alt Hacker NewsI think it's a great proposal if we add a slight alteration. Rather than requiring parents to maintain block/allow lists, the OS should allow the parent to lock in a birth-date, and that birth-date is used by the system to generate a user-age header, from there, websites can be legally required to respect the header and maintain whatever restrictions correspond to the applicable laws. This gives sites the ability to dynamically adapt to users, changing features and laws, as well as remove the burden from the parents of having to determine which sites are safe and not.
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This sounds more like the most reasonable solution.
Part of me has wondered if there could be a PAC that focuses on pushing for issues that "both sides" can agree on to politicians from both sides. The big thing is it has to be problems both sides agree are problems, and both sides agree on the solutions. The only problem I see is that there's an insane amount of contrarianism from both sides. I have seen both sides of the political aisle flip flop on issues because one side chose one solution this time around.
So let me tell you a story.
There are plenty of states including the one I live in where you are required to verify your age to visit porn sites.
If you add up all of the sites that are not hosted in the US and combine them with all of the sites that you can get around the age verification just by using a VPN, would you be surprised if I told you that the total is 100% with most just ignoring the law?
I'd really like to steer away from age entirely. This requires that we have universal rules about what content is appropriate for what age, which I don't think is necessary. For kids, why not let parents decide. And why not also use this infrastructure for adults. NSFW buttons are so common that it's clearly something that adults want too.