[xoa]

>I’m in the “we should protect kids online” camp, but I am not sure there’s a real way to do it without compromising privacy for everyone.

Of course there is, it's easy! You take a white list approach instead of an auth one. The default is that the general Internet is exclusively for adults. Anonymous = adult. Then use the DNS system to make a set of .kids ccTLDs, with government controlled registries. Then legal standards can be set for who gets a .kids.cc domain and what content is allowed, what meta-data is required, what services can be provided (which could be blanket stops, like no ads or social media under age 7, or granular, like "age 7-11 can only talk to registered educators or other children within given domains"), and so on. Then everything is in place to have router manufacturers give parents a super easy interface (and technical ones can do their own easily) to add their kids, have a password for each kid, and either automatically filter by general age, or let parents drill in and select specific categories or the like. And it'll all Just Work. Yeah it'll be a lot less stuff then on the main internet, but with government money to fund things and parent-based payment all abstracted from what kids see there will be as much as there was on PBS or the like back in the day.

So specific ID/passwords/parental control is exclusive to those who haven't reached majority. Once they do they an just dispense with it and access everything like we do right now. The entire approach being taken everywhere is 100% backwards, because it's not about the kids at all it's about control over adults.