The answer is quite simple. You just don't verify it. The point isn’t to verify the age but to set the age on the device itself. If the parents set the age on the cell phone or computer, that setting is then used as the basis. The operating systems can be configured so that only the device administrator can change the age. Systemd already has a field for storing the age, which programs can read. If the child doesn’t know the root password for the laptop, they can’t change the age. If they do manage to get around that, well, so be it. The solution doesn’t have to be perfect because it would still be an improvement over the current situation without restricting adults in any way.

No, the point was that the actual decision happens client side and under the control of the sysadmin (the parent).

> You are just moving the verification point to another gate

Yeah, the gate being the decision of legal entities of age, aka. adults.

> You want to use your friends, Wi-Fi?

That would still do whatever your parent decided for you.

> Want to connect your can toilet to the internet?

Whether the toilet can connect to the network, is the decision of the network administrator, and toilets don't contain UAs, so that wouldn't even have software on them, where you could configure such behaviour.

> At glance this looks reasonable but how do you enforce that kids connection always goes through the parents control?

YouTube doesn't, the parent does.

> no anonymous connections are possible anymore to the entire Internet

Adults would not be blocked if I understand the GP comment. It's an age recommendation and it's up to the parent's to control it for their kids.

> we want to allow parents to control their kids.

Yes. Google, YouTube, AI in general will never be a replacement for parenting and they should drop the charade now.

> At glance this looks reasonable but how do you enforce that kids connection always goes through the parents control?

Because the parent is there to parent them?

Somehow I (and presumably almost everyone here) grew up with unfettered access to the Internet until now. Your kid isn't my kid, and someone relying on a computer to parent their children shouldn't ruin computers for everyone.

> but how do you enforce that kids connection always goes through the parents control?

Because the devices they're given by their parents should be administered by their parents. The minors wouldn't have administrative control over their devices at all.

> You want to use your friends Wi-Fi? Now that requires full identification so that we know that its not some kid

The device wouldn't care how the connection to the internet is made. It ultimately obeys the parents' settings.

The Wi-Fi doesn't need to care either way.

> You are just moving the verification point to another gate, it means that no anonymous connections are possible anymore to the entire Internet because we want to allow parents to control their kids.

Not at all. This wouldn't affect people without parental controls on their device at all. They'd be able to have anonymous connections as they do now.

The only difference from the server-side is adding some special path /.well-known/parental-info.json or an HTTP header to responses that would indicate what's on the page from a parental perspective, so the device can make a decision whether to display based on its parental settings.

"how do you enforce that kids connection always goes to the parents"

That's the thing. You don't.

It's the parents job to monitor how their children use the Internet.