What might those be? Everything I've seen is ineffective or can be compromised. I think letting parents parent is probably the best option, but will require better/easier/free tools and education to help lock down different categories of harm.
1) When buying a device, store employee could program user's age range.
2) When configuring a device, parent may toggle "child mode" checkbox to switch the device into "child mode", protected with a password or fingerprint.
3) The tokens, containing a private key (same for all tokens) can be sold in liquor stores to adults only. This token could confirm the age without a passport.
It is interesting that is US (unless I am wrong) you can vote and change the government without a selfie and a passport, but you need them to use Reddit or Discord.
> but will require better/easier/free tools and education to help lock down different categories of harm.
There should be a single big "child mode" checkbox for normal people and "configure" button for 1% of geeks. Most people do not need tools and have no interest in configuring allowed categories.
> Everything I've seen is ineffective or can be compromised
Selfie/passport also can be compromised by asking a friend/older brother/parents to verify your account. Especially if you have a poor adult friend with alcoholic dependency in dire need of a new portion.
> When buying a device, store employee could program user's age range.
Big Brother would like to hire you. This is the kind of idea I only expect to hear from a politician or a grandparent that has difficulty unlocking their iphone.
Number 2 is basically here for many things, but not as easy as a single checkbox. Number 3 is something I've thought about, but it seems that's never seriously discussed in politics.
There should be a single checkbox (when setting up the phone), and "configure" button hidden deep in the settings for the minority. Most people do not like complicated UIs and unnecessary work.
There's nothing that can't be worked around or compromised in some way. Even the face scans and ID scans being used today are being circumvented.
In the end we do need parents to parent, but websites should help. The easiest way would be for websites to send an HTTP header to the client so that censorware can know to block or allow it accordingly.
I assumed that when he asked "What might those be?" he was talking about privacy preserving ways to address that same false justification. I'm not sure how you took it some other way.
They didn't say OP's proposal wasn't privacy-preserving, but that preservation of personal privacy is contrary to the actual reason that age checks are being pushed by politicians.
The header must confirm that site is age-appropriate. No header should be interpreted as "adults only". This is the safest option, and it doesn't require 99% of webmasters to do anything which is in my opinion better than any other proposal.
Exactly. That's the problem I have with the "restricted to adults" header. Ideally the header wouldn't have a "safe for kids" value either because what one parents feels is safe will be very different from what another parent would find appropriate. I think The Internet Content Rating Association had the right idea were the header would show if a site contained specific types of content or not and it was up to parents to decide how much to censor.
Website generates a random nounce, the government offers to sign the json { over_18: true, nounce: [inserted_here] }. That signing is coupled to you being signed in, or scanning your passport via nfc or whatever
That significantly reduces the leaked information: the service doesn't receive any information who you are, and the government doesn't know what service you use. They can collude, but that does not reveal more to them than most current age-verification methods. Children can get another adult to sign their request, but that's a working attack on nearly any age verification (including in-person purchases)
Correct observations. But have you wondered why those solutions are ineffective?
Kids nowadays use phones and tablets for the most part. They don't even know how to use a computer that well and are not taught properly. But this isn't really on the kids.
Now, suppose I'm an OS developer. I cannot simply fork Android or iOS to create a child-friendly toy operating system for smartphones with a reduced set of features. The hardware is locked down to oblivion. They want you to use their OS. And their OS has no user accounts, permissions, or firewall configs.
Well, then suppose I'm an app developer, and I want to make a browser or social app with built-in client-side content filtering. But my browser doesn't pass Cloudflare or whatever attestation, and is blocked from half of the sites. It might not even be approved on their app store so people will never find it.
Fine. Then I want to change what content is filtered within the approved apps. But those options either don't exist or is some kind of cloud service where you give them your age, and they decide what to filter.
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Parents can't even control what software runs on their own hardware. How are they supposed to control what runs on their child's hardware?
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"The market failed", so they can sell you parenting among other things as a service, with surveillance as a free gift. The tech companies make money while the government gets control over the populace. It's a terrible arrangement.
That is why most digital parenting solutions you've seen are ineffective or can be easily compromised. Tech companies along with the government are playing chess against you at every level of the stack. Don't ever forget the PRISM program exposed by Edward Snowden. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook - they're all complicit. Don't look at what their PR department says, look at what they do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Revelations
One possible short-term solution is antitrust legislation for hardware vendors to ship their devices without an OS... is what I would say if we lived in a sunshine and butterflies world. Maybe the EU is not thoroughly captured yet and still has the ability to implement this, but I doubt it. Technoauthoritarians are building a panopticon to contain the sheep, and they're not even hiding it at this point:
The actual long-term solution is difficult. We have to make our own computers and radio equipment before they outlaw mining and manufacturing using the same safety excuses, which will happen when humanoid robots can do those jobs. The entire stack has to be open-source, which means we will have to diffuse fab technology everywhere so that people can manufacture computers locally, from mining to wafers to final assembly, in every city, or even at home. There are very talented people working on this problem, so it will be done. Just don't fall for the narrative that surveillance is inevitable or needed.
