The issue with the Internet

A lot has been made recently of the need to protect kids from bad stuff on the Internet.

I’m not a fan of the “we need to protect the children” rhetoric. We all know it’s often misused. But even I have to admit that this isn’t a “kids shouldn’t play Dungeons and Dragons” type moral panic. The Internet isn’t a generational trend, it’s the entirety of human activity, and I think it would be difficult to argue there isn’t harmful stuff in that.

So far our collective societal policy on the Internet for kids has been, roughly, “ok whatevs, they get EVERYTHING”. I honestly don’t think it works. I mean, would you let your kids wander alone in a city? Just like you wouldn’t let your 13 year old wander in a topless bar where drunk people are dancing on the table, we should at least try to do something so kids are at least somewhat shielded from *some* parts of the Internet.

Ok, some people will disagree, but this is not what this blog post is about.

The issue with age verification

The real issue is, even if you *do* want to protect kids from bad stuff, you need to figure out who’s a kid, which means age verification (for everyone). And there is no miracle solution; age verification creates:

• Significant private data security issues
• A concerning risk of expansion of the system for government control

There’s no way around it. It does create those risks. And so a lot of people have been, understandably, opposed to the very idea of age verification.

But regardless of this opposition, societies and government have increasingly realized / decided that kids *should* be shielded from some part of the Internet, and have increasingly mandated age verification, even if the tech community says there are risks and there is no miracle solution.

The miracle solution

Yeah… Actually, we did come up with a pretty good system. It’s quite simple, and while it isn’t perfect, it does seem to adress most of these issues reasonably well. Here’s how it would work:

1. When setting up a new device, parents can specify the age of the child that will use it.
2. Device manufacturers implement an OS level system that informs third parties of the user’s age.
3. That’s it. The apps (sites, whatever) now know what to allow or not, what to display or not.

Why is this better?

Data security:

The way age verification is being implemented now requires every service to come up with their own individual solution (aka: “figure it out”). They work with partners, use AI or documents or whatever but data is spread out and more prone to mistakes, leaks and attacks. And let’s make not pretend otherwise: mistakes, leaks and attacks ALWAYS happen.
With the miracle solution, there is none of that. A central point is much easier to lock down, and no exchange of document or sensitive private data is necessary.

Government control:

If things get out of hand, you can revert the setting yourself. This is a reasonable protection that is in the hands of the parents. Of course kids can get around it, but let’s not pretend otherwise: kids can ALWAYS get around it.
And of course a totalitarian government could decide to lock things down even more for kids or adults, but that could be done regardless of this system. To my understanding, this wouldn’t help in that at all.

Why are we not doing it?

As far as I know governments aren’t considering this system, which might be because the tech community hasn’t made a lot of noise about it. It’s also easier to say “just figure it out” than to force Apple to implement something (though the EU has proven it is not impossible).

Maybe they’re not considering it because they haven’t heard about it enough from the tech community, because the tech community is busy fighting the very idea of age verification (news flash: we’ve kind of lost that battle already; age verification is being implemented everywhere around the world, and the risks it incurs are becoming real right now).

And maybe it’s because Zuckerberg was actually the first to openly suggest this could be the best solution, and people don’t like Zuck so they thought it had to be a bad idea (as it turns out, I think this might be the exception. Even if his motivation is simply that he doesn’t want the responsibility of age verifying everyone… news flash: I don’t think any of us want him to have that responsibility either).

Finally, Apple has apparently fighting the idea tooth and nail, lobbying against it in Washington. They also don’t want the responsibility. Too bad, that’s the least bad idea we have. And they’re being babies: they wouldn’t carry the entire responsibility; it would mostly be in the hands of the parents, just like God intended! (sarcasm, but also not)
(To my knowledge, Google and Microsoft have stayed silent about it; I suspect if the idea gains steam they’ll try to make it go away as well).

The bottom line

It’s a good idea. It addresses most of the issues. Let’s push for it.