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miohtamatoday at 10:10 AM2 repliesview on HN

Here is a 2-minute tutorial video on how to turn on parental controls on an iPhone.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/tv6vxRBEa2o

Instead of asking parents to do this, you get these laws where you need to show your id to unlock your own device.

Clearly.


Replies

codedokodetoday at 10:51 AM

This is a garbage UI and it looks like it was designed using "dark patterns" to ensure that nobody uses it. Look how many clicks (18 clicks, I counted) one needs to do in the correct sequence without a single mistake, and how many distracting and misleading options are there. It is a sabotage, it is a rebellion. Technically, yes, Apple can claim that they have "safe mode", but in practice it is unusable. Apple clearly doesn't want parents to enable restrictions, for reasons I do not understand, probably they just hate children or people having a family.

Your video actually has the opposite effect: it shows that there are no (easy) ways for parents to protect the children and government regulation is necessary.

The UI should be a single checkbox named "child mode" and small, gray link "configure" that opens the menu from the video. The parent just clicks the checkbox, and sets up a password, a fingerprint or paired device to unlock the mode. That's all. After this only government-approved apps and websites can be opened (parent may edit the white list if they are ok with navigating through a maze of ten thousand menus) and children are perfectly safe. Government may white-list only apps and sites that implement measures for content safety and may not add non-compliant apps.

Also I hate watching vertical videos on a laptop.

jackvalentinetoday at 10:34 AM

Famously these controls basically don’t work.