Netflix is reportedly expanding its parental control options with a new series of tools to allow parents to filter and control the content that kids see on the service.
While before now there was an overall filter for kid-friendly options, the new tools are much more surgical – essentially allowing parents to hide or mute an individual TV series or movie by title so that it won’t appear at all on that profile account.
Parents can also filter out titles based on rating, thus making it possible to have only G-rated films on their kids’ profile accounts. There’s also expanded parental control options like PINs to protect profiles, the ability to review a child’s viewing history, and disabling autoplay on TV shows to help restrict screen time.
The move comes as the kids are quarantined inside with nothing much to do but stream movies and shows while parents are often still having to continue to work in the same house and leaving kids to their own devices with the streaming services – services which some kids know how to better operate than their parents.
On the flip side the controls also raise ethical concerns about censorship, especially if intended for anyone but small kids.
Source: The Verge
