5 ms·

Here's my idea how "safe mode" might be implemented without selfie, passport and without every app or website owner having to spend money on compliance. The mo

Here's my idea how "safe mode" might be implemented without selfie, passport and without every app or website owner having to spend money on compliance. The mobile and desktop OS should have a checkbox "child mode" in the onboarding stage. Switching device to "child mode" allows only installing white-listed apps from the government list and opening white-listed websites from the government list. Parents may edit the white lists but not required to do anything other than checking a box and setting a password, or registering a fingerprint, or a paired device. The white-listed apps and websites (who volunteered to be included into the white list) must implement measures to ensure safety. Another option for a website to opt-in is to add a HTTP-header claiming safety. White-listed sites may be subject to additional regulations. Non-white listed apps and websites are not required to implement anything, including checking age, asking for selfies etc. If the parents add a website to the white list, it becomes their responsibility to ensure that it does not contain any harmful content. For example, if parents allow their child to use Telegram, Telegram is not obliged to do any age checks and content restrictions. My proposal achieves safe environment for all ages, but at the same time: - based on liberal principles of voluntary participation rather than on totalitarian principles like most other proposals - doesn't require any age checks, selfies or passports - doesn't require adult websites to do anything and spend money for compliance, unlike most other proposals which assume that every business must spend money on moderation and compliance - only those sites and apps that want to be in the white list, have to spend resources - doesn't require banning VPNs as VPNs will not be approved for inclusion into a white list

GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
Browsers already support safe browsing - a service that checks opened urls for fishing, so safety can be provided as a mode of such service (app store can check app url there). Also it doesn't really need to go through government, AFAIK DuckDuckGo and some DNS providers implement such feature independently.
- codedokode 2mo ago
  No. SafeBrowsing is a black list, and it doesn't provide the necessary level of safety. I propose to use the white list. Also, SafeBrowsing works only within a browser and my proposal is to implement child mode system-wide.
  - GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
    Safe browsing is filtering, and the result depends on what filter or service you use. It can be a black list or white list, it's an implementation detail invisible to the browser, it just sends a url and receives a reply whether it's ok to open. The only problem is that such filer is not provided yet, or maybe it is, I just don't know, and browsers don't implement switching to this filter.
CommanderData 2mo ago
I like this approach but this is a power grab similar to the purchase of Tiktok...
- codedokode 2mo ago
  Where is the power grab? Everything is voluntary except for the requirement to support child mode.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Probably the government list. That part is a bad idea. It can be reactive instead, allow anyone to declare their site is child-safe and then punish false declarations.
    - codedokode 2mo ago
      The problem is that you cannot punish foreign websites, and there definitely will be ones allowing to bypass restrictions.
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        UK has no problem telling ISPs to block them or else.
  - CommanderData 2mo ago
    Yeah sorry I meant to say in general this whole thing is a power grab like the acquisition on Tiktok. I can't see any reason that passes the sniff test to say otherwise.
inigyou 2mo ago
Half the laws people are complaining about are literally this although instead of a checkbox, it asks you for the birth date of a hypothetical child whose protection you want the device to match. And they don't use a government whitelist, but expect sites to self-declare and reserve the right to take action against sites that use misleading classification.
- Arch-TK 2mo ago
  I genuinely don't know if the people who keep doing this are just stupid, unreasonably contrarian, or intentionally trying to sound unreasonable (and are in favour of the UK style approach) to weaken the apparent position of being against the UK-style approach. It's incredibly disappointing to see people constantly complain about the actually _reasonable_ implementations (that don't rely on a loss of privacy for adults _or_ children).
- like_any_other 2mo ago
  I.e. they establish the framework for censorship and deanonymization by making everyone else responsible for child-safety, except the person that should be setting up the parental controls - all they get to do is select a "child" or "not child" option. The law doesn't require they be given any control besides that - no default whitelist of apps and websites that they could edit, no blacklist, no screen time limits, nothing. Just an easy way to hand off control to someone else. A way that would be unnecessary if they instead got real parental controls. As explained in my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256731
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Why would you make John Smith responsible for what Mark Zuckerberg displays to Jimmy Smith?
    - fn-mote 2mo ago
      Stop the disingenuous comments please. 1. John Smith is the parent. Giving them power to control what the child visits allows them to do their parenting job. 2. What proposal makes Facebook responsible for anything? Surely none of these. They will just say they are appropriate for ages 13+ and what will parents do?
fauigerzigerk 2mo ago
So under your proposal, all checks would happen exclusively on the end-user device. Websites would do absolutely no age checking, nor would they get any kind of signed certificate from end-user devices vouching for the user's age. Am I understanding this correctly? Would this not immediately lead to demands for hardware makers to prevent the installation of non-compliant operating systems?
- codedokode 2mo ago
  White-listed sites could report the content rating (for example in HTTP headers) and the browser in "child mode" would refuse to display non-appropriate content. Lack of the header means that content is for adults only (unless parents manually white list the site). Also, websites could use different domain for "child mode" version. > Would this not immediately lead to demands for hardware makers to prevent the installation of non-compliant operating systems? In child mode, yes, installation of any other OS (compliant or not) should be prevented.
  - fauigerzigerk 2mo ago
    >In child mode, yes, installation of any other OS (compliant or not) should be prevented. Not just in child mode, because child mode would only exist in compliant operating systems. It would not exist in all Linux or Android distributions for instance. So governments would have collude with or regulate hardware vendors to control and certify what can run on the hardware available in the country. This would be a highly centralised system with the potential the become tyrannical.
txrx0000 2mo ago
I also have a proposal for lawmakers. It's simpler, and it will address the digital parenting problem from the root, and also solve a bunch of other societal problems in the process: use antitrust to force hardware vendors to ship their smartphones without an operating system. End the mobile OS cartel and let there be competition. This digital parenting problem would have been solved long ago if hardware wasn't locked down to oblivion. Kids nowadays use phones and tablets for the most part, so there should be a bunch of toy forks of Android with child-friendly features builtin as a result of natural demand, and some might not even have a browser or app store. There should also be scam-proof OSes for the elderly. But those don't exist because the mobile operating system duopoly is forcing the entire population to use the same two OSes, stifling software competition that would normally respond to user demand for different feature sets.
- lern_too_spel 2mo ago
  Your proposal doesn't even attempt to solve the problem these laws solve. If I'm a parent, how do I prevent my kid from telling some website that they are an adult? AB 1043 solves this by letting me set this on their OS account, which all other services will query.
  - txrx0000 2mo ago
    AB 1043 doesn't solve anything. It just delegates parental responsibility to the tech companies - you're giving them your child's age and letting them decide what's good for the kid. > If I'm a parent, how do I prevent my kid from telling some website that they are an adult? You don't need to because all content filters and permissions can be implemented on the client-side at the OS and app level. Rather than every service taking your child's age and deciding what to filter, you decide what to filter based on your child's level of maturity. You'll have total control over what runs on the hardware. Think: user accounts and permissions, local firewalls and traffic inspection, executable permissions, app installation locks, stripped down browsers and apps, small local neural networks, bootloader locking with custom password, etc. The market will follow the gradient of user value and spawn a bunch of OSes with different feature sets, probably better than what I can come up with, and you pick the OS with features that suit your needs.
someguynamedq 2mo ago
So your idea is that the government determines the list of sites children get to use?
- codedokode 2mo ago
  The default list that parent may change but 99% won't bother doing it.
jiaosdjf 2mo ago
We already have all of this, multiple paid and free solutions exist across all major devices and operating systems, and at an ISP level. The only thing a parent has to do is turn it on, but apparently even that is too much work for people who would rather hand the state full control of their rights.
preg_match 2mo ago
I've had this exact same proposal, and it's basically perfect. We can go one further and require a fee for inclusion. Then, if Meta for instance really wants to be included in that list, they must prove they are child-safe AND pay a little fine. We can make exemptions for non-profits. The system would be self-paying, no taxes needed. A whitelist is the only thing that works. Anything else is not just stupid, it's ineffective. These laws are 100% ineffective. Many, maybe most, porn sites will just... not implement an ID check. A whitelist solves that.
ytoawwhra92 2mo ago
> - based on liberal principles of voluntary participation rather than on totalitarian principles like most other proposals Well, except for children, who under this proposal don't get to participate in anything online that hasn't been explicitly endorsed by the government or their parents. Too bad for that 17 year old who wants to get their news from Reuters rather than Fox. I personally prefer proposals that treat children as human beings first and foremost, and only infringe on their rights in specific cases where the reduction in harm outweighs the infringement.
- txrx0000 2mo ago
  Yeah, the First Amendment applies to children after all. We shouldn't give the government, tech companies, or even parents total control over children's online communications. The only exception is when they're very young, and even that should be actualized locally by parents rather than the online platforms or the government. I think a good test for maturity is whether they're able to purchase and use their own device. If the kid can figure out how to earn 100 dollars and buy a used phone off of Craigslist without your guidance, then it's time to let go or at least loosen your controls from device-level to the home router level. And when they can afford their own mobile data or figure out VPNs that can't be blocked by the filtering you set up on the router, I'd say they're ready for the open Internet.
hedora 2mo ago
Why would there be a government controlled white list? I guarantee such a list will contain surveillance watering holes like google, and pedo havens like roblox. 99% of the stuff my kids see that I wish they wouldn’t involves misogynistic/racist/incel jokes buried 20+ minutes into YouTube minecraft videos. Child mode should just require a second device (or a pin) to install apps, and include a adblock-list style whitelist (one regexp per line) for parents to select from for the web browser. Alcatel used to make landfill-grade android tablets with the first feature, no account required. That reminds me: Child mode should not require a third party account with a commercial surveillance firm, like it does on Android!
ebiester 2mo ago
And what stops children from reinstalling their OS? I know many kids can do it at 11 or 12. Or are you requiring BIOS lock? Are there restrictions on hardware to enable this?

GoblinSlayer 2mo ago

Browsers already support safe browsing - a service that checks opened urls for fishing, so safety can be provided as a mode of such service (app store can check app url there). Also it doesn't really need to go through government, AFAIK DuckDuckGo and some DNS providers implement such feature independently.

codedokode 2mo ago
No. SafeBrowsing is a black list, and it doesn't provide the necessary level of safety. I propose to use the white list. Also, SafeBrowsing works only within a browser and my proposal is to implement child mode system-wide.
- GoblinSlayer 2mo ago
  Safe browsing is filtering, and the result depends on what filter or service you use. It can be a black list or white list, it's an implementation detail invisible to the browser, it just sends a url and receives a reply whether it's ok to open. The only problem is that such filer is not provided yet, or maybe it is, I just don't know, and browsers don't implement switching to this filter.

CommanderData 2mo ago

I like this approach but this is a power grab similar to the purchase of Tiktok...

codedokode 2mo ago
Where is the power grab? Everything is voluntary except for the requirement to support child mode.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Probably the government list. That part is a bad idea. It can be reactive instead, allow anyone to declare their site is child-safe and then punish false declarations.
  - codedokode 2mo ago
    The problem is that you cannot punish foreign websites, and there definitely will be ones allowing to bypass restrictions.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      UK has no problem telling ISPs to block them or else.
- CommanderData 2mo ago
  Yeah sorry I meant to say in general this whole thing is a power grab like the acquisition on Tiktok. I can't see any reason that passes the sniff test to say otherwise.

inigyou 2mo ago

Half the laws people are complaining about are literally this although instead of a checkbox, it asks you for the birth date of a hypothetical child whose protection you want the device to match. And they don't use a government whitelist, but expect sites to self-declare and reserve the right to take action against sites that use misleading classification.

Arch-TK 2mo ago
I genuinely don't know if the people who keep doing this are just stupid, unreasonably contrarian, or intentionally trying to sound unreasonable (and are in favour of the UK style approach) to weaken the apparent position of being against the UK-style approach. It's incredibly disappointing to see people constantly complain about the actually _reasonable_ implementations (that don't rely on a loss of privacy for adults _or_ children).
like_any_other 2mo ago
I.e. they establish the framework for censorship and deanonymization by making everyone else responsible for child-safety, except the person that should be setting up the parental controls - all they get to do is select a "child" or "not child" option. The law doesn't require they be given any control besides that - no default whitelist of apps and websites that they could edit, no blacklist, no screen time limits, nothing. Just an easy way to hand off control to someone else. A way that would be unnecessary if they instead got real parental controls. As explained in my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256731
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Why would you make John Smith responsible for what Mark Zuckerberg displays to Jimmy Smith?
  - fn-mote 2mo ago
    Stop the disingenuous comments please. 1. John Smith is the parent. Giving them power to control what the child visits allows them to do their parenting job. 2. What proposal makes Facebook responsible for anything? Surely none of these. They will just say they are appropriate for ages 13+ and what will parents do?

fauigerzigerk 2mo ago

So under your proposal, all checks would happen exclusively on the end-user device. Websites would do absolutely no age checking, nor would they get any kind of signed certificate from end-user devices vouching for the user's age. Am I understanding this correctly? Would this not immediately lead to demands for hardware makers to prevent the installation of non-compliant operating systems?

codedokode 2mo ago
White-listed sites could report the content rating (for example in HTTP headers) and the browser in "child mode" would refuse to display non-appropriate content. Lack of the header means that content is for adults only (unless parents manually white list the site). Also, websites could use different domain for "child mode" version. > Would this not immediately lead to demands for hardware makers to prevent the installation of non-compliant operating systems? In child mode, yes, installation of any other OS (compliant or not) should be prevented.
- fauigerzigerk 2mo ago
  >In child mode, yes, installation of any other OS (compliant or not) should be prevented. Not just in child mode, because child mode would only exist in compliant operating systems. It would not exist in all Linux or Android distributions for instance. So governments would have collude with or regulate hardware vendors to control and certify what can run on the hardware available in the country. This would be a highly centralised system with the potential the become tyrannical.

txrx0000 2mo ago

I also have a proposal for lawmakers. It's simpler, and it will address the digital parenting problem from the root, and also solve a bunch of other societal problems in the process: use antitrust to force hardware vendors to ship their smartphones without an operating system. End the mobile OS cartel and let there be competition. This digital parenting problem would have been solved long ago if hardware wasn't locked down to oblivion. Kids nowadays use phones and tablets for the most part, so there should be a bunch of toy forks of Android with child-friendly features builtin as a result of natural demand, and some might not even have a browser or app store. There should also be scam-proof OSes for the elderly. But those don't exist because the mobile operating system duopoly is forcing the entire population to use the same two OSes, stifling software competition that would normally respond to user demand for different feature sets.

lern_too_spel 2mo ago
Your proposal doesn't even attempt to solve the problem these laws solve. If I'm a parent, how do I prevent my kid from telling some website that they are an adult? AB 1043 solves this by letting me set this on their OS account, which all other services will query.
- txrx0000 2mo ago
  AB 1043 doesn't solve anything. It just delegates parental responsibility to the tech companies - you're giving them your child's age and letting them decide what's good for the kid. > If I'm a parent, how do I prevent my kid from telling some website that they are an adult? You don't need to because all content filters and permissions can be implemented on the client-side at the OS and app level. Rather than every service taking your child's age and deciding what to filter, you decide what to filter based on your child's level of maturity. You'll have total control over what runs on the hardware. Think: user accounts and permissions, local firewalls and traffic inspection, executable permissions, app installation locks, stripped down browsers and apps, small local neural networks, bootloader locking with custom password, etc. The market will follow the gradient of user value and spawn a bunch of OSes with different feature sets, probably better than what I can come up with, and you pick the OS with features that suit your needs.

someguynamedq 2mo ago

So your idea is that the government determines the list of sites children get to use?

codedokode 2mo ago
The default list that parent may change but 99% won't bother doing it.

jiaosdjf 2mo ago

We already have all of this, multiple paid and free solutions exist across all major devices and operating systems, and at an ISP level. The only thing a parent has to do is turn it on, but apparently even that is too much work for people who would rather hand the state full control of their rights.

preg_match 2mo ago

I've had this exact same proposal, and it's basically perfect. We can go one further and require a fee for inclusion. Then, if Meta for instance really wants to be included in that list, they must prove they are child-safe AND pay a little fine. We can make exemptions for non-profits. The system would be self-paying, no taxes needed. A whitelist is the only thing that works. Anything else is not just stupid, it's ineffective. These laws are 100% ineffective. Many, maybe most, porn sites will just... not implement an ID check. A whitelist solves that.

ytoawwhra92 2mo ago

> - based on liberal principles of voluntary participation rather than on totalitarian principles like most other proposals Well, except for children, who under this proposal don't get to participate in anything online that hasn't been explicitly endorsed by the government or their parents. Too bad for that 17 year old who wants to get their news from Reuters rather than Fox. I personally prefer proposals that treat children as human beings first and foremost, and only infringe on their rights in specific cases where the reduction in harm outweighs the infringement.

txrx0000 2mo ago
Yeah, the First Amendment applies to children after all. We shouldn't give the government, tech companies, or even parents total control over children's online communications. The only exception is when they're very young, and even that should be actualized locally by parents rather than the online platforms or the government. I think a good test for maturity is whether they're able to purchase and use their own device. If the kid can figure out how to earn 100 dollars and buy a used phone off of Craigslist without your guidance, then it's time to let go or at least loosen your controls from device-level to the home router level. And when they can afford their own mobile data or figure out VPNs that can't be blocked by the filtering you set up on the router, I'd say they're ready for the open Internet.

hedora 2mo ago

Why would there be a government controlled white list? I guarantee such a list will contain surveillance watering holes like google, and pedo havens like roblox. 99% of the stuff my kids see that I wish they wouldn’t involves misogynistic/racist/incel jokes buried 20+ minutes into YouTube minecraft videos. Child mode should just require a second device (or a pin) to install apps, and include a adblock-list style whitelist (one regexp per line) for parents to select from for the web browser. Alcatel used to make landfill-grade android tablets with the first feature, no account required. That reminds me: Child mode should not require a third party account with a commercial surveillance firm, like it does on Android!

ebiester 2mo ago

And what stops children from reinstalling their OS? I know many kids can do it at 11 or 12. Or are you requiring BIOS lock? Are there restrictions on hardware to enable this?