Thread

Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat

484 points · 257 comments · simonpure

nyargh · 1790611878 · focus · HN ↗
Discovered my kid doing exactly this years ago. We purposefully limited all social media, locked dowb devices etc, but life uh.. finds a way.
I was impressed, just had the standard talk about how you have to assume everything you put out on the internet never goes away and that you really have no idea who is on the other side of the screen, never share personal information, etc
Now they are older and are on ridiculous group chats with their friends. Pretty impossible to control tbh. At least they keep me up to date with the latest memes!
1. barnas2 · 1790612890 · focus · HN ↗
  > I was impressed, just had the standard talk about how you have to assume everything you put out on the internet never goes away and that you really have no idea who is on the other side of the screen, never share personal information, etc
  This feels pretty level headed. My parents seemed to be of the opinion that the internet consisted entirely of pedophiles and me. Talking to anyone for any reason got me in a ton of trouble. All it meant was that I got really good at hiding stuff from them as a kid.
  1. nyargh · 1790666037 · focus · HN ↗
    Thank you for the affirmation :)
  2. LtWorf · 1790673975 · focus · HN ↗
    My parents gave me no such talk; I now believe that at least some of the "teenage girls" i chatted with were in fact not girls at all.
2. bityard · 1790613361 · focus · HN ↗
  > everything you put out on the internet never goes away
  I've been thinking about this quite a lot recently as I've been trying to dig up information about 90's era dial-up bulletin board systems. It was a scene I was deeply immersed in at the time (or at least, one specific niche within it) and there is surprisingly little information left which is easy to find now, 30 years later. I remember the web being awash in more contemporary technical minutia than I could read in a lifetime. Now, the vast majority of it seems to be flat-out missing or at least very well hidden/distributed.
  I think it is more accurate to say, "everything you put on out on the Internet _might_ never go away." Because my experience has been, a lot already has.
  1. Avicebron · 1790613720 · focus · HN ↗
    The might or might not is a critical part of why the panopticon works..
  2. esseph · 1790616154 · focus · HN ↗
    > I've been thinking about this quite a lot recently as I've been trying to dig up information about 90's era dial-up bulletin board systems. It was a scene I was deeply immersed in at the time (or at least, one specific niche within it)
    Say more!
    bityard · 1790628921 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm working on a blog article about my adventures on toll-free BBSes before I had access to the Internet. It's about halfway done, and I hope to have it ready to publish soon, somewhere between a week and a year from now.
    esseph · 1790631180 · focus · HN ↗
    I ran a couple of very local BBSes late beyond the hayday in the 14.4-56k timeframe. That got me into BBS software, which got me into ANSI Art, which got me into associations with warez groups, and that got me into association with various hacker collectives. Had it not been for the BBS scene I probably wouldn't work in technology today.
    I'd love to read it when you're done!
  3. walthamstow · 1790621757 · focus · HN ↗
    I regularly mourn the photos of my early teens that were on MySpace and no longer exist anywhere
    SauciestGNU · 1790634653 · focus · HN ↗
    Same, but at the same time I'm glad data about me from that period of my life no longer persists.
    mrheosuper · 1790654023 · focus · HN ↗
    There is non-zero chance it's on the tape sitting on the shelf in some unknown warehouse.
    SauciestGNU · 1790724681 · focus · HN ↗
    Rip my dignity in that case lol
  4. dylan604 · 1790628221 · focus · HN ↗
    Just wondering what an internet archive for usenet groups might have looked like. Back then, it was cool to have messages have a finite time limit before going away. Snapchat isn't an original idea. Now, unless you're Snap, it's anathema for a company to think that willingly removing user content would be a good idea.
    someonebaggy · 1790631874 · focus · HN ↗
    Usenet archives exist
    jasonfarnon · 1790641225 · focus · HN ↗
    Snap isn't a new idea but the motivation, to my understanding, is completely different. It was a technical limitation in the usenet days, both hdd space and bandwidth. Goodness I can still remember what one user on alt.binaries could do to our university network in the 90s.
    Dead_Lemon · 1790686979 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://olduse.net/" rel="nofollow">https://olduse.net/ Experience legacy usenet in real-time. You can subscribe to different start points and receive posts as they were sent, 40+ years ago.
  5. bilegeek · 1790636212 · focus · HN ↗
    I'll do my duty and provide some links as a fellow spelunker (apologies if you've already seen some of these):
    <a href="http://textfiles.com/directory.html" rel="nofollow">http://textfiles.com/directory.html (<a href="https://archive.org/details/textfiles-dot-com-2011" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/textfiles-dot-com-2011 or use rsync for a local copy), plus he made <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS:_The_Documentary" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS:_The_Documentary with the full interviews available (<a href="https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5289" rel="nofollow">https://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/5289)
    <a href="https://breakintochat.com/collections/messages/fidonet/index.html" rel="nofollow">https://breakintochat.com/collections/messages/fidonet/index...
    <a href="https://www.ipingthereforeiam.com/bbs/msgs/" rel="nofollow">https://www.ipingthereforeiam.com/bbs/msgs/
    <a href="https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/archives.thebbs.org/" rel="nofollow">https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/archives.thebbs.org/ (<a href="https://archive.org/details/bbsarchives_2017" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/bbsarchives_2017 for a local copy)
    <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29955294">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29955294
    <a href="https://archive.org/details/boardwatchmagazine" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/boardwatchmagazine
    <a href="https://defacto2.net/bbs" rel="nofollow">https://defacto2.net/bbs
    <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20241210143429/http://sysopshub.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20241210143429/http://sysopshub....
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klBD-U-9PIg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klBD-U-9PIg
    bityard · 1790688266 · focus · HN ↗
    Thank you! Yeah, I'm well familiar with Jason Scott's efforts to archive/preserve/present BBS culture and information. I've been a fan of his work for ages.
    The other links are new to me, thank you for passing them along. I'm particularly interested in that BoardWatch magazine archive. I didn't know that existed. Although now I have yet _another_ side project: figure out how to index and search it all!
  6. jasonfarnon · 1790642973 · focus · HN ↗
    What surprised me is BBS's aren't really the Internet, right? Everything is just stored one one guy's (often a kid's) computer at a time when hdd space was expensive and we were constantly swapping out floppies etc, who could expect it to last long? For some reason in the Internet era I didn't think it would often still come down to "it's just stored on one guy's computer". Likewise I've been surprised how much film/TV/radio from when I was a kid no longer exists.
    Dead_Lemon · 1790686639 · focus · HN ↗
    The network was basically point to point serial, with a phone number for routing.
    Some BBS hosts were quite sophisticated, running multiple computers and banks of modems to handle multiple user connections.
  7. empath75 · 1790645185 · focus · HN ↗
    I worked at AOL in the early 2000s and let me assure you, a lot of it did go away. I tried to rescue the club caribe code and it got erased with the last mainframes before i could. They had a lot of stuff backed up on tape but it was in dire shape and most of it get deleted in a datacenter migration.
    Macha · 1790711792 · focus · HN ↗
    I was there in the early 2010s and we did have older versions of AIM, netscape in an archive CVS (svn was the day to day system when I started). But then we moved to git and only stuff that had a designated owner got moved from cvs/svn to git so there was another round of losing old source code. And another in the migration to yahoo systems post merger.
  8. nyargh · 1790664535 · focus · HN ↗
    > I think it is more accurate to say, "everything you put on out on the Internet _might_ never go away." Because my experience has been, a lot already has.
    Oh you are absolutely correct, and I agree.
    However when parenting, one cannot help being drawn to hyperbole from time to time. I'd rather have them at least consider the worst case scenario. ;)
3. madibo3156 · 1790614245 · focus · HN ↗
  Sounds like you accepted it but did not outright say whether you're content with it. Do you think it was a little silly now or do you still stand by it? Basically, if you were to go back knowing what you do now, would you have still locked down social media use for your kids? What would you have done differently if anything?
  1. nyargh · 1790665164 · focus · HN ↗
    Locking down algorithmic social media for kids/youth is an absolute no brainer for me. So many reasons, honestly. No regrets there, and they never had it so they didn't get addicted and don't miss it.
    Maybe you're asking about the spotify chats though? It was challenging for me, yes. There were topics and discussions that moody kids would have that I now had a window into. It can be a bit scary as a parent to see that all without filters, but it was also an opportunity to check in with them and have conversations about it. Kids have all these feelings and conversations anyway, so it's just part of that age. My childhood was rough, so I'm just thankful it is not like that for them and they have people to talk to. As I parent of course I wish they'd come to me first, but I know I will never be their peer in that way.
    I do wish I blocked short form video better, but that's more out of concern for their attention and my own aesthetic snobbery ;) I do significantly limit how much time they can spend watching it, and we all know its a "treat" akin to junk food. Sometimes they share it with me :)
    madibo3156 · 1790786985 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks for your reply. To me, kidhood is a developmental time where self-destructive habits have more time and malleability to course-correct. On the flip side it's a breeding ground for addiction.
    I guess I'd rather kid tries to screw life up while parent has more leverage to fix it. But you could argue proactive preventative leverage is even better.
    In my mind I think if a person really wants to explore something, they will find a way. If kid is susceptible to social media addiction, it will find its way in. Yes, it's more dangerous when young. Conversely if it happens later in life they're on their own to combat it, without having learned through experience. That was my thinking. May not be accurate.
4. xer0x · 1790615584 · focus · HN ↗
  This is my kids too, life finds a way. I've blocked Youtube, and yet I discovered they are watching their favourite Youtube creators via Spotify.
  1. Lerc · 1790630522 · focus · HN ↗
    My father blocked things from me, not internet based obviously because they weren't available. But things like fixing the heater so it wouldn't be set higher than what he considered reasonable.
    I assume he's still alive, but I haven't communicated with him for years.
    pkthunder · 1790634902 · focus · HN ↗
    Did yours also do the fun “hide the power cords to important electronics” as a punishment? That was always my favorite /s
    plausibility · 1790639932 · focus · HN ↗
    When I had my computer mouse taken away because I got in school suspension (for getting domain admin in the local AD no less), I promptly learned how mouse control via keyboard worked.
    Feels like a rite of passage.
    SV_BubbleTime · 1790668190 · focus · HN ↗
    My dad took the keyboard and left the mouse. I did ok, it was annoying using char map to copy letters because there was no virtual keyboard then.
    Ended up making common phrases and commands in a txt file.
    Dylan16807 · 1790637093 · focus · HN ↗
    I... did you pick the first example of conflict that came to your head and there were many deeper problems, or do you think not being able to adjust the thermostat is some kind of huge red flag/worse?
    Aeolun · 1790640465 · focus · HN ↗
    I guess that depends on what temperature he thought was reasonable? Freezing is a temperature.
    what · 1790645765 · focus · HN ↗
    Put a sweater on instead of running the heat. Maybe I’m just an old fart.
    Lerc · 1790647152 · focus · HN ↗
    I felt the cold a great deal and preferred a higher temperature. The issue is not the temperature, it was that my preference was different to his and his solution was to force his preference because we disagreed on a point.
    Obviously it is not the only thing, but an example of using control instead of reason or consensus.
    For the record I did not forbid my daughter to use social media. I told her why I did not use it myself. She finally got a facebook account because it was required to engage with her university courses. She was livid.
    Dylan16807 · 1790647906 · focus · HN ↗
    > The issue is not the temperature, it was that my preference was different to his and his solution was to force his preference because we disagreed on a point.
    > Obviously it is not the only thing, but an example of using control instead of reason or consensus.
    When the preference in question is temperature, not many households include children in the consensus process. Adults deciding that is quite normal with few grudges.
    I don't know how to interpret "instead of reason". If you mean that literally, I strongly doubt the temperature setting was chosen without reasoning things through.
    SoftTalker · 1790653660 · focus · HN ↗
    My dad liked to say that if I wasn't happy with the temperature then I could start paying the gas bill.
    Lerc · 1790668666 · focus · HN ↗
    >not many households include children in the consensus process.
    That was at least something I could address when I became a parent.
    My daughter mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she was confused by the fact that all of her friends seek her out when they need to know the right thing to do. I told her it is because she has a moral compass that you can see from space.
    redsocksfan45 · 1790677962 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    impurify · 1790814675 · focus · HN ↗
    > I did not forbid my daughter to use social media. I told her why I did not use it myself.
    This is genius: (a) Treat your kid like an intelligent human being, and (b) don’t be a hypocrite.
    It sounds like if you’d been my parent, maybe I would’ve respected you and taken your opinion seriously. As it is, I just quoted your anecdote (with link and attribution) in another venue where this HN thread got linked.
    I will never forgive my parents for what they did to me when I was a teenager—allegedly “for my own good”. I thought I was smarter than they were. I was right.
    salad-tycoon · 1790929883 · focus · HN ↗
    My uncle was a forensic child psychiatrist. He told me once about a very poor family, both parents had the equivalent IQs of lukewarm water and over all were dull and struggled in every aspect of life.
    Yet, they had a kid that was actually very bright.
    One time during a family session the kid would complain that he got made fun of at school a lot because he smelled of burnt rubber.
    Turns out, the dad would burn tires in the “living room” to heat the house and explained to my uncle that it was cold (freezing) and they couldn’t afford other heat so it was tires or freeze.
    Story always stuck with me. He said his job in this case was to help the kid understand the reality of his situation and help him live with it so that he could move on past it when he was finally old enough to move out (and move up) in the world.
    Maybe your dad also struggled with something that he kept from you that caused him to not want (or be unable to afford) to turn the heat up. Or, maybe, he was just a controlling jerk. Or some combination of the two even. I have no idea of course of your life but thought the story mildly relevant and worthy of sharing.
  2. Aeolun · 1790640159 · focus · HN ↗
    I try not to restrict things so that I can walk into the room at any time and not have them hide shit. Then the few times I do see something I don’t like and ask him not to look at it there’s plenty of other stuff to watch so it doesn’t really cost him anything to humor me.
    I’m young enough that I remember my parents thinking games were going to make my eyes go bad, and old enough to remember my younger siblings being absolutely addicted to youtube. Everyone turned out fine.
    I’m convinced knowing what they watch is far more important than making sure they don’t watch it.
5. SAI_Peregrinus · 1790637270 · focus · HN ↗
  > you have to assume everything you put out on the internet never goes away
  Only applies if you regret posting it later. If it's something you want to find later, it will inevitably have bit-rotted and not been archived.
  1. autoexec · 1790639166 · focus · HN ↗
    > Only applies if you regret posting it later
    Not really. For example, something you posted on social media can easily get you turned down for a job you wanted. You'll never be told that your post is what caused you to lose the job, so you'll never "regret" having posted it, but your life was still negatively impacted by what you overshared. It doesn't even have to still be found online to have an impact on your life. It could be something scrapped once a long time ago by a data broker who used that data to flag your file in some way. Your info can still come up when people request targets matching whatever you were flagged for, even when the original content is no longer online. Even when the internet forgets, data brokers don't.
    zerocrates · 1790647988 · focus · HN ↗
    They're just joking that whatever you want, the opposite will happen: if it's something you'd rather faded away, it will stick around. But if it's something you actually want to keep and find again, it will be lost.
    busssard · 1790689498 · focus · HN ↗
    Thank you for translating. Reading the comment section of HN is again and again showing that we should never assume the other side understood what we meant.
6. Aeolun · 1790639771 · focus · HN ↗
  I think I just start with this talk early, but it’s amazing how kids are willing to assume the best of intentions. “But why? Why would they do that?”, “Because suckering 7 year olds makes them money.”, “But why? That’s mean!”
  1. 1718627440 · 1790676351 · focus · HN ↗
    This just means, they are well raised.
7. NettleBurr · 1790646544 · focus · HN ↗
  If you could do things differently would you be more lax or even stricter, or were your restrictions just about right in hindsight?
  1. nyargh · 1790664871 · focus · HN ↗
    Ohhhh.. I can just say that no parent makes it through the experience without regrets.
    Also, it depends a lot on the kid, the relationship, etc. It was a fine line, these were important social interactions for them, but there was definitely risks to be made aware of and kids are famously bad at risk assessment.
    So it was something I would monitor as best I could and check in with them on, but at some point you just have to trust them and hope any mistakes don't have overly severe consequences.

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