On Tech: Hooray (mostly) for the government!

U.S. lawmakers are digging into questions about how to steer technology to make our lives better.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story September 23, 2020 Hooray (mostly) for the government! Leif Gann-Matzen By Shira Ovide I feel a glimmer of hope about America’s government officials and elected representatives. A tiny one. Underneath a truckload of partisan hooey, they are digging into complex and important questions about how to steer technology to make our lives better. In investigations into technology antitrust and the reconsideration of a 24-year-old bedrock internet law, government officials are taking on big ideas: Is the online economy fair? And how should U.S. laws balance protecting people from online horrors with giving them room for expression online? First, the Department of Justice may sue Google within days, claiming the company breaks laws intended to ensure healthy business competition. There’s no telling how this lawsuit might turn out, and my colleagues have reported that some people familiar with the government’s investigation have worried that it was rushed to score political points ahead of the presidential election. It’s going to be a shouty mess. But there are meaty questions here: Did Google, and America’s other tech giants, get so powerful by tilting the game to their advantage? Broadly, does the dominance of superstar companies result in Americans having worse online communications products, more expensive pharmaceutical drugs and crummier cellphone service than we would if there more, smaller competitors? Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT These are good questions! I don’t have answers, but I’m glad the questions are being asked on a big stage. Likewise, there is lots of truly awful garbage in the government scrutiny of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but I’m still glad that it’s being reviewed. The 1996 law gave websites legal breathing room to filter and delete threats of violence and other unwanted material that people posted in spots like comment sections. This was a foundation that enabled Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others to let people share themselves with the world without fear that the companies would be sued out of existence for what users posted on their sites. Both Republicans and Democrats are now asking whether the law has outlived its use and is too lax on online companies that don’t effectively weed out child sexual abuse imagery or extremists organizing violence. And they’re also asking whether tightening the rules might unfairly squash what people say online. This is a worthy debate. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT The issue is complicated by political interests. Some conservatives have misrepresented what the law says and want these companies to intervene less in what people say online to avoid what they view as partisan censorship. Some Democrats want to hold websites more responsible for false information, but haven’t talked about the possible unintended consequences of doing so. Skeptical people — hello, I am you — might be shouting at me through their screens. Our government officials and elected representatives are not banging the table about Amazon mistreating small merchants or conservative bias in Gmail folders because they’re thinking deeply about our world and how it works. This is about their side winning. Fair, OK. I also worry that antitrust and Section 230 have become so bogged in the partisan muck that there is no there there. But U.S. government officials recently made a partisan charade over the TikTok app, AND didn’t even try to tackle big questions like how the United States should deal with future global technology that is less American. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT I prefer this one time to look on the bright-ish side. At least in two areas of technology policy, U.S. officials are mixing the partisan muck with taking on complex issues. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. So, Amazon: Is this useful? One good thing about the questioning of Big Tech power is that it gives us a chance to consider whether the status quo is good for us. I was thinking about this because The Wall Street Journal dug into the promotions that Amazon pushes when we hunt for products on its site. Type “dog beds” into the search box on Amazon. The first half-dozen products that I saw, marked as “sponsored,” had paid Amazon to appear prominently. The Journal’s article showed that Amazon has different rules for paid promotions for its own products versus those of its top competitors. But I have a more basic question: Are these Amazon promotions useful to those of us shopping on the site? If the most visible products on Amazon are those that pay Amazon, is the company nudging us to buy the best product at a great price — or the one that paid Amazon the most for promotion? As a Recode technology reporter pointed out to me on Twitter, merchants who sell cat toys or Oreos on Amazon tend to say that these ads help them get noticed — although they often resent them — in Amazon’s sea of products. That’s true. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we shoppers are better off, though. Yes, these kinds of paid product promotions are not novel. Stores charge cereal and ice cream companies for prime placement on store shelves. When you type “Niagara Falls hotel” into Google, companies pay Google to pitch you their vacation packages and lodgings. Amazon has said that paid promotions help people find what they’re looking for. But it’s worth asking whether Amazon combining the largest online store in America with a Google-style paid ad machine is a step too far. Before we go … Surprising! Also, not good! Usually it’s baby boomers and other older Americans who get blamed for believing bogus stuff on the internet. But new research found that it’s Americans under 25 who are most likely to believe false information about the coronavirus, my colleague Adam Satariano wrote. TikTok-style geopolitics are only new to Americans: The confusion about TikTok — is it a Chinese spying threat? Can the U.S. government really ban it? — might be unsettling for Americans, but is old hat to most of the world, my colleague John Herrman wrote. People in other countries have long had little say in what happens when their favorite online spaces are threatened by diplomatic or political fights between companies and corporations. I mean, at least your kid’s school is not THIS: Some schools in Hawaii, California and Ohio dropped an online learning program after parents found some of the material racist, sexist and of low quality. One example: A cartoon bear welcomed first grade students to “the concentration camp,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Some parents also worried that the company founder was connected to a polyamorous religious sect. Hugs to this Drumming to the beat, with hopping virtual penguins. Make sure to turn on the sound for the video. (My colleague Charlie Warzel is obsessed with this. Thank/blame him.) We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you’d like us to explore. You can reach us at ontech@nytimes.com. If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, please sign up here. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for On Tech with Shira Ovide from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. 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My Kid Sold Her Soul to Roblox

It’s my daughter’s main social outlet, and I’m not taking it away from her.

View in browser|nytimes.com Continue reading the main story September 23, 2020 My Kid Sold Her Soul to Roblox By Emily Flake Jackie Ferrentino I’m taking a break from this week to get my kids acclimated to remote learning, so I handed the newsletter over to the prodigiously talented Emily Flake, a writer, cartoonist, performer and illustrator living in Brooklyn. She’s writing about how Roblox raised her daughter this summer, and how that’s not such a terrible thing. — Jessica Grose, lead editor, NYT Parenting I made a deal with the devil this summer. Lots of devils, if we’re going to be accountants about it. But one in particular weighs heavy on my heart: Roblox. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT I have never liked video games. Not for myself, and not for my daughter. I’m not uptight about screen time, but the addictive, immersive world of video games was something I’d hoped to keep her out of for as long as possible. And then, of course, the pandemic happened. When the creaky old laptop we’d been letting my daughter use for online school wheezed its last, I made a fateful choice. I got her an iPad, reasoning that it would serve as her laptop for years to come. Sometime in the not-too-distant past, I’ve said things like, “Why would anyone spend that kind of money on a device for a child?” I have had to go back in time, find those words, and eat them with a knife and fork. Say it with me now: This is what happens when we get smug. I had never heard of Roblox before we got the iPad. I thought maybe it was something like Minecraft, another game about which I know nothing. Even now I am unclear on exactly what Roblox … is. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT As far as I can tell, it’s not so much a game as it is a gaming universe. Players choose avatars, and move through frankly ugly landscapes and obstacle courses acquiring skills, objects and animals. You haven’t lived pandemic parenting until you’ve sat, bewildered, on your daughter’s bed as she sobs inconsolably because somebody scammed her out of her kitsune. Can you spend real world money in this game? You bet your mortgage — a friend in California forbade his son to use Roblox after the kid racked up $700 worth of in-game purchases. What makes Roblox so devilishly attractive is that it’s a multiplayer gaming world. When the actual world stopped being a place where children could go and meet their friends, it’s just the natural order of things that a digital world would pop up to replace it. My daughter got tight with the 10-year-old kid who lives upstairs who introduced her to it. They played for hours a floor apart from each other. She discovered that a lot of her other friends were on the platform, too. Then she figured out how to use FaceTime to talk to them as they played. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT How could I deny her a social outlet in a time when companionship had been taken from her? It would have felt monstrous. But let’s not sit here and pretend I let her do it just for her sake. I let her do it for mine, too. Roblox had become a babysitter, a youth group and a camp all in one. I have come to think of it as a place she goes rather than a thing she does. She can happily spend hours there and I hear nothing but screeches of “Teleport! Teleport to me!!” I wouldn’t say I get great work done while she plays, but I get *some* work done. Or some housework. Or some dispirited doomscrolling. I knew, abstractly, that there would come a time when I lost the child I knew. That my baby would become an adolescent, a gawky thing full of spite she could use as rocket fuel to blast out of my orbit. But my daughter is on the cusp of turning 8. I thought I had more time, and I never thought the fuel she burned would be supplied by me. Because I see her stepping into a new world, trying on new personae, different avatars. I see her deftly navigating a space in which I am all thumbs. When I tried to play, she typed in the chat bar: “Mom. Mom! Follow me, Mom! My mom is so bad at this and I’m trying to teach her but she is an amazing mom.” I appreciated the softening of the blow, but the truth is I am not an amazing mom. I let her move to a two-dimensional arcade because, in the depths of my torpor and sorrow this summer, I could barely string two words together, let alone get it up for a fun mother-daughter project Generally speaking, it sets my teeth on edge when parents (ugh, mothers, I mean mothers, it is always mothers) describe themselves as failing as parents, as though this were a competition or a job for which we might be awarded a gold star. But I found myself truly understanding that I wasn’t so much failing at the task of parenting as I was failing her. As we move forward into school time (a fraught and indefinite phrase), things are going to have to change around here. I have felt, this summer, like a woman drowning in Karo syrup. Sure, I’m depressed, aren’t we all? But I can’t pull her back into the real world if I can’t even get there myself. On one of the last perfect, golden days of summer, my daughter and I joined the family from upstairs at the beach. Their kid and mine play together in the real world a lot now, and they frolicked in the waves like seal pups, shouting with joy. The older kid is a strong swimmer, and he jumped fearlessly into the waves. But at the same time, he looked out for my daughter, and helped her navigate the choppy surf much better than I could. That friendship blossomed under the auspices of software, but it has come to flourish in the real world as well. It felt wholesome, it felt true. It gave me hope that maybe, despite my damningly poor showing, there’s hope for her after all. Want More on Kids and Tech? Anya Kamenetz was a screen time expert. Then coronavirus happened. Read about how she changed her recommendations in light of our new reality. Do you want to figure out how to end a screen time session without causing a meltdown? Andrea Petersen wrote these tips before the pandemic, but they are still extremely applicable today. Read NYT Parenting editor Jess Grose’s recommendations for semi-educational screen time here. Some other big hits in her family since she wrote that in March are GoNoodle, which gets kids moving, Epic Books for oodles of e-Reading and Pinna podcasts, particularly “The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel.” Tiny Victories Parenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories. My 4-year-old hates wearing any pants except leggings, so having to wear khakis during this first week of remote Pre-K has caused a thunderstorm of tears every morning. On day 3 we struck a deal that she could wear leggings under her khakis, so finally day 4 was tear free!— Joyce Adesina, Dallas If you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. Continue reading the main story Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for NYT Parenting from The New York Times. To stop receiving these emails, unsubscribe or manage your email preferences. 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