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I don’t know why this isn’t a very simple Internet standard. The browsers on devices that have a child lock turned on could send an http header. People who have
by skybrian 8mo ago
I don’t know why this isn’t a very simple Internet standard. The browsers on devices that have a child lock turned on could send an http header. People who have websites that are adult-only could configure their web server to check for that header and do something appropriate.
That requires cooperation, but since most adult websites don’t want children to be visiting them, cooperation shouldn’t be hard to get. Governments can pass a law and businesses can set a config flag. For uncooperative websites, child-locked devices can check a blacklist.
Then it’s up to parents to make sure their kids only have child-locked devices and for stores to not sell unlocked devices to kids. It’s never going to perfect, but it doesn’t doesn’t have to be to change community norms.
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoThere is already a set of standards for this: websites can send content ratings to the browser, and the browser can choose not to show content on the basis of those ratings. We don't need another one, especially one that inverts the polarity by having the browser proactively send information to the site.
- skybrian 8mo agoMaybe that would work too, but “this device has a child lock turned on” seems like reasonable information to send? It’s a lot better than having to check ID’s.
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoYou know what's even better? Not sending anything. There's no value in sending that bit of information rather than in using what's already readily provided.
- skybrian 8mo agoWhich Internet standard are you referring to? I’d like to check browser support.
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoPICS is one older standard for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_Selection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_... There's also "Voluntary Content Rating", and the "RTA" marker.
- skybrian 8mo agoPICS and its successor (Powder) both appear to be abandoned. “Voluntary content rating” and “Rta marker” must be pretty obscure since I’m not finding a good web page. I think these would be better thought of as attempts to create a web standard rather than an actual web standard?
- JoshTriplett 8mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restricted_to_Adults https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restricted_to_Adults Some of these are already voluntarily supported by many common/popular sites.
- skybrian 8mo agoI did a bit of research. Looks like the <meta name="rating"> tag is supported by Google's Safe Search. Most adults probably do Google searches with "safe search" turned on (since we don't want porn sites most of the time) and this will put website owners in a dilemma. What if it's not for kids but you don't want to drop out of Google search results? That's going to discourage usage of this tag by anything other than porn sites. I asked ChatGPT about browser support for the meta tag. It appears to be an experimental feature in Firefox 146 that's turned off by default [1]. So, there's some work on this feature, but it seems like another signal is needed to say "It's not porn but I don't want my website to be visible on devices that have parental controls on," which would be needed for it to get mainstream usage. Also, often you won't want to drop out, but just redirect kids to more appropriate content. For example, Lego's website has a popup to redirect kids to the "play zone." It might be nice to do that automatically, but the <meta name="rating"> tag isn't going to do the trick. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Experimental_features https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Exp...
- darkwater 8mo agoOk but I bet that's easy enough to classify the receiving browser behavior when it gets some rating value from the webserver and it cannot show certain content to user because parental control (i.e. it's not going to do more requests from the same browser fingerprint)
- koolala 8mo agoThe CA law is pretty much this but for any program.
- glenpierce 8mo agoAs a parent, none of these are useful to me. Age is not a useful indicator of what’s appropriate for my kid. At best, this can avoid a small portion of some stuff they probably wouldn’t see anyway. The bad actors who I’m worried about actively try to circumvent any automated systems that block them. These age verification systems don’t help even if they worked as intended… or at least as advertised.
- skybrian 8mo agoI guess it would be most helpful for websites that can show that they’ve done their part by setting a config flag. If there’s no society-wide standard for what’s kid appropriate then it’s going to be hard to set up a system that satisfies everyone, but it seems like movie ratings sort of worked?
- katsura 8mo agoThen predators can show normal content to adults, while children are redirected. I'd rather the browser didn't leak this kind of information.
- skybrian 8mo agoIf the browser has to do the same thing for adults and children (to avoid detection) then it’s going to be hard to build a system that does different things for adults versus children.
- katsura 8mo agoAs you suggested, the websites could send information about themselves and the browser then could decide locally. Then there is no data leak. Obviously not perfect, because just like how the cookie law is abused, people could abuse this system as well. But the browser passing around headers is not the solution.
- skybrian 8mo agoAnother way to prevent a data leak would be for browsers to always fetch both web pages (with or without a child lock header) but obviously that doesn’t do what you want. It seems like what the browser displays is pretty important here and that goes beyond what gets disclosed in the original request. Another way to look at it: a predator could make a website specifically for children and advertise it as such, while covertly doing something bad. How is that different? If they control the website, they can do what they want. If you’re concerned about that then I think you need a whitelist of known good websites and you need to vet them by browsing it with the child lock turned on. Even then, it wouldn’t be hard to look harmless at first.