[himata4113]

Yes! This is the way, give parents the ABILITY to advertise the users age to browsers, apps and everything in between. Only target cooperations, do not target open source projects. Fine websites for not using this API (ex: porn sites). Assume an adult if not present.

[fn-mote]

> Fine websites for not using this API (ex: porn sites).

Recent posters here are clear that porn sites are setting every available signal that they are serving adult-only content.

According to them, you are targeting the wrong audience.

Facebook/Instagram studying how to get young users addicted should be of greater concern. I have my doubts about the effectiveness of age-based blocking there, though.

[troyvit]

> Facebook/Instagram studying how to get young users addicted should be of greater concern. I have my doubts about the effectiveness of age-based blocking there, though.

Yeah quite the opposite. Once they have that formalized attestation they will move in like sharks.

[edgyquant]

Both are problems, porn sites have also targeted children and any non-enforced age “verification” on these sites is simply plausible deniability that isn’t plausible at all

[XorNot]

In what way have porn sites targeted children? They have no disposable income to target and the product is literally self age gated in appeal.

[fivetomidnight]

No. This is not the way.

> give parents the ABILITY to advertise the users age to browsers, apps and everything in between.

Accounts and Applications to services that provide countent are set to a country-specific age rating restrictions (PG, 12+, 18+, whatever). That's it.

None of the things you mentioned have any point to concern themself with the age or age-bracket of the user in front of the device. This can and will be abused. This is very obvious. Think about it.

[ryandrake]

Why should the applications get to decide if they are appropriate for a particular age? Shouldn't that be up to the parent? I shouldn't need to tell my kid: "Well, to use this compiler software, you need to set your age to 18 temporarily, because some product manager 3,000 miles away decided to rate it 18+. But, set it back to age 13 afterwards because you shouldn't be on adult sites." It's stupid.

[fivetomidnight]

I get what you mean, but I might have miscommunicated a bit.

Clarification: "are set to" means by the parent. "Accounts and Applications to services that provide countent" like media content providing apps like discord, netflix, etc. that ARE able and/or bound to rate their content.

Package Manager and Software Installation in general are usually locked behind root/admin passwords anyway. Especially on kids' devices their user should be non-admin, no?

So, when any piece of software is installed, it is by choice of the parent.

That's not unreasonable then?

[himata4113]

That is what I meant by age(-rating), you are correct. However, drop country specifics - too complicated. Age brackets are enough: child, preteen, teen, adult. At around 16-17 these should be dropped anyway since at that point people are smart enough to get around these measures anyway and usually have non-parent controlled devices.

[idiotsecant]

This is a great solution to the stated problem. The issue is that nobody is actually trying to solve the stated problem. This is a terrible solution to the real 'problem' which is the lack of surveillance power and information control.

[simion314]

>This is a great solution to the stated problem. The issue is that nobody is actually trying to solve the stated problem. This is a terrible solution to the real 'problem' which is the lack of surveillance power and information control.

So on the Sony consoles I created an account for my child and guess what they have implemented some stuff to block children from adult content on some stuff.

So if Big Tech would actually want to prevent laws to be created could make it easy for a parent to setup the account for a child (most children this days have mobile stuff and consoles so they could start with those), we just need the browsers to read the age flag from the OS and put it in a header, then the websites owners can respect that flag.

I know that someone would say that some clever teen would crack their locked down windows/linux to change the flag but this is a super rare case, we should start with the 99% cases, mobile phones and consoles are already locked down so an OS API that tells the browser if this is an child account and a browser header would solve the issue, most porn websites or similar adult sites would have no reason not to respect this header , it would make their job easier then say Steam having to always popup a birth date thing when a game is mature.

[necovek]

When one clever teen figures it out, they will share it with 80% of their friend group, making that number 80% and not 1%.

Let's go back to parenting: yes, world is a scary place if you get into it unprepared.

[fsflover]

100% law enforcement is harmful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47352848

[gzread]

When one teen figures out how to get alcohol without ID, 80% of them will.

[necovek]

From https://www.edgarsnyder.com/resources/underage-drinking-stat...:

  > Nearly 75% of 12th grade students...have consumed alcohol in their lifetimes.

and

  > 85 percent of 12th graders ... say it would be “fairly easy” or “very easy” for them to get alcohol.

So, yes?

[himata4113]

That's why I suggested kernel enforced security (simple syscall) that applications could implement and are incredibly hard to spoof / create tools and workarounds for, but I got downvoted to hell.

Permission restricted registry entry (already exists) and a syscall that reads it (already exists) for windows and a file that requires sudo to edit (already exists) and a syscall to read it (already exists). Works on every distro automatically as well including android phones since they run the linux kernel anyway. Apple can figure it out and they already have appleid.

[simion314]

For linux we have the users and groups concept, the distro can add an adult group and when you give your child a linux a device and create the account you would just chose adulr or minor , or enter a birthdate. No freedom lost for the geeks that install Ubuntu or Arch for themselves and we do not need some extra hardware for the rare cases where a child has access to soem computer and he also can wipe it and install Linux on it. Distro makes can make the live usb default user to be set as not adult. Good enough solutions are easy but I do not understand why Big Tech (Google and Apple) did not work on a standard for this. (maybe both Apple and Google profits would suffer if they did)

[himata4113]

Definitely the latter, exploiting kids (roblox) is very very profitable.

[gzread]

Three states now implement this solution that you just called a great solution, and most of HN still hates it. Are they seeing something that you're not? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47357294

[idiotsecant]

Psst I was talking about zero knowledge proofs. Read twice before talking.

[gzread]

Can't see where you said that. You definitely commented about parental controls.

[mijoharas]

This is what I think. I saw someone else on HN suggested provide an `X-User-Age` header to these sites, and provide parents with a password protected page to set that in the browser/OS.

Responsibility should be on the website to not provide the content if the header is sent with an inappropriate age, and for the parent to set it up on the device, or to not provide a child a device without child-safe restrictions.

It seems very obviously simple to me, and I don't see why any of these other systems have gained steam everywhere all of a sudden (apart from a desire to enhance tracking).

[qup]

Seems simple until you try to figure out what's allowed for what age, which surely will differ by country at a minimum.

[mijoharas]

To me that's a geo-ip lookup on the online service, which they kinda need to do anyways so seems fine?

(if there are further restrictions then it gets messy, but I feel like that's the current state of things anyways? at least for online services which I'm mostly speaking about here.)

Mostly my point is I don't think attestation is required. I think that responsibility should fall upon parents, and I don't want to have to give my ID to any online sites, because I don't remotely trust them to keep that safe. I'm less worried about them storing a number I send them about how old I am.

[qup]

There's ~195 countries with 195 sets of laws.

And 50 US states.

[mijoharas]

Yeah, and frankly if you have a porn site (for example) you already need to deal with the different country restrictions.

Having no restrictions would be great, but since a bunch of countries are passing these laws I'd appreciate having a minimally invasive version instead.