There is a very good argument for OS level age ‘tracking’ as a means of creating a cohesive environment for software and websites to operate without having to implement individual age verification. The biggest actual issue here is how the OS determines what the user’s age is.
I agree with you on this. I wouldn’t mind if there was a mechanism on browsers which would send ‘child/teen/adult’ (or whatever they’d be called) data to websites in request headers since they already report a ton of stuff to the server anyways. It would be trivial for adult sites to check one header and limit access based on that. But the setting needs to be local only, so that parents could easily set restricted accounts for their kids. The point where user age must be validated via any 3rd party it’s no longer about parental controls and the whole thing becomes a surveillance tool.
Also the limits should be agreed somehow on at least somewhat global basis so that it’s only used for porn/gore/horror and other stuff like that. Things like sexual education, religious topics (likely both pro- and against-), medical stuff and things like that should be left out of the filtering. But as with practically every ‘think of the children’-thing proposed for the internet it’s got nothing to do with children nor used only for that.
The biggest damned issue i have with the “child / teen / adult” markers is they would literally serve up minors to predators.
Malicious sites already use browser markers to tailor exploits, now they can scoop up the kiddies with ease. A 14 year old browsing substack is currently just another random user. But put in OS level markers and now they’re spotlighted.
That’s the irony. It would make kids more fucking readily ltargetted.
That is a problem, I agree. But I still feel like it would be beneficial if there was some standard on HTTP or other protocols which could limit user access based on PG-rating instead of everyone developing their own approach. It could also be something like robots.txt, but for PG-rating, where client would do the verification.
And, as I already mentioned, that should be strictly local only setting and only for parental/guardian controlling what minors can and can’t do with their devices.
I agree with you on this. I wouldn’t mind if there was a mechanism on browsers which would send ‘child/teen/adult’ (or whatever they’d be called) data to websites in request headers since they already report a ton of stuff to the server anyways. It would be trivial for adult sites to check one header and limit access based on that. But the setting needs to be local only, so that parents could easily set restricted accounts for their kids. The point where user age must be validated via any 3rd party it’s no longer about parental controls and the whole thing becomes a surveillance tool.
Also the limits should be agreed somehow on at least somewhat global basis so that it’s only used for porn/gore/horror and other stuff like that. Things like sexual education, religious topics (likely both pro- and against-), medical stuff and things like that should be left out of the filtering. But as with practically every ‘think of the children’-thing proposed for the internet it’s got nothing to do with children nor used only for that.
The biggest damned issue i have with the “child / teen / adult” markers is they would literally serve up minors to predators.
Malicious sites already use browser markers to tailor exploits, now they can scoop up the kiddies with ease. A 14 year old browsing substack is currently just another random user. But put in OS level markers and now they’re spotlighted.
That’s the irony. It would make kids more fucking readily ltargetted.
That is a problem, I agree. But I still feel like it would be beneficial if there was some standard on HTTP or other protocols which could limit user access based on PG-rating instead of everyone developing their own approach. It could also be something like robots.txt, but for PG-rating, where client would do the verification.
And, as I already mentioned, that should be strictly local only setting and only for parental/guardian controlling what minors can and can’t do with their devices.
Of all the comments this post has generated, this is absolutely the most compelling argument against what I suggested. Thanks for your input.