
Teen's tweets from her smart fridge go viral after mother confiscates phone - kylesellas
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/13/teen-smart-fridge-twitter-grounded
======
serpix
She caused a fire because she got distracted with Social Media. As a parent I
would also confiscate electronics and probably consider therapy at that point.

~~~
llamathrowaway
This is assuming the story is real, not just some marketing campaign:

1\. Therapy requires mutual trust to work. Administrating therapy at this
point, after turning the child into an adversary by taking away electronics as
a form of punishment, would make the child think that the therapy sessions are
no more than another form of punishment. Nothing useful can come out of the
therapy if the child perceives the therapist as an enemy.

2\. It frightens me how people turns everything that is supposed to be a part
of human life into a medical condition, and treat 'therapy' as the deus ex
machina that could solve all inconveniences in our social life.

~~~
forgottenpass
>It frightens me how people turns everything that is supposed to be a part of
human life into a medical condition

In my experience it's correlated with the US West-coast passive aggression.
Nothing can just be a difference in opinion and/or personality clash.

------
yread
What a creative marketing campaign

~~~
donmcronald
On a more serious note, how does this work? Do they pay for followers,
influencers to promote it, directly for articles like this?

I’m really starting to think we need updated legislation for labelling ads.

~~~
michaelt
There are services that sell upvotes - such as [1]. Presumably while also
maintaining a large enough set of plausible-looking profiles, IP addresses,
browser fingerprints etc to bypass upvote ring detection.

So you don't have to pay high-profile influencers, who might be expensive or
give away that it's a paid campaign.

A marketing company comes up with an adequate post, posts it on one site and
gets it upvoted, and with a bit of luck there you have it, it gets reposted
onto other sites and maybe even ends up in conventional media.

I strongly suspect the "we get it, you vape" meme was brought-and-paid-for by
the cigarette industry by these means.

You can hire ad agencies to make fake terrorist videos and promote racial
division [2] so it's not like advertisers are too ethical to do this type of
stuff.

[1] [https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-
upvote/](https://upvotes.club/buy/hacker-news-upvote/) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bell_Pottinger&ol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bell_Pottinger&oldid=902639563#Exposure_of_plans,_and_resulting_disgrace)

~~~
C1sc0cat
"We get it, you vape sounds" like that god awful made up tabloid speak that no
real person ever uses.

------
benj111
This reminds me of a story an older colleague told me. In ye olden days (60s
or 70s) they used to have locks to fit over dial telephones, and this
colleagues dad fitted a lock as punishment for running up large phone bills.
You don't need to use the dial on dial telephones though, you can just use the
hang up button to create the right pulse lengths, so that's what she did.

Teenagers it seems don't really change that much.

~~~
C1sc0cat
That was also a method for Phreaking tapping out the number

------
neverminder
Where there's a will there's a way. Reminds me of the old days in the 90's
when my old man used to take away our PC's power cable to "manage my computer
addiction", so I made my own from an old stereo power cable and two nails.
Good times.

------
slics
As a parent of Few Young kids (non teenagers) I have made it my mission to not
give in to the social media BS. My kids will only get phones when they go to
college. If they get a phone before then, it will be a dumb phone with no
internet.

Looked here and looks promising: [https://tello.com](https://tello.com)

For the others that say, we all get distracted, well then you might have no
clue what distracted means to someone with a kid. You ask them to brush their
teeth, they bring their toothbrush in the living room just to watch TV. Phone
for a teenager it’s the worst thing a parent can do (outside of the emergency
reasons)

~~~
yodon
The social ostracism and inability to interact with their peers will not
strengthen your children socially nor given them a value system for dealing
with the challenges of the culture around them. It will simply delay when they
have to grapple with it from a time in their lives when mistakes are
understood and expected by the world to a time when the world will expect them
to already be experienced with how to manage it. A rule like you describe is
not for the benefit of your children. It is a crutch designed to help you
avoid the hard work of having to teach proper values around difficult things.
Charting a path through social media is part of parenting. You haven't found a
secret hack that makes it easy. You have created a fantasy that you can simply
get away with not doing so.

~~~
panpanna
IMO, his kids will be just fine. Probably more than fine and more capable of
handling real-life situations compared to other kids.

The positive effects of social media is highly exaggerated.

------
isthisnametaken
We did the same thing with my eldest when he was about 14 - confiscated phone,
laptop, etc.

He managed to get round it (at least until we realised) by using Facebook
Messenger via the web browser on his Kindle.

------
beatgammit
As a parent of young children, this honestly terrifies me. I know how
addictive social media can be, and I'm trying to teach my kids how to set
their own boundaries, but I don't know how to properly respond to problems
caused by addiction. I don't believe in involuntary confiscation, but I may
resort to that if my child loses my trust, and once I take something away, I
lose whatever trust they have in me.

Does anyone have any good resources for dealing with this type of problem
constructively? I know building trust in the first place is important, I just
don't know much about what works with older children/teenagers. My current
approach would be to treat them like an adult and have them come up with their
own disciplinary measures.

------
jwilk
> the tweet source confirms it was sent from the device

I seem to recall that the source can be easily spoofed.

~~~
jpindar
Yeah, it looks to be easy enough; much like making a an actual IoT device, you
don't have to write a complete Twitter app. When I think of something funny
enough I might try it.

------
einarfd
The Internet of Shit to the rescue.

------
bootsz
> _its website confirms the refrigerator does have social media capabilities,
> and the tweet source confirms it was sent from the device._

Imagine waking from a coma after 10 or 20 years and reading this in the news.

------
not_a_cop75
The article once again shows that Twitter has instead of being peaceful and
cooperative, opted to take the would be side of a Jerry Springer show and
instigate a greater fight and argument. If there is ever a WWIII, Twitter will
be proud to have been part of the argument/misunderstanding that started it.
No other service exists that primarily connects people so they can trash talk
each other. It might as well be described in their business plan as much as
they do it.

~~~
not_a_cop75
It's uncannily similar to an old Monty Python sketch.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ)

------
tams
That's some hacker spirit.

------
zaarn
Apparently she tried with a Nintendo 3DS before it was also taken away.

------
comb42
we need to introduce her to morse code slip and 300 baud modems

------
comb42
we need to introduce her to slip and 300 baud modems

------
thomasfl
Fight for your right to tweet and freedom of speech. #FreeDorothy ;-)

