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There 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 t
by JoshTriplett 7mo ago
There 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 7mo 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 7mo 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 7mo agoWhich Internet standard are you referring to? I’d like to check browser support.
- JoshTriplett 7mo 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 7mo 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 7mo 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 7mo 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...
- JoshTriplett 7mo ago> That's going to discourage usage of this tag by anything other than porn sites. That's good, because those are the only sites that should be saying "we're only for adults".
- skybrian 7mo agoThis sort of lack of imagination is why governments are passing bad laws about social media websites.
- darkwater 7mo 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)