3 ms·

Maybe 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’

Maybe 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 ago
You 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 ago
  Which Internet standard are you referring to? I’d like to check browser support.
  - JoshTriplett 8mo ago
    PICS 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 ago
      PICS 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 ago
        https://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 ago
        I 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 8mo 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 8mo ago
        This sort of lack of imagination is why governments are passing bad laws about social media websites.
        JoshTriplett 8mo ago
        It's not a lack of imagination. I can easily imagine why people would believe otherwise. They're still wrong, even if I can easily imagine how they came to believe that. But mostly, governments are trying to pass such laws because they want control, and kids are just a convenient excuse.
- darkwater 8mo ago
  Ok 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)

Maybe 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 ago

You 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 ago
Which Internet standard are you referring to? I’d like to check browser support.
- JoshTriplett 8mo ago
  PICS 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 ago
    PICS 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 ago
      https://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 ago
        I 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 8mo 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 8mo ago
        This sort of lack of imagination is why governments are passing bad laws about social media websites.
        JoshTriplett 8mo ago
        It's not a lack of imagination. I can easily imagine why people would believe otherwise. They're still wrong, even if I can easily imagine how they came to believe that. But mostly, governments are trying to pass such laws because they want control, and kids are just a convenient excuse.
darkwater 8mo ago
Ok 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)