[pcrh]

Would someone be able to comment on this:

Why is it not possible to require websites that wish to market to children to be certified as "child safe". Such sites would be audited by an independent entity that would grant them some form of encrypted key. These could be in age bands, e.g. <6yr, <12 yrs, <16 yrs, etc. also also possibly geographically.

We do this for many other things, from toys to public venues.

Parents could then set their child's device to only allow access to sites with the appropriate certification.

This way the children are as safe as their parents allow them to be, without sharing their child's identity, and the rest of the population also doesn't have to share their identity with dubious authentication service or the government.

There's probably something wrong with this idea, if so I'd be glad to hear it!

[netdevphoenix]

The economic reality is that none of the social media websites would pass the test without a significant hit to their profits. If you want to see the long-term economic projections of a social media website without the younger market see Facebook.

It's like asking tobacco companies to reduce the toxicity and addiction of their products, inevitable collapse.

The reality is that the business model itself is inherently toxic.

[pcrh]

Even when cigarettes were smoked by ~50% of the adult population, there were restrictions on sales to children. Why can we not accept the same for websites?

[Caius-Cosades]

Because that's not the goal of this legislation. The point is to eradicate anonymity, so that people with wrong opinions can be made to go away.

[beloch]

1. A tech solution like this is unlikely to work since kids will be highly motivated to circumvent it and will likely be more tech savvy than their parents.

2. Leaving whether or not to allow social media use up to parental discretion creates a situation where some kids get permission to use social media and the rest use it anyways because of peer pressure.

3. If tackling the problem from the side of children and parents doesn't work, you can try to address it by acting on the social media companies themselves. Unfortunately, these companies will resist any effort to make their products less addictive. Social media companies are mostly American and lobby (bribe) the U.S. government into taking punitive action against anyone who tries to tax or regulate them in a way that actually impacts their bottom line. Since you can't tax/regulate them without facing reprisals, one alternative is to ban them as ineffectually as possible. e.g. Australian kids are still using social media, so the social media companies don't really care. They may actually benefit from the cool/rebel factor their services have been granted.

[pcrh]

The same problem exists for almost any product that might be a risk to children, from cleaning products to "adult" literature.

Parents would be much more able to restrict the devices a child has access to (or its controls) than the websites they visit (absent website certification).

[inigyou]

It doesn't have to work 100%, just add enough friction. We bypassed game site blocks in IT class but we felt dodgy about it and did our work most of the time.

[WithinReason]

1. You can't forge a cryptographic signature

2. Fine the parents

[beloch]

Fining parents because of the bad actions of a foreign tech company would generally fit the definition of "political suicide" for any government dumb enough to do it.

[WithinReason]

How about fining parents because of the bad actions of a foreign tobacco company when they buy cigarettes for their children? Political suicide as well?

[dgrcode]

This seems to be a situation where the stated problem (protect children) is different to the actual problem (surveillance).

Your proposal doesn't solve the actual problem.

[inigyou]

Protecting children is a real problem, the internet right now is doing massive damage to everyone (not only children but for some reason we don't protect adults). Opportunists are seeing the opportunity to paperclip mass surveillance onto actual child protection efforts.

We can fight this by supporting child protection mechanisms that don't act as mass surveillance, such as the one in California that merely reports whether root said the user is a child, and fighting ones that do, such as the one in New York that checks your ID.

[Caius-Cosades]

Protecting children is not a problem for the government's who are pushing this through. It is, however, a problem for parents. And for the children that are getting the raped.

It should be noted that it was not a major priority for government's to bring justice for the victims of the Epstein class or for the 250 thousand children that got sexually abused in the UK.

[inigyou]

The Andrew Formerly Known As A Prince got deprinced. I think some countries had actual arrests? It's mostly the USA that pretends it didn't happen.

[pcrh]

Surveillance of who by whom? Requiring identity disclosure guarantees surveillance.

[mike50]

Example I'm running my personal academic website and I research something like human sexuality or transgender people how will this be enforced since the website is just one person? Remember people in high school have been credited authors on research papers.

[pcrh]

How many 10 yr olds are going to read a academic article on transgender studies?

And if they are curious about the question, it would be better if they found sources that frame the issue appropriately for their age.

[bryanlarsen]

That sounds somewhat like what Canada is trying to do. Its bill makes certain types of content unavailable to people under the age of 16.

Canadian kids will be able to access social media, as long as that site has effective means to prevent bullying and similar restrictions.

https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/safe-soc...

I doubt any sites are actually going to comply, so it'll be ban in practice.

[pcrh]

It would be a ban only to children. "Addictive" sites without certification could still be accessed by those who are no longer their parent's responsibility.

[inigyou]

https://monolith-project.org/blog/age-verification/

The California law might interest you (but with reverse data flow - the way you proposed doesn't work because most websites have mixed content)

[pcrh]

Mixed content would have to be tagged as such.

Mixed content isn't a problem for broadcast TV or newspapers. They simply avoid publishing material not appropriate for children, e.g. broadcast news programs don't show gore, even when a place has been bombed and is littered with body parts.

[inigyou]

Websites mix content far more than TV shows do.

Think about the Twitter home page (back when it was Twitter). If someone tweeted something that should be restricted, what do you suggest?

Mark the whole page over-18 and effectively ban kids from using Twitter until it falls off the front page? That's ridiculous.

Ban people from tweeting over-18 content or hide it from everything except direct links? This is what Twitter management would choose, in reality, if the other option aa the above. They'd just make the whole platform child-safe. Remember how much outrage this caused when Tumblr tried it? But you want to force this on all platforms.

Hide the over-18 tweet from users who are under 18, but display the rest of the page? This is the obviously most sensible solution, and it requires the server to know whether the user is over 18.

[johneth]

I think "over-18" posts on X within the feed are hidden behind a "please verify your age" button if you've not verified your age (in UK and parts of EU, probably Australia too). They're intermixed with non-hidden posts.

X lets post authors mark their content as NSFW, and I'd assume they're doing some sort of algorithmic checking or making use of user reports of content to classify content too, to varying degrees of success. It's definitely subject to the whims of the platform owner, given the sheer amount of racism, sexism, and porn that isn't marked.

My account is >18 years old so it never showed up for me (it just used the account age to determine I'm old enough), so I'm going by what others have said.

[inigyou]

That's pretty stupid, that means X has to verify your age. If the browser could just send a header saying whether adult content was allowed, the server could just respect that and not verify anyone's age.

[pcrh]

Kids don't need Twitter.

There would obviously arise a market for a moderated, or more regulated, version of this type of social media.

Social media doesn't deserve an exemption from the efforts society makes to protect children in other domains.

[pibaker]

Who do you trust to moderate a platform like twitter? Its current owner? The US government?

[inigyou]

So basically you just ban any company from serving both kids and porn stars, no matter how hard they keep them separated? This is one of the avenues people often go down to censor the porn industry. You're effectively doing "think of the children! ban porn!" without doing it explicitly.

[pcrh]

A system as above would matter only to sites that want children among their audience.

Those that don't, or don't care, would not seek a rating, and would not be accessible to devices that parents control. Otherwise they would be free to host whatever legal content they wish.