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Comment by darklajid | Hacker News Reader

Wait, but is that related to the proposal? Not my native language and all, but I thought this is basically age-gating .. porn sites.

If you have a random app (unrelated, not a porn site) showing ads (unrelated unless a porn site) of alcohol services (not sure what that is, but .. unrelated/not porn), how does this apply?

How would you age-gate ads? Wouldn't that require a new X-KID-PRESENT: 1 http header so that each and every ad network can suppress ~questionable~ content? In fact: That's a great thought experiment: Is a site that serves ads that might contain 'adult' ads at times a porn site according to the British government and would need to verify that the visitor is of age?

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> That's a great thought experiment: Is a site that serves ads that might contain 'adult' ads at times a porn site according to the British government and would need to verify that the visitor is of age?

The simplest solution is to just require ID from everyone everywhere. They'll figure it out sooner or later if you let them build the infrastructure now.

Age gate all adverts ;)

> How would you age-gate ads?

They currently are age-gated. The age gating clearly isn't working. Advertisers in the UK are not allowed to target children with alcohol or gambling ads.

I don't care how it happens, but showing alcohol ads to children in apps for children because the parent has a credit card and owns the phone is sub-optimal.

Maybe, yeah. But is it neglect on the part of the developer (What are the consequences? You installed the app, no?), on the part of the parent not supervising (I'm kinda defending this position in this thread) or a reason to fix this with a generic law?

I'm not trying to be difficult, I really think that it's the parents' responsibility. And if ads are considered harmful in your household, don't use ad based apps / use an ad blocker? That should solve the problem on a local level.

Edit: It just came to my mind that ad supported apps are often/usually free.. Is that the case here? Because I seriously dislike the idea of blaming a developer of a free application for different ideas about morality or a bad choice ('copy/paste some ad integration code' - stupidity vs malice?) in implementing a way to make some money.

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