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> If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page I don't understand why you think this is true when I specifically

> If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page I don't understand why you think this is true when I specifically described a label that is applied to "an individual section" of the page. To be more explicit: Today, each post on the Reddit front page appears in its own container element. If an 18+ post's container element could have some kind of "adult-content" attribute set then some web browsers could render the whole front page normally with the exception of that individual element. Perhaps they could black it out, collapse it, display it with a pixelated overlay and a "Request Access" button, whatever the browser supports and the device administrator prefers. > The solution is obvious: you show it on the front page if the user is 18+. However, your proposal deliberately forbids this and says the front page must be the same for everyone. Why do you think that my proposal requires that the front page must be the same for everyone? Providing different views to different users is the entire point of every child safety law and rating scheme I've ever seen. I'm merely saying that my preferred approach would be to mandate that potentially objectionable content is semantically annotated in the HTML somehow, so that each user's browser can apply whatever view restrictions (if any) the device's owner wishes. I think this is better than mandating that web browsers send personal information to every web site they visit and also mandating that sites pre-filter the content they send back.

flavionm 1mo ago
Won't that effectively leak the user's registered age bracket anyway? And if so, what advantage does it has over the current law?
- angiolillo 1mo ago
  Good questions! First, leaking a device's content filtering settings is not the same as leaking a user's age bracket. For example, if the server identifies a web browser that isn't loading tags annotated with "sexual-content" that might indicate that the user is a child but could equally well indicate that they're a corporate office worker, religious, or anyone else who prefers not to see such content at the moment. Second, if the standard defined multiple semantic tags or levels (e.g. violence, extreme violence, substance use, unknown, etc) then this gives more granular control to device administrators who may care more about some types of content than others. Third, web browsers wouldn't even have to leak the content filtering settings. For example, perhaps an administrator could configure the web browser to render content overlaid with a semi-opaque blur, in which case the server would not know. Fourth, and this is more philosophical, asking websites to provide more information to the device so that an admin can do their own filtering leaves the choices to them. Whereas if the only way a device admin can filter content is to submit the age of the device's user to a third party so the third party can decide how to pre-filter the content it sends back, that gives an uncomfortable amount of control to platforms and regulators.

flavionm 1mo ago

Won't that effectively leak the user's registered age bracket anyway? And if so, what advantage does it has over the current law?

angiolillo 1mo ago
Good questions! First, leaking a device's content filtering settings is not the same as leaking a user's age bracket. For example, if the server identifies a web browser that isn't loading tags annotated with "sexual-content" that might indicate that the user is a child but could equally well indicate that they're a corporate office worker, religious, or anyone else who prefers not to see such content at the moment. Second, if the standard defined multiple semantic tags or levels (e.g. violence, extreme violence, substance use, unknown, etc) then this gives more granular control to device administrators who may care more about some types of content than others. Third, web browsers wouldn't even have to leak the content filtering settings. For example, perhaps an administrator could configure the web browser to render content overlaid with a semi-opaque blur, in which case the server would not know. Fourth, and this is more philosophical, asking websites to provide more information to the device so that an admin can do their own filtering leaves the choices to them. Whereas if the only way a device admin can filter content is to submit the age of the device's user to a third party so the third party can decide how to pre-filter the content it sends back, that gives an uncomfortable amount of control to platforms and regulators.