Comment by Bender
3 months ago
I stand by my repeated statements of how this could have been solved simply using an RTA header [1] on the server side and require the most common user agents to look for that header putting the onus on parents where it currently legally resides. It's not perfect, nothing is nor ever will be but using the header solution is entirely private, does not store or leak data and puts the decision into the device owners rather than creating perverse incentives to track everyone. It may actually protect most small children whereas today teens quickly find a work-around and then teach smaller children how to work around these centralized gate-keepers. The current solutions are just about tracking people by real identity and incentivizing teens to commit identity crimes.
Correct.
None of these laws are actually about protecting children. That's not the real goal. The real goal is the complete elimination of anonymity on the web, where both private companies and the state can keep tabs on everything you do.
Not being able to be at least pseudo-anonymous has a real chilling effect on speech and expression. Even if there are laws in place protecting such rights, people will self-censor when knowing they are being watched.
It's how freedom of speech and expression dies without actually scratching that part off of the bill of rights.
It's a mix. I'm sure there are some people really trying to protect kids. There are other people that just want all porn off the Internet. And there are bad actors that want total surveillance. And they are all on the same side of this issue.
Yea. People which cured their children with lobotomy also thought that they we're doing something good. These usefull idiots are in some sense worse than the perpetuators it self because they are primarly the enablers of such behaviot simply because of their naivety or worse, ignorance.
> I'm sure there are some people really trying to protect kids.
yes, I believe the term for them is "useful idiots"
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The goal was to put Company A in between you and the web. Collecting data and selling it for profit. It’s never about what they say it’s about. Lobbyists have bought every aspect.
I think you're right. Surveillance power is nearly a side effect of the personal enrichment.
> None of these laws are actually about protecting children. That's not the real goal.
I fear that for 90% of the supporters of such laws (just like with chat control) this statement is wrong, and they truly do want to protect minors from harm. But that only makes it worse, because this type of argument completely misses the mark while the other 10% get to laugh up their sleeves while continuing to manipulate public opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46154208
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981
How do you know this?
Technical people have been gleefully eliminating anonymity on the web for the last 20 years. Progressives should be the party on the side of maximal freedom but really in the US we have one neo-liberal party wearing two different disguises.
The problem is normies don't operate under assumed anonymity. So when the hordes of unwashed regular people joined the internet they wanted their face everywhere. People were shamed out of their handles. Some people gave up their anonymity to make yet another faceless bullshit blog-as-a-resume. Look at most of the top karma farmers on HN. Most of them post their personal information in the their bio. Pathetic.
> people will self-censor when knowing they are being watched.
This has been happening both in public and on the internet for over a decade now.
> Not being able to be at least pseudo-anonymous has a real chilling effect on speech and expression.
The normies would argue you have nothing to hide if you aren't doing anything wrong. The average voter, regardless of party, will happily surrender every ounce of freedom for the thought of security. Hell, I remember sometime around 2007 DEFCON became a first-name-basis conference!
> bill of rights
It's more of a bill of privileges given NGOs and PACs are regularly paying to erode the core rights granted to citizens. Either through lawfare by circumventing the courts and suing companies into bankruptcy, or by directly purchasing congressmen via donation.
What I have found in general is people who cry and complain about this kind of thing were, at one point, happy to have it happen to their political enemies. The laws that are paving the way for age-gated deanonymized internet were at one point used as a cudgel to beat their political enemies down. When the tables finally turn after the Nth "protect the children" bill, it's the other people left crying and now suddenly its a "problem".
This was inevitable on the day the Web ceased to be a third space and became an integral part of day-to-day life.
Some time between Facebook opening to the general public (mid 2006) and the launch of the iPhone (early 2007).
"Online" was no longer a meaningful distinction from there on out.
You may not be old enough to remember Edward Snowden or Mark Klein (who went unnoticed), but there never was anonymity.
My pet theory is that this requirement is part of a mob war and porn and whatever else the MindGeek people are involved with is being attacked for the much of the same reasons Ukraine attacks Russian oil refineries.
> The real goal is the complete elimination of anonymity on the web...
I'm ok with running this experiment (not sure how it really turns out) BUT only if everyone participates. Governments and businesses get to watch me... I get to watch them. If the death if anonymity is inevitable, as unpleasant as that sounds, the goal to shoot for then is universal application
>Not being able to be at least pseudo-anonymous has a real chilling effect on speech and expression. Even if there are laws in place protecting such rights, people will self-censor when knowing they are being watched.
This supposed golden era of communication lasted for a very short period. Why is is so important that freedom of speech also be anonymous? What you're asking for is the right to talk to anyone with all societal, cultural, and interpersonal contexts removed.
>Why is is so important that freedom of speech also be anonymous?
Because it is a shortcut for an otherwise extremely hard to enforce freedom.
Can you afford to defend your speech in court?
Can you prove that an action taken against you by someone in power is retaliation against your speech?
Can you handle social ostracism by a majority that disagrees?
If the answer to some is no, your freedom of speech has practical limits.
This is not to say that a world with anonymous speech is necessarily better, I’m just saying that in terms of guarantees it has a clear advantage.
Case in point: will you answer a workplace questionnaire the same way whether or not it is anonymous?
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Agreed, to recycle a past comment on the benefits:
____________
We never needed everyone to filter, just parents busy lobbying the government to impose crap onto every possible service and website across the entire world.
Instead, they should purchase devices for their kids that have a child-lock and client-side filters. All sites have to do is add an HTTP header loosely characterizing it's content.
1. Most of the dollar costs of making it all happen will be paid by the people who actually need/use the feature.
2. No toxic Orwellian panopticon.
3. Key enforcement falls into a realm non-technical parents can actually observe and act upon: What device is little Timmy holding?
4. Every site in the world will not need a monthly update to handle Elbonia's rite of manhood on the 17th lunar year to make it permitted to see bare ankles. Instead, parents of that region/religion can download their own damn plugin.
I agree with your approach.
This is society though, hence it is an issue of law and people trying to tell other people what to do.
The Elbonia rite crowd don't just want this for themselves. They want to ensure that their vision of "what is right" is put onto everybody. And the AnkleShowers want their vision of "what is right" put onto everybody. And everyone else has their opinion too.
And the shit-shouting continues until finally someone says "But we can ALLLLLL agree that we want to protect our children yes?"
The issue has never been technical. It is how society has it's debates. Things like each issue becoming a two party extreme. Things like media rules that "both sides get equal airtime" even if one is a tinfoil hat wearing idiot.
As a society, we won't get properly better until we debate better and can accept middle grounds.
I understand the rationale - I am still against that. To me it is censorship.
Making it more sophisticated does not change this problem.
The problem is that some want to control other people. I am against this. For similar reasons I stopped using reddit - I finally had enough of random moderators censoring me and others.
I strongly disagree. Having ratings on content isn’t censorship. It’s providing additional information.
Like a nutrition label. It’s your choice (as an adult) what you want to do with that information.
I'm starting to see platevoltage's point. Yes it's additional information, but it is an indirect form of censorship.
Remove one more f-bomb and we'll give you that PG-13 rating you're wanting.
Food labels are easier to justify because they have a very tangible effect on one's health. But even those can be misleading in the end.
I say keep the food labels, but reconsider the movie ratings system. What if it went away? The studios and exhibitors would have to *tell us* who the movie is intended for. What's so hard about that? What is this magic benefit we're getting from a rating system?
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Sure it is. An NC-17 rating is basically a death sentence for any movie.
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On the planet I’m from, the pedophile in chief is already intentionally miscategorizing information so it can be censored using mechanisms like this, and is implementing a public playbook explaining how this is one pillar of a platform to force his particular brand of right wing christian “morality” on the rest of the population.
At best, you’re defending coordinated disinformation campaigns, though the article is about attempts to make compliance with the propaganda mandatory.
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To me it is censorship.
If you are a small child it is indeed up to your parents to censor adult content and I am all for that. Kids will be upset but that is part of growing up. When the parents believe the kids are emotionally ready for adult content then I am sure they will get parental controls disabled. Even if that should not come to pass the kids once they are teens will bypass it anyway.
If you are an adult and your followers are adults then this does not really apply to you or your device. This would only hurt groomers, most of whom use video games for that purpose.
I don't think we're talking about whether it's appropriate for kids to see the stuff. I think we're talking about who gets to decide to *mandate* an RTA header on a website. (They can already add it voluntarily so we are talking about a hypothetical mandate.)
Let's say your website mentions the MLK assassination. Or maybe the 9/11 attacks. Just a mention; no disturbing details. Is some government entity now going to force the RTA label? Who gets to decide? An RTA label would be a death sentence to educational sites.
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> The current solutions are just about tracking people by real identity and incentivizing teens to commit identity crimes
Not all of them.
The solution currently undergoing large scale field testing in the EU uses cryptography (specifically zero-knowledge proofs) to allow you to anonymously prove to a site that your government issued ID shows you are above the site's minimum age, without the site getting any information about your real identity.
I've seen articles on that. What I do not like about that is one has to trust that is really the way the system works and that special people do not have a special API key to get their own hash from the adult site related to a user ID and then submit that has to a special API end-point to reverse or undo the anonymization. Having been a liaison to law enforcement I just assume that is a thing but I am also fine with people saying I am paranoid. A header does not require this level of trust nor a dependency on a third party see recent Cloudflare outage.
Youtube has been repeatedly told about videos that are abusive towards children and they do nothing about it. They're not interested in effective solutions
Youtube has been repeatedly told about videos that are abusive towards children and they do nothing about it. They're not interested in effective solutions
Youtube is user-generated content which is precisely why I would prefer they add an RTA header. Random people uploading videos can claim to be kid friendly when they are not. Take that responsibility away from the uploaders and away from Youtube and hand it to the parents. Less work, liability and cost for Youtube should be a nifty incentive at the risk of blocking some advertising to children which is another loaded topic all together.
> Take that responsibility away from the uploaders and away from Youtube and hand it to the parents.
The system described still requires action by the webmaster. Their options are: deny the entire site to those sending an RTA header; evaluate the content themselves; or trust the uploader. (Or a combination: have uploaders opt-in to evaluation for a fee, with the content denied to kids by default.)
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I mean they have invested a ton into their kid-friendly mode and there have been quite a number of “adpocalips” where ad revenue for many content creators was dramatically slashed due to YouTube’s over-zealous moderation.
It is a serious business concern, there are occasional panics triggered by consumers complaining that a brand ad is shown next to and benefits from the attention of some distasteful content, and they start to bleed important advertisers on mass. YouTube then proceeds to get defensive and demonetizes (removes all ads from) or tags as adult-only any video that may be concerning, where avoiding false negatives takes much more precedence over avoiding false positives.
Of course this is not directly tied to protecting children, but this incentive structure is partly aligned and it is a strong one.
Their kid friendly mode is still completely full of absolute crap that you wouldn't want your kid to see.
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Out of curiosity, who would YouTube implement an RTA header? Which resources would have the header and which wouldn’t?
Out of curiosity, who would YouTube implement an RTA header?
Their app developers unless it is set globally and in that case their network engineering team.
Which resources would have the header and which wouldn’t?
If the app developers send the header on any video flagged as adult then just specific videos. If they created a unique URL that all adult content would reside under then it could potentially be the network engineers. It really depends on how much work they put into it so that more people could view the content assuming user agents become legislated to check for the header.
Bold of you to assume that legislators know how any kind of implementation works. They just propose general rules like "kids underage can not access this content" and the technical implementation doesn't matter to them. I think this is the reasons we should vote more technical competent people into politics.
How would this work where children are hell bent on bypassing this control? Won't they be able to install browser plugins which will remove this header similar to how they are using free VPNs to bypass age checks?
Children who are hell bent on bypassing controls will always find a way. It helps them not just stumble on it though when they're not ready. If they really want to access it, they already know about it and what it is
I can't believe in 2025, nearly 2026, that anyone would seriously suggest a header as a valid way of doing anything like this. Headers can be spoofed, modified along the way, or flat out ignored. DNT header is the obvious go to example here.
An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for all traffic on the network that the parental units never even know about. I'd venture there would be plenty of YT, TikTok, Discord threads, etc that would provide a step-by-step set of instructions to do it. Probably just point to an image to download to copy to your SD and voila.
This would require SSL interception, which requires a custom certificate on the end device.
If your kid can figure out how to install a custom certificate on their device and MITM SSL to evade filters, (a) you never secured the device (b) you already lost long ago and (c) let’s get that kid a job or a scholarship.
how many of those of us reading this right now would have been able to do this? how many of us reading this right now had parents that would had a clue about any of this to question it?
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DNT is a client header that failed to get traction and never did anything useful. RTA is a server header and small children will not be doing this for the most part and parents can of course disable parental controls assuming one day they are enabled by default for child accounts. Like I said, it's not perfect. Teens can of course bypass this a million different ways. For every 100 million dollars a company spends to lock teens out of something is just an extra 5 lines of python or 15 seconds of their time on AI if that. Currently many teens watch pirated movies and porn together in VR and assorted games that allow placing a media player in G-rated world building games.
It's probably worth noting that if teens can not view porn, they will likely produce porn making an entirely new tax free underground market on Tor or other networks.
This is just for keeping small children out. Nobody in the history or future of earth have ever or will ever locked teens out of a thing. Archive this comment so we can review it at a later time.
> An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for all traffic on the network that the parental units never even know about
An aspiring teen could just have sex with another aspiring teen...
You won't stop teenagers from finding a way to be teenagers. Part of being a teenager is learning how to subvert the rules set by adults to fulfil one's hormonal imperative.
If your goal is to make something teenager proof, you have already failed before you started. Many teenagers have the intellectual capacity of full grown adults, it is their emotional intelligence and life experience that is lacking. Doing any more than putting a simple padlock on the door will not stop them, the same way a determined adult couldn't really be stopped, and teenagers are determined in most everything they try by default.
> An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for all traffic on the network that the parental units never even know about.
Who cares? Why is this an issue? An aspiring teen can (and will) do many things their parents don't know about. It's part of growing up. Making air tight surveillance systems to prevent teens from talking to friends or looking at boobies is many a bridge too far.
> An aspiring teen could set up an RPi
If circumventing a measure requires setting up a RPi and modifying headers, I would call it widely successful, that would be less than a thousandth of kids.
> An aspiring teen could set up an RPi that modifies headers for all traffic on the network that the parental units never even know about.
Just like how teens are already bypassing age-gates? The point is to make it the responsibility of the parents and not of the government.