Perfect Systems are not Perfect

In the debate around parental controls, a counterargument I have heard against many proposals is that "the system is easy to circumvent". When designing systems, we naturally want to build a system that is perfect, and so we think that any system that can be circumvented is broken. But I actually think that a parental control that is possible to circumvent, is actually a sign of it being well-designed.

Why? When designing something for the future, chances are we will never get it quite right. There will always be edge-cases, or situations that we have not prepared for. Rather than thinking of imperfections in a system as purely flaws, they can actually serve as checks, as ways to navigate situations that we have not thought of. A way to break the glass, so to speak, when the system is not living up to the intended purposes. Such as when those in power are overreaching.

In any liberal society, systems must fundamentally serve the people. Kids can have legitimate reasons for wanting to circumvent parental controls, or to be anonymous online. If the government leverages age restrictions to censor legitimate information, teenagers should have the ability to find that out. Or if teenagers don't feel comfortable sharing something with their ID attached, they should have a way of doing so.

- Marc