Saferize Parental Control - Turn Unhappy Parents Into Paying Customers

Hi everyone!

Happy to be here, hope to have positive discussions.

I’m a parent (triplet girls \o/ ) and an entrepreneur - just founded a company in the parental control space called Saferize.com. Our approach is different from what traditional companies do. For the first time ever, we empower developers to enabling parents customize how children interact with apps.

It’s a natural movement, whenever a market matures, society demands companies take an actively role in safety (in this case, children safety). We saw that happing in the auto industry: in the beginning drivers were blamed for deaths and injuries. Later on, companies were pushed to invest in seatbelts, crash tests, etc. Nowadays, safety is a feature and even generates more sales.

We’ve been seeing Apple investors demanding the company to improve their parental controls, Facebook launching Messenger Kids, Google hiring thousands of moderators to remove inappropriate videos and more. This very forum and the Center For Humane Technology are proofs this change is happening!

We want to make it easy for any developer to be part of this change.

Would love to get your thoughts!

Cheers,
Gus

3 Likes

Hey @gusguida ,

Don’t know why this post got resurfaced to me, but this looks interesting.

As a kid, I myself was dismayed by the stuff I could access on the internet, and actually asked my parents to put a safety lock on (!). Would love to recommend this to my Dad for his step-kids. Are you seeking customers yet?

Laurence

(Note: I have changed the title and category of this topic to be more descriptive)

There is an (as yet unwritten) rule on this forum that advertising your service as a Humane Tech product warrants brutally honest feedback from the community. So I’ll play the Devil’s Advocate here and provide some of that…

There is much discussion lately of the unprecedented ways that kids are targeted by marketeers and advertisers and thus are exposed to vicious data collection efforts. Less than 2 weeks ago the NYT reported on it too:

And on Hacker News the article was discussed, with more than 400 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18334263

Now the perception I get when reading the (beautifully designed) landing page at Saferize, is:

  • You provide parental control services to garner satisfaction and get parent’s consent to get their kids use apps
  • Where this consent then allows the app providers to have unbridled access in targeting these children with ads and data collection
  • And you are sharing that legal consent, which is now ‘officially’ recorded, to 3rd parties

So, to me it seems your product is not primarily a parental control service, but an ad-tech application.

I am not a lawyer, but when looking at the (well-written) Privacy Policy, I have the impression that it still offers enough loopholes to have near unrestricted data collection for Saferize and 3rd-parties.

Note that I am not attacking the product, but just want learn. I am sure you have good arguments why this is Humane Tech, and I also see there are several mentions on the product being ethical. So that will be well thought through.