discord is adding parental surveillance. as nerdskii’s tags pointed out its a ridiculous measure that doesnt help anyone because apps like Signal exist for actual illegal/sketchy activity and this just hurts lgbt teens looking for somewhere to be themselves and have resources especially with conservative parents
I use android. this is my secure folder, which was built into my phone. it has a customize option, so I’ve made it look like some bland fitness app. when you open it, it asks you to enter a password or unlock it in any other way you’ve set it to unlock before it lets you in
inside of this folder is like a 2nd phone almost, I can hide apps in here or have different accounts on apps I’ve already installed. I have a separate discord and tumblr inside of my secure folder (which I moved this blog to recently)
there are similar third party apps, usually disguised as a calculator that you set a certain number or calculation as the password to unlock. that’s a lot more inconspicuous if opened, but also more well known, and parents might be looking out for any suspicious calculator apps
also, be careful what 3rd party apps you download, especially when it’s concerning things like your accounts and data! make sure you’re downloading something safe and secure
this isn’t foolproof, depending on how far your parents are going to track you. if they’ve installed anything or had you install anything on your phone or computer, or had the chance while you weren’t there, be careful for spyware. some apps report how long you look at each app, or can record sound from your phone on demand
also important: a good VPN can secure what you’re looking at from the router, which parents may be able to access information from, but this also isn’t guaranteed to work if the parental controls are set to block VPNs
another one, if your parents are tracking your location but not your app usage: download a GPS spoofer. you don’t necessarily need to root your phone for this, as long as it’s supported in developer settings. a lot of them are branded as tools for pokemon go, which can be helpful for plausible deniability
parents reading this: these are things I’ve learned from constantly having my shit taken and looked through as a teen. you aren’t protecting your kids, you’re ruining any chance of them trusting you with anything. if something goes wrong, you’re going to be the last person they tell, because someone who goes to these lengths to see any little thing isn’t going to be chill when something actually bad happens if this is how you act when literally nothing is happening
i cannot possibly overstate the psychological damage of growing up being abused in a way that is considered so disgusting as to be literally unspeakable and treated as such.
every single person on this website and everywhere else needs to take a long fucking look at how they talk about and think about csa and how it might fucking feel to have things that literally happened to you be considered so taboo that frank depictions are declared obscene or so disgusting so as to be talked about only in whispered tones
CAN YOU EVEN BEGIN TO CONCEPTUALIZE THE MULTIPLICATION OF TRAUMA THAT COMES FROM YOUR ABUSE BEING TREATED LIKE RADIOACTIVE WASTE THAT MUST BE BURIED LEST IT CONTAMINATE OTHERS BY ITS VERY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT DESCRIPTION OR EXISTENCE
i had friends on here that used to be very frank and open about their status as CSA survivors. because they insisted on talking about the subject frankly and with depth and nuance they were called pedophile apologists, which was quickly shortened just to pedos, and constantly harassed. one teenager specifically sent someone she knew to be a csa survivor links to triggering materials in an attempt to get them to reconsider being friends with me because i was also considered a pedo.
the way online spaces decided to Protect The Children from pedophilia has done no such thing, just like we warned you it wouldn’t. instead it gave bullies and bigots a perfect label to slap onto any victim they wanted, at the direct expense of csa survivors everywhere. it’s also been horrible for queer artists of all sorts. we have been saying this over and over for a decade at least.
it really is sad that algorithmic feeds have broken peoples’ brains so badly. people really do come here and go “wait, i have to CHOOSE who i follow to get posts on my dashboard???” because a social media site working the way they were always supposed to work is so alien now. people will assume the site is a ghost town because they don’t follow enough active users. there has to be a constant stream of New Content every time you refresh, regardless of whether or not said Content is any good
you can never just get caught up on your feed and put the phone down, because that’s not what tiktok and insta and twitter and facebook have conditioned users to expect. putting the phone down means you’re not looking at more ads and generating revenue for the site. when you venture off of the following feed twitter’s algorithm is very transparently designed to show you bait tweets and other things that will make you angry, because getting people to argue is one of the easiest ways to drive engagement. it’s no wonder threads just launched with no following feed whatsoever, just an infinite stream of algorithmic slop. these sites don’t want you to curate your own experience because then you might develop a healthier relationship with them. that’s not what they want. they want addiction
