[nydel]

>Historically the approach to this issue has been age-gating (asking a child to confirm they’re over 13), which makes everyone feel better but doesn’t actually solve the underlying problem. > >Today, we’re unveiling KidSwitch, a new piece of…

Which underlying problem?

I’m more interested in education & intelligence levels, iff* we’re to regulate content over web.

E.G. you must be thiiisss smart &or demonstrate n% content comprehension to continue, return, reply etc.

*iff as ‘if & only if’

[wisty]

I think the underlying problem is that parents want the entire internet to babysit their kids for them.

edit: Maybe what we need is a kids.txt to go along with robots.txt. Some file on websites with some kind list of what interactions a site has (can you leave a message, chat, access hardcore pornography, etc) so auto-blockers can block (or even just limit usage).

So what if a site doesn't have a kids.txt? Block it I guess? Prompt to go into some special mode (no video, no posts, alert parents)?

I guess sites lying might be an issue, then you'd either need whitelists or blacklists. Maybe tie compliance to whether the browser bar goes green.

[kalleboo]

This used to exist in browsers in the 90s. Site owners never bothered implementing it. https://www.w3.org/PICS/

[ars]

It wasn't that owners never bothered implementing it, rather people were actively against it because they felt that no content should be filtered period, and never mind children.

It was actively campaigned against to the point that if you did implement it you were criticized in public. So sites stopped using it and browsers stopped checking it.

Some linkes: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/di...

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/19/business/technology-to-le...

https://www.wired.com/1997/02/microsoft-employs-good-clean-p...

[wisty]

Scanning it, it seems PICS specifies an rdf format that ratings agencies can use to define their own rating system, with self reporting (of various PICS implementations?) being an option for sites. I can imagine some site owners would find it a little hard to implement.

[ars]

> I think the underlying problem is that parents want the entire internet to babysit their kids for them.

It's virtually impossible for parents to check on exactly what their kids are doing, all the privacy controls that the tech world is so proud of have made it almost impossible for parents to keep an eye on their kids.

So what do you expect from parents? What else are they supposed to do? It wasn't even 15 years ago that the whole world helped shield children, now suddenly, nothing.

Not just nothing, active work to prevent parents from watching their kids, coupled with sites also refusing to filter anything.

And then parents get criticized for not doing enough........

[dotancohen]

I once signed up for a chess website that asked a non-trivial question to enable signup. I didn't know the answer, but with a quick google I was able to find it.

I think that's great. One must either be passingly-familiar with the subject matter to participate, or be reasonably intelligent enough to google things you don't know. Some mild gate-keeping does good for a community.

[_v7gu]

Here, have an amusing 4chan thread about this

https://warosu.org/sci/thread/8913970

There should also be a /v/ version of this but with filtering bosses/sections.

[jacquesm]

The underlying legal problem is the fact that in many jurisdictions it is forbidden to advertise to children of a certain age, sometimes with restriction on the time of day and / or the products advertised.

Toy companies and other producers of children aimed products do what they can to stay on the right side of the legal line while at the same time maximizing exposure.

[daveguy]

There are regulations in the US against accounts and data collection on children under 13.

[mirimir]

I wonder if KidSwitch violates this. I mean, it actually claims to track user behavior. Isn't that "data collection"?