Let websites issue a "window.isUserOver(16)" call once and then move forward based on the response to that query.
Age restrictions are different across countries and cultures. Parents disagree on age ratings given by boards all the time.
Have apps and websites declare the objectionable content they have, and let the device decide if it will show it or not according to parental controls.
If you’re a parent that pays attention to age ratings, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The age is meaningless. It’s the type of content next to the rating that’s important.
Your only option as a parent now to let your 14 year old play a violent game rated M that you specifically allowed is to give them a fully unrestricted device. They can now use that device to access gore, porn and gambling as well. How does this make any sense?
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1. Most of the dollar costs of making it all happen will be paid by the people who actually need/use the feature.
2. No toxic Orwellian panopticon.
3. Key enforcement falls into a realm non-technical parents can actually observe and act upon: What device is little Timmy holding?
4. Every site in the world will not need a monthly update to handle Elbonia's rite of manhood on the 17th lunar year to make it permitted to see bare ankles. Instead, parents of that region/religion can download their own damn plugin.
That would have been nice. The RSAC (Recreational Software Advisory Council) had a slightly more granular rating system that rated violence, sex, and language on a scale from 0 to 4 which unfortunately it lost out to the ESRB/IARC age-based classifications, and the internet appears to be going towards age-based classifications as well. Personally I like Common Sense Media's ratings which extend the standard violence, sex, and language flags by adding scales for "Products & Purchases" and "Drinking, Drugs, & Smoking".
From a semantic web standpoint it would have been useful if the web had codified these sorts of content flags so content producers could apply them to apps, websites, page sections, images, or even individual HTML tags. Then a device administrator could tell the operating system or browser to restrict certain content, either based on age-appropriate presets or based on custom levels for each type of content.
The RTA one was even pushed by the porn industry and is already in place in majors websites[3]
[2]:https://icra.org/webmasters/
[3]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
To effectively keep adult content away from kids, it merely requires secure boot and closed app stores, which are already widespread. And they are only required on the devices actually given to kids, rather than every single computing device.
But this proposal has another problem: it's easy for a website to run isUserOver(n) in a loop to derive the exact age. And on a persistent account, it can be queried every day to derive an exact birthday! Which comes back to my main point that the only technical schemes we should be considering are ones where information strictly flows one way - the website/app supplies information to the browser/OS, which then [may] implement parental control policy. anything else fundamentally boils down to a mandate for identity verification.
This is unacceptable. If I own a computer, I expect to be able to build and run any program, either written by myself or others, without asking anyone for permission.
> And they are only required on the devices actually given to kids
My whole point is that this limits the blast radius, compared to any solution involving "age" (read: identity) verification which has a blast radius of every computing device!
Perhaps my other comment will show you where I'm coming from better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645646
...I guess I don't really see the difference.
Closed app stores are widespread on some platforms but certainly not others, and I for one would really like them to not spread any further.
But in general there is a huge difference between the freedom-destroying properties of secure boot with closed app stores, and the next step of remote attestation. Remote attestation lets the server insist that you only run software fully of their choosing rather than your choosing, as a condition of interacting with them. This completely destroys the idea of protocols that mediate between two parties with diverging interests, and computationally disenfranchises users. Imagine the next generation of the Cloudflare nagwall that doesn't let you past unless you buy a new computer, and that new computer must be running MSWin/OSX and MSIE/Chrome.
(also note that my use of "secure boot" here includes systems like on Pixels where you can straightforwardly unlock the bootloader (erasing the data on the device), install whatever you want, and then relock. I still find these systems philosophically objectionable, as there is still a privileged key baked in and retained by the manufacturer - similar security properties could be provided without the backdoor. But pragmatically they've been working okay)
Why are we treating kids like adversarial threats? If my kid gets around parental controls, I’ll revoke their phone privileges. No need for invasive security.
Yes, as a parent you should be able to say this! You should also be able to say other things like I want my kid to have full access to wikipedia. Or I do not want my kid to have access to Faceboot, including a special Faceboot4Kidz version that their corporate attorneys have declared is completely suitable for minors.
My whole point arguing for client side controls is that it allows parents to express these types of fine-grained preferences, without merely putting the onus on tech companies to make these decisions in a top-down fashion serving their own self interest!
As for secure boot specifically, my point is that it is already here on basically every phone. One of the most security-forward phone OSs (Graphene) even requires it. I've got philosophical problems with manufacturers baking privileged backdoor keys into hardware, but it's already prevalent. If you think I'm arguing in favor of restrictions, then please go educate yourself on the security properties of remote attestation to see what I'm actually arguing in favor of heading off!
I’m well educastes on what remote attestation means, and I know it’s the status quo. But it is not required by law. And I’d very much like for it to continue being optional indefinitely, and not bundled with a different “save the children” law.
More specifically, I don’t want to have to prove to the OEM that I’m an adult to unlock my bootloader or disable SecureBoot. Or, more realistically, I don’t want OEMs deciding it’s cheaper to stop offering that choice because they don’t want to risk unlocking the bootloader on a child’s device.
Yes, then we're coming from the same place here.
> I’m well educastes on what remote attestation means, and I know it’s the status quo
I wouldn't describe remote attestation as the status quo. I generally use the web from my libre desktop, and apart from all the constant nagwalls (Cloudflare et al), I can access sites just fine. Perhaps on many mobile apps it's become some kind of status quo ("Play Integrity" I think it's called?), but even mobile browsers don't do attestation (WEI, or whatever they've renamed it to these days), IIUC.
> But it is not required by law
This is a red herring. None of these laws are proposing to require remote attestation, but rather anything that puts the onus on big tech to "verify age" (aka verify identity) will eventually lead to it being de facto required, with no direct law required.
> More specifically, I don’t want to have to prove to the OEM that I’m an adult to unlock my bootloader or disable SecureBoot. Or, more realistically, I don’t want OEMs deciding it’s cheaper to stop offering that choice because they don’t want to risk unlocking the bootloader on a child’s device.
I'm right with you about the knife-edge we're currently teetering on, where what is a pragmatic system that "merely" has gotchas could get more restrictive at any time. But Google already requires you prove you're the device owner to unlock a bootloader, and far too many manufacturers already don't let you unlock. But if done right, then none of this really matters for the parental controls use case - rather when unlocking the bootloader erases the whole device, that is the flag that lets a parent know.
This doesn't have to be perfect.
We agree it doesn't need to be 100% perfect. But it needs to be at least, like, 60% perfect, right? And unless you make it at least a bit hard to bypass, it will stop virtually no one.
When I buy/configure a device which prevents Little Timmy from viewing smut, that device is also going to have a parental code for installing new apps. If that part is left open, then Little Timmy wouldn't have to even bother getting a different browser, he could just install direct porn apps.
> But it needs to be at least, like, 60% perfect, right?
That can easily be reached by ensuring that child-mode covers default browsers and also the ability to install a new browser. If Little Timmy is turning on debugging over USB to sideload, then a fundamentally different parenting strategy is required.
Installing a new browser is already a bit hard for most people. I think you are a little skewed in your thinking being online on HN.
You also aren't thinking about age. Certainly 16 and 18 year old probably can get a new browser installed. But a 14 year old? 12 year old? 10 year old? That barrier is a lot higher the younger a kid is.
To give you an example of the workarounds kids will find: Youtube was blocked on school laptops, so the kids all started embedding Youtube videos inside of Google Sheets in order to watch stuff. This isn't, like, something a few savvy kids did, it was a widespread and common practice.