what kids are like, adults can't and shouldn't. If you're old enough to vote you're old enough to suffer the consequences of your actions.
"Vulture Central's backroom gremlins invite Reg readers to try and decipher the iRights website"
I can't be bothered to find my 'Bollocks-to-English Dictionary', but here's a rough translation:-
Blah blah marketing-speak-bollocks mutter mutter patronising-alliterated-emptitudes murmur murmur this-sentence-means-absolutely-nothing blah blah brainless-twitterings-of-a-civil-service-fuckwit etc. etc...
And I'm sure it's a total coincidence that this minsterial iRights campaign was started shortly after the election of a new Baby of the House of Commons (not mentioning any names but the Right Honorable Member's name rhymes with crack) who has been frantically purging their rather embarassing tw@tter history of any references to Tennants Extra, pizza, maths being shite and Smirnoff being the drink of gods.
Didn't send the needle on my cynicism meter swinging wildly at all, no siree...
Plenty of kids lie about their age to use social media - will it only be people in Twitter's/Facebook's/Whatever's databases who were listed as <18 at the time of the now-regretted career-threatening idiocy who get the big red delete button?
Can I claim to have been <18 even though I put a DOB of 01/01/1900 in their form?
Seriously - make people learn the internet is in pen - either the kids will learn to keep a lid on it, or a dubious internet history will become so common that no-one cares.
<joke>Maybe people could even stand by their past actions and defend them (or admit all and ask for forgiveness).</joke>
So will this right to delete embarrassing pics/comments erase the unfortunate consequences if not done before the authorities come looking for them at 6 or 9.am. due to over-diligence or unfortunate error/oversight due to lack-of-funding/training / terrorist alert / zero tolerance etc....
Preferably within minutes of them posting anything
I know the yoots are all over the interwebs with no parental supervision but I've never thought this was a good thing - letting your kids roam the streets willy nilly is something most parents wouldn't want to do, never understood why the Internet was any different.
Whereas the ones of the England Football Team saluting Hitler on the orders of the Foreign Office will remain...?
So, basically it is being suggested that kids are given a rule saying they can troll/hate/abuse online all they like and not worry about the repercussions? Can't see that going wrong. Glad government is looking after this one and not, say, parents.
(Also, did I see something about 'a right to be forgotten' a little while back? Does that cover this?)
'Glad government is looking after this one and not, say, parents'
Indeed. Seem to recall reading an article a while back about how internet industry leaders (can't recall who but think it was US) let their kids use the Internet. Basically they didn't.
These were the leaders of companies that encourage everyone to spill their guts on social platforms, attitudes to letting their own kids do the same thing were quite telling.
"Vulture Central's backroom gremlins invite Reg readers to try and decipher the iRights website"
Original Text:
"It must be right that the commercial considerations used in designing software should be balanced against the needs and requirements of children and young people to engage and disengage during a developmentally sensitive period of their lives. It must also be right that safety software does not needlessly restrict access to the internet’s creative potential."
Translation:
Wot it is, right, is that them big companies wot write the web should be told to give a shit about us wot wants to read it all, right, and they should back off and let us get on wiv it, right, and anuvver fing, they shouldn't oughta be allowed to block stuff we want to look at, right?
Yes, think of the kids and be responsible parents. Don't let social media become this generation's version of the babysitter (that TV was to the last). How about actually making your child wait until he or she is adequately mature to understand the ramifications of online social rants? Parenting - what a unique and unheard of function these days.
My kid had free reign to the Internet. In the family living quarters, not in private ... at least not until she went off to Uni. When she ran across "icky stuff" (her words, not mine), we discussed it. Her daughter (pre kindergarden) will be raised the same way, or so she says ... Growing up in a barn helps, IMNERHO ;-)
Why parents provide unsupervised access for their kids to access the tawdry underbelly of the entire planet is beyond me ... In my day, parents parented.
If your daughter has a child she is older than the current generation where social media is everything, and it was probably easier to monitor her internet access. Even better if she was your only one.
While I agree on the point about parents parenting generally, it's easier said than done. If they are at home you can check up on them, although looking over their shoulder the whole time is impossible. And do you prevent a 13-year old having a smart phone when "everyone has one" and all phones are smart anyway? Do you police their internet access when out with friends?
It has to rely on education and trust, but kids make mistakes, follow the wrong crowd, etc.
Having said that, this new proposal is just silly. I think they must believe that there is some body somewhere who can control what is "on the internet".
@ David Nash: you are right about education and trust and that is the key part of parental responsibility in this. It is probably too late to shut the gate to underage access to the various technology. Perhaps a better solution would be to only allow children to have any social media accounts with full parental details being provided? That would allow parental oversight and provide some deterrent to cyber bullying, at least in the cases where parents aren't f'ing kidults who support their offspring's bad behaviour without question and encourage/exemplify bad behaviour.
"Kids should be allowed to run around and shout and scream and scribble on the walls without any supervision from their parents and then get off scot free and not have to take responsibility for what they've done or the mess they've left behind them."
FTFY.
You really think Facebook, Twitter and all that lot really want kids removing all that juicy data they've posted? You're dreaming!
With the Internet, as most of us know it, now roughly 25 years old ( yes I know, DARPA, etc, more like 60 but I'm think Joe Public's perception here ) the marketing men are are on the cusp of cradle-to-grave tracking of a person's online life. Most of the young adults the 18-30 crowd have never known a world without some form of online services and they've been steadily dumping their persona all over the net since they could sit upright and push buttons. That cradle-to-grave data is worth megabucks to the ad men and marketers, and especially those who make a killing selling you as the product, the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Googles of this world. They're not going to let go of it without a fight.
"I thought only terrorists had something to hide ?"
Hi, Tom. Might I point out that you don't have a plate glass exterior wall in your shower, and you do have drapes in your living room & bedroom? Hopefully there is a door between the toilet and the rest of your house. Privacy isn't always covering something illegal.
If your "defence" for your actions is "I was an idiot and spoke without checking if I knew what I was talking about and acted without thinking of the consequences", I am going to judge you as an idiot who speaks and acts without thinking, and I am not going to assume that what you are telling me today is any better researched than the previous nonsense you admit you were making up. It's called a reputation.
I "grew up on the internet" when it was full of professionals and academics before facebook and such. If I made a fool of myself I was respectfully mocked and took note to do my research before "acting like an expert" so I would say something more intelligent next time.
I have scrapped my "teenage identity", however if someone did find my old activities I am happy to defend anything I said. The way I said some things might come across as immature, however I can explain that the nature of the interactions and the way the person was treating me lead to an emotional reaction and can generally point out their messages were far more offensive than mine. I then alter the conversation on to the intellectual content of the messages, which was always well reasoned and researched before posting.
Unfortunately the Internet is not the same place as it was then - If whenever you post factual information that someone doesn't like you get bombarded with "you dunt know what ur talkin bout if you fink that, shut up", you aren't ever going to learn the art of constructive conversation, you are just going to learn to "ignore idiots", including "idiots" who have a valid point.