I know its easier than ever to dunk on how terrible reddit has gotten, but honestly? What is this? How is is safer to deliver this content to kids viewing reddit on a tablet or PC or in the app? Why even create the bs excuse?
They could just have easily told the truth an displayed a message like "Content is limited. Open in the app to view." It's still a jerk move, but at a minimum its honest.
Also just getting a bottom banner asking if you want to use the app. I only ever get there from searches so, no I don't want the app. One of the only websites deliberately making their mobile site unusable to push an app.
I'm trans and have surgery coming up so I'm often trying to research a lot of stuff related to that. Seems half the useful info out there is on Reddit and I have to get around the fucking NSFW wall all the time. I'm so frustrated that so much of that information got tied up there and in discord channels
Old reddit has started to prevent people from accessing the site without being logged in if you use a VPN. Reddit is officially dead for me since last month.
Big yike 😬 Anyone find a decent way around THAT yet? How do they even know that you're on a VPN? Is it like... they maintain a list of known VPN exit node IPs?
Do you also support "just say no to drugs" and abstinence only sex ed? Screens, as a concept, are not literally the devil. It's unmonitored and unlimited screen time that's the issue.
E: Damn y'all are dense. "Just say no" was a failed messaging campaign from the war on drugs. The alternative isn't "say yes to drugs"; it's actual education about drugs so you know what they are and the actual dangers they can pose. The "just say no" campaign taught that weed was a "gateway drug" and that everyone that tries the devil's lettuce will start using cocaine, amphetamines, and there's a 100% chance you'll become a homeless junkie and die of an overdose. It was about as ignorant as you can get.
No need to be an asshole and no need to presume I'm stupid. My kids dont have any tablet, we monitor screen/tv time and they play with my phone from time to time. That's enough for at least until they're 12. Every recent study shows that kids spend way too much time staring at screen.. It should be less then one hour a day, we keep it under two. I teach to young adult and this generation is litteraly addicted to their phone. Most have a 6 minutes attention spam and get anxious if they can't look at their phone for more then 10 minutes. Lot's of my friends kids have their own device and the parents keeps fighting with them over screen time. You do what you want, I'll keep my way.
Um yeah, just say no to drugs. Marijuana is fine but it's never made anyone more productive when used recreationally. Cigarettes are horrible for you, alcohol is dangerous, and any more hardcore drugs can be life-ruining.
And when talking about kids, yeah, they should avoid having sex until they're like 17 or 18. When they're basically adults. Nobody is telling 14 year olds that it's okay to have sex, because at that age, it's likely coerced. And especially not those who are the subject of "best tablets for kids."
That's exactly why you look for a tablets specifically for kids. The features you want are parental control, time locking, and app screening.
The entire future of learning is built around screens. Kids take standardized tests on touchscreens. They will do their taxes in an app, research topics with the internet, communicate with their peers in messaging apps, apply for jobs in apps, and build new tools through programming.
They must learn to use screens effectively without getting addicted to them.
Kids who learn those skills early, who practice using a tablet and then putting it down, those kids will be better equipped to go put into the world.
I agree with you that too many parents use screens as babysitters. And while tablets are more addictive and predatory, that's been a problem since screens existed. There's a cool documentary on it calles The Cable Guy.
Yes that's why kids' tablets exist. They're less powerful devices loaded with a special version of android that's been MDM'd up the ass to give parents strict control over how their children use the thing. It helps you regulate screen time to a safe level instead of depriving your child of it entirely.
What concerns me the most (I'm not a parent) is the advertising and deliberately addictive games. I think forcibly shutting it off is not a good idea as you are basically becoming a drug dealer to the kid.
Maybe make them willing shut it off instead of forcing it off. If they aren't mature enough to do that they either the software is terrifyingly addictive or they are to young.
Honestly I love my tablet for reading manga. I know that as a kid I would have found a way to use it for other things but I think I would consider it for my kid for reading manga and comics. Maybe some type of e ink device....
Idk about other browsers but firefox has an option to load in desktop view, that is what I do to bypass that when I need an answer to something quick and every other source sucks
I don't know about that, even when I'm in desktop mode the site is Nigh unusable. It'll refresh the page when I use the back button after viewing a thread and after a short while the whole page will freeze and become unresponsive. Reddit has purposefully made the site as frustrating as possible to use to the point where I don't even use it to browse my niche subreddits anymore.
Isn’t it wonderful that google SEO algorithm updates essentially killed off independent forums and blogs? Half of my search results are Reddit and completely irrelevant AI spam.
Or get links by that one stubborn friend who refuses to leave and thinks creating an account on Lemmy is too much hassle despite having one for every popular site to ever exist.
If anything happens to that, not only will it probably be forked, but there's also kddit and Eddrit, as well as a couple of old Libreddit instances that Reddit forgot about.
Tons of comments and not one answering OP's question. I would be interesting in knowing the official reasoning too, but nobody here is answering the question.
Maybe nobody actually knows the answer, except probably Reddit devs and the managers that made them push those changes out, neither of which will be at liberty to say.
We can all speculate - they're doing something for the sake of being seen to be doing something instead of actually blocking the content; they don't want to block the content selectively because that means KYC and lots of people get upset about that sort of thing, etc etc.
I feel like there is probably a linux solution for a kid's tablet, like a refurbished android device, that would be better than a lot of the products on the market which have in the past been a part of countless privacy concerns. VTech and Amazon are big recent examples of lawsuits over children's privacy violations, and both Hasbro and Mattel have violated COPPA in the past, it's been an industry for over a decade and has no signs of stopping.