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on-device filtering is the right way to go, but it shouldn’t be a matter of sending metadata about the user to a service- instead services should provide standa

on-device filtering is the right way to go, but it shouldn’t be a matter of sending metadata about the user to a service- instead services should provide standard metadata about the content to the device and the device can choose what, if anything, to display. This preserves privacy better by keeping more information about the user local, and gives people better tools to decide what metadata categories they want to filter- for their kids and for themselves.

ajsnigrutin 18d ago
That's much harder to implement. If you ban advertising eg. online casinos to underge users, the service would have to send two different ads (one 18+ and one for younger people too), and the browser would have to decide which one to play. Same for eg searching on google, browsers would have to filter out every <div> with adult content, meaning half the page would be empty, but with a browser "underage" flag, google could just turn on safe search and not allow turning it off.
- 1e1a 18d ago
  Plus, as soon as the user clicks on one of these optionally filtered elements, the service will know how exactly what browser is filtering.
inigyou 18d ago
That solution doesn't actually work, and it angers me that people can't see why it doesn't work. That solution requires that the entire website must be child-safe or none of it. That solution requires that Tumblr must ban porn if Tumblr has any underage users. The alternative would be that Tumblr would randomly not load for underage users because some recommendation or ad would be over 18, and so it would rapidly have none.
- angiolillo 17d ago
  Why must an age rating apply to an entire website? As one example, the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) (and to a lesser extent the prior Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSACi)) had a rating scheme that allowed sites to provide a default rating label that was then overridden for individual pages and resources using <meta> tags and RDF-based labels. For example, Tumblr could set a family-friendly default rating and append a different rating on specific user pages, images, or ads. An even more granular scheme could be applied via HTML attributes which would allow an individual section, image, link, or text snippet to be marked e.g. as "sexual", "violent", "substance use", "spoiler", or even "unknown" for unreviewed user-provided content. Then leave it up to web browsers to choose whether and how to render elements with these attributes. (Hidden entirely? With censor bars? Pixelated?) There would be substantial logistical and regulatory challenges to get websites to comply, but it doesn't seem substantially harder than the current age verification schemes.
  - inigyou 17d ago
    Because let's say you have a website like Reddit with a mixture of 18+ and 13+ stuff. Something that's 18+ but not explicit gets really popular. Pornhub will now livestream congressional debates, someone posts a link to this, and it gets fifty zillion upvotes as people can't resist commenting "wtf". Now you have a dilemma: do you show it on the front page or not? If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page, which for many of them means they're locked out of the entire site because that's the way they know to access the site. But if you don't, then the law is forcing you to censor your front page for everyone, even for adults. 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. Which leaves the other two bad options.
    - red_admiral 17d ago
      Haven't paid video streaming services solved that one already? Admittedly not with age verification, but you can set up child accounts. I presume Disney+ is ok here as they want to be in the family-friendly market but also offer content meant for young adults.
      - flavionm 14d ago
        That's exactly what the law will do, but on the device. The parents will input the child's age during device setup, and then every service will query the age range based on that and work in "child account" mode. Without any requirement for verification, it'll be completely up to the parents to decide what their child will see, while the services will only get the minimum information needed. It'll basically make parental control easy, but still in the parent's control.
    - angiolillo 17d ago
      > 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.

ajsnigrutin 18d ago

That's much harder to implement. If you ban advertising eg. online casinos to underge users, the service would have to send two different ads (one 18+ and one for younger people too), and the browser would have to decide which one to play. Same for eg searching on google, browsers would have to filter out every <div> with adult content, meaning half the page would be empty, but with a browser "underage" flag, google could just turn on safe search and not allow turning it off.

1e1a 18d ago
Plus, as soon as the user clicks on one of these optionally filtered elements, the service will know how exactly what browser is filtering.

inigyou 18d ago

That solution doesn't actually work, and it angers me that people can't see why it doesn't work. That solution requires that the entire website must be child-safe or none of it. That solution requires that Tumblr must ban porn if Tumblr has any underage users. The alternative would be that Tumblr would randomly not load for underage users because some recommendation or ad would be over 18, and so it would rapidly have none.

angiolillo 17d ago
Why must an age rating apply to an entire website? As one example, the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) (and to a lesser extent the prior Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSACi)) had a rating scheme that allowed sites to provide a default rating label that was then overridden for individual pages and resources using <meta> tags and RDF-based labels. For example, Tumblr could set a family-friendly default rating and append a different rating on specific user pages, images, or ads. An even more granular scheme could be applied via HTML attributes which would allow an individual section, image, link, or text snippet to be marked e.g. as "sexual", "violent", "substance use", "spoiler", or even "unknown" for unreviewed user-provided content. Then leave it up to web browsers to choose whether and how to render elements with these attributes. (Hidden entirely? With censor bars? Pixelated?) There would be substantial logistical and regulatory challenges to get websites to comply, but it doesn't seem substantially harder than the current age verification schemes.
- inigyou 17d ago
  Because let's say you have a website like Reddit with a mixture of 18+ and 13+ stuff. Something that's 18+ but not explicit gets really popular. Pornhub will now livestream congressional debates, someone posts a link to this, and it gets fifty zillion upvotes as people can't resist commenting "wtf". Now you have a dilemma: do you show it on the front page or not? If you show this on the front page and it's 18+, it'll lock children out of the front page, which for many of them means they're locked out of the entire site because that's the way they know to access the site. But if you don't, then the law is forcing you to censor your front page for everyone, even for adults. 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. Which leaves the other two bad options.
  - red_admiral 17d ago
    Haven't paid video streaming services solved that one already? Admittedly not with age verification, but you can set up child accounts. I presume Disney+ is ok here as they want to be in the family-friendly market but also offer content meant for young adults.
    - flavionm 14d ago
      That's exactly what the law will do, but on the device. The parents will input the child's age during device setup, and then every service will query the age range based on that and work in "child account" mode. Without any requirement for verification, it'll be completely up to the parents to decide what their child will see, while the services will only get the minimum information needed. It'll basically make parental control easy, but still in the parent's control.
  - angiolillo 17d ago
    > 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.