I don't want the market solving this. If we are going to do age checks it should be based on public key cryptography, be open source, and handled by the government. You verify with the government (or don't since they already know your age), you get some form of cryptographic attestation, present said attestation to websites/apps.

I'm not a fan of age verification in the first place, but I am extremely not a fan of random third parties doing the verifying.

>It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working. Just observe the world around you to know it’s a non starter.

Then who should? Government, where each implementation strips away rights to privacy - which in some countries, including mine, are a constitutional right? Where it expands powers of government to track everyone's activity online - and remember we're one election away from total policy shift(just like with latest US elections)?

Free market? The profitable solution is, depending on environment - either ignore the problem(profit from ads served to children, no extra work necessary), or strip away all privacy (to filter out bots and get paid more per ad).

The sad reality is that "parent should take responsibility" is least bad option available, and takes into the account individual development of a child.

Even creation of a highly regulated child only internet creates more problems - as now that becomes a highly profitable target for bad actors(both individual abusers, and companies trying to serve ads)

We have cars, and kids are not allowed to drive them. Yet we do not have mechanisms in place to ensure kids aren't driving cars because the responsibility falls on the parents, and it works. By and large, parents understand the threats and navigate this requirement perfectly fine; outliers are few enough that we can deal with them on an individual basis.

The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unfettered internet access is either that parents by and large don't actually agree with the threat assessment of said internet access for kids, or they ignore it because the consequences of doing so are disproportionately small. Personally, my vote is that they just don't think it's that big of a problem.

To me, the ideal solution would be more granular and better parental control configurations, especially on the web. Pair that with preconfigured devices that have "unremovable" parental controls, branded as "kids/youth phones." If parents care about this, they'll buy those phones for their kids and the problem is solved. If they don't, then this isn't something parents want, and we shouldn't really pursue it further.

There should be a law that forces social media companies to use a different algorithm for anyone under a certain age and be required to disclose it to the public. Possibly different algorithm depending on age group.

There should however be no force age verification. Social media companies already know how old you are or very close to it using the data they collect everyday. Using this data they should be required to use "best effort" to determine which algorithm you fall in. Nothing is 100% and we should stop pretending it is, sure some kids will find a way around but they would also if there is a age verification system.

The EU actually has a very good, privacy protecting way of doing this based on zero knowledge proofs.

Unfortunately they completely botched it by having the proof-of-concept app rely on Apple & Googles integrity APIs - which a bunch of countries copied.

Children here are a distraction. Any harm these companies are causing to children is also being inflicted on adults. The correct solution is to end the harmful behavior for all, not set up required identity verification.

I have a feeling that, in order to protect privacy, those regulations must fall on the parents too. It is their primary responsibility to take care of their children. Maintaining your kids digital hygiene should be important to the lawmakers and the child protections services.

> Companies have show that they are incapable or unwilling to address the problems they cause

> This is where regulation is supposed to come in.

This is such a misdirected effort... Why the heck are we focusing on addressing those problems for a small subset of population (kids) while creating even bigger problems for the rest? Lets regulate those companies into actually addressing the problems they cause for everyone!

> This is where regulation is supposed to come in.

Yes, agreed. However regulation does not necessarily have to mean age checks.

The most obvious low hanging fruit to start off with is open and interoperable content filtering infrastructure (ie parental controls) so that there's some common standard that literally everything supports out of the box. It needs to all work together - the current situation tends to be spotty and unreliable thus parents tend not to bother trying to use it.

Start with an extensible metadata format that enables websites to self-classify pages. Account for things like loading alternative resources on the same page. Mandate that all websites and app stores include such metadata and that all browsers and operating systems have some baseline functionality for making use of such data in a sensible manner.

Only after that has completely and utterly failed should we even begin to consider highly invasive measures such as mandating government ID checks.

There's nothing to be confused about, this isn't about age verification. It's about increasing surveillance and ending anonymity.

The "think of the children" shit is just a tactic to make emotional, non-critical-thinking people into die-hard soldiers for the cause that get angry when you argue against it.

"Oh you're against protecting children? What are you, some kind of pedophile?"

> companies have shown that they will abuse any personal information that is shared with them

This is the rot at the center of tech IMO. We have all these wondrous toys but we can't do something as simple as verify age without abuse. What's the point of all this tech if we can't trust any of it?

> It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working. Just observe the world around you to know it’s a non starter.

That's like saying "take a look at owners of fast sport cars, it's obvious this is not working and they have too many accidents." If you want to patronize other parents and think the government should be more responsible and parents less responsible, please state that honestly. Don't make up alleged "facts" to make a point.

Otherwise, I'll just say "it's obvious you're wrong, just observe the world around you and you know age verification is a non starter."

> It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working.

So punish those people.

Stop letting them neglect the responsibility a parent innately has to their child

and to the rest of us.

Related recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49084938

100%, it's not like adults are immune to misinformation, social media addiction or scams. Those platforms should be safe for all people regardless of their age, nationality, sexual orientation, gender or religion.

Parents should take responsibility and not let their children smoke, and we still banned selling cigarets to children. Just because something should be some way, doesn't mean as a society we shouldn't do anything about it.

In any case, the story with parents and addictive devices is even harder for parents than e.g. cigarets. For example, a LOT of schools in the UK think that it's good to give childrens ipads to study, and there's nothing that parents can do to prevent this. In this specific situation saying that "parents should take responsibility" is unfair to parents, because their only option to avoid this is home schooling.

The parenting argument is a complete cop-out. There's no universe where you can be shoulder hovering 24/7. This could've been solved years ago with robust parental controls. But companies like Google just didn't want to because they wanted to shove ads in kids' faces.

I think you've done a great job identifying the three main options and why two of them (parents, censorship-by-default) just will not work. That leaves regulation; the only way we will prevent children—or anyone—from coming to harm is to stop companies from producing this harmful content in the first place.

Either that, or just accept the harm.