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This might somewhat reliably work for children aged up to ~8, but above that many determined literate children will be able to circumvent these things for thems

This might somewhat reliably work for children aged up to ~8, but above that many determined literate children will be able to circumvent these things for themselves and their friends. We had all kinds of tricks up our sleeves to play RuneScape in CS class and read various video game guides that would have normally been blocked by word filters in the school's proxy server. How are you going to stop a kid who figured out how to boot some Linux from portable media and is now handing these out to their entire friend group? At some point your only option is to closely watch them every second, but then what's the point of all that electronic parental control nonsense in the first place? The only reason these kinds of controls may appear to work is that younger children simply aren't interested in the stuff that may be blocked.

stebalien 1y ago
Yeah, I agree. Nothing will stop a determined and smart child from getting what they want. My goal is to describe a system that's as secure as ID verification without all the drawbacks.
neruthes 1y ago
I think the current boot feature will disallow arbitrary EFI booting. And most mobile device manufacturers do not allow bootloader unlocking for consumers. That being said, there is no guarantee that a determined child will be prevented from apt install git build-essentials and cloning Chromium source code and compile a modified version of Chromium; or from using ncurses and libcurl to hand-make their own tiny browser; or from receiving a premade browser using nc -l 8080 > www.AppImage. As long as the exposed functionalities are Turing-complete and any tiny networking is possible, a determine child will eventually make it happen.
mindslight 1y ago
"Give websites your ID" requires doxing yourself to every site out there, including forums etc which will heartily embrace the excuse to dox you. "Magic ZKP faerie dust" still requires locked down corporate controlled devices implementing remote attestation that destroys everyones ability to run the code of their choosing on their device (see UK's system). Of course Google advertises the cool seems-like-privacy ZKP part rather than the totalitarian remote attestation/"Safety"Net/WEI part. Filters on the device, including preventing kids booting/installing alternative software only requires devices to prevent easily running other OS images on demand. Boot signatures suffice. And if designed to support it, filters could also be run on the router or by a mobile provider. That last approach is still the least freedom-destroying, by far.

stebalien 1y ago

Yeah, I agree. Nothing will stop a determined and smart child from getting what they want. My goal is to describe a system that's as secure as ID verification without all the drawbacks.

neruthes 1y ago

I think the current boot feature will disallow arbitrary EFI booting. And most mobile device manufacturers do not allow bootloader unlocking for consumers. That being said, there is no guarantee that a determined child will be prevented from apt install git build-essentials and cloning Chromium source code and compile a modified version of Chromium; or from using ncurses and libcurl to hand-make their own tiny browser; or from receiving a premade browser using nc -l 8080 > www.AppImage. As long as the exposed functionalities are Turing-complete and any tiny networking is possible, a determine child will eventually make it happen.

mindslight 1y ago

"Give websites your ID" requires doxing yourself to every site out there, including forums etc which will heartily embrace the excuse to dox you. "Magic ZKP faerie dust" still requires locked down corporate controlled devices implementing remote attestation that destroys everyones ability to run the code of their choosing on their device (see UK's system). Of course Google advertises the cool seems-like-privacy ZKP part rather than the totalitarian remote attestation/"Safety"Net/WEI part. Filters on the device, including preventing kids booting/installing alternative software only requires devices to prevent easily running other OS images on demand. Boot signatures suffice. And if designed to support it, filters could also be run on the router or by a mobile provider. That last approach is still the least freedom-destroying, by far.