I think this is the way. Not control, but just make it simpler for parents to handle their childrens devices. You dont have to make everyone share their age, you just make it so that parents can in a simpler way choose what the children should be able to access. Make it easy to do right, dont add more control. Its kind of the old anti-piracy copyprotections. The pirates always cracked it, and in the end, the ones who got to sit there trying to figure out what is the word in the manual is the user who actually paid for the game. So making it worse for the ones who paid, and better for the cracked version. So, make it simple.

It’s very hard to control kids internet access. Impossible really. Even if you do it fine at home, once they go to school it’s whatever policies the school has. Most require laptops and provide internet access.

> Classifying accounts as child accounts (moderated by a parent)

Notice also that even if you do this, you still don't need the service to be able to decrypt the content, only the parent.

This could even be generically useful, e.g. you have a messenger used by business and then the messages can be read by the client company's administrator/manager but not the messaging company's.

I think getting the age thing correct is key to get parental classification to work properly(I think now platforms just ask for a birth date which is lame) e.g

> Surveys by Britain’s tech regulator, Ofcom, find that among children aged 10-12, over half use Snapchat, more than 60% TikTok and more than 70% WhatsApp. All three apps have a notional minimum age of 13: https://archive.ph/y3pQO

Once you get the classification correct — and AI cannot it do this — only via community ombudsman/age verifiers, in a privacy first way*, the app stores can easily tell the app devs what accounts are sensitive and filtering should be much more effective.

*Basically once your age is verified by a real human for your device(using device local encryption to verify biometrics) you are set. No kid should be able to bypass and install apps it on devices that their parents hand to them. There will always be black market devices with these apps, but there are ways of beating those to be very minimal by existing tech.

That doesn't work, unless the system knows everyone's family relationships.

Not guesses. Not is told about and takes on trust. Knows.

There's nothing to stop a kid creating a fake adult account and using it as an adult, perhaps creating their own kid account for "official" use.

Ultimately this is an unsolvable problem without a single source of truth for verified ID and user age.

The only responsible way to do that is to create a global "ID escrow" agency, where ID details are private and aren't available to governments or corporations without a court order, but the agency can provide basic age checks and other privacy services of a limited nature.

Good luck with that idea in this culture.

Meanwhile we have the opposite - real ID is known to governments and corporations, personal habits and beliefs of all kinds can be tracked, there is zero expectation of privacy, and kids still aren't protected.

I don’t agree we should Treat everyone as an adult by default online. We wouldn’t do that in any other circumstances.

> Classifying accounts as child accounts

It's ok to drive Dad's truck unless he catches you and tells you no.