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by pnt12 130 days ago
The browser could also emit the age, which sites could check to block, and parents could manage via parental controls.

But that's no fun: can't assure control of the children (bad), monetization (even worse) not share with government (the worst, given the current administration).
2 comments
uyzstvqs 130 days ago
True, and that'd be the best method by far. A European politician recently proposed this.[0] The issue is that a single service can't just implement this. If I'm a service and I need age verification, I need something that I can implement by myself.

[0] https://democrats.eu/en/protecting-minors-online-without-vio...

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fooqux 130 days ago
> The issue is that a single service can't just implement this. If I'm a service and I need age verification, I need something that I can implement by myself.

I don't understand. A simple if age<18 check is quite a lot easier to implement than doing age verification yourself, or even shopping it out to some other "partner".

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uyzstvqs 130 days ago
It'd be even simpler. If a device is in Child Mode (which would be activated by parents during setup, and require a separate PIN to disable), it'd respond with status.isMinor = true. Or even simpler, make it a HTTP header.

What I meant is that it doesn't exist yet. It'd require operating systems, apps, browsers, etc, to all implement this system before a company like Discord can actually use it.

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fooqux 130 days ago
Eh, you're trying to boil the ocean. This functionality built into the browser would cover 99.9% of the use cases. Applications can be monitored separately, and I'm at a loss for why my OS needs to know about my age.

None of this matters anyway. If a 15yo boy wants to see boobs on the internet he's gonna find a way. There's so many ways to muck with the connection. Not to say these age verification checks work either; the recent usage of the Death Stranding character's face to bypass the checks is evidence of that.

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wiml 130 days ago
Even better, the site could just tell the browser that there's age-sensitive content and the browser could check it. There are already standards for this!

The problem is, it doesn't give a legally-enforced monopoly to any rent seeking data brokers, and it doesn't act as a foot in the door for requiring government-ID attribution of all internet activity everywhere.

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