[ElectroBuffoon]

Or parents could set accounts to "child" and every service send the proper tags so the programs deny access locally. No third parties involved.

PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...

POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R...

ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...

[Nevermark]

Reality check: Children have many and useful opportunities to use devices in all kinds of situations away from parents.

Useful situations. On devices parents don't control.

Expecting parents to follow their children around 24/7, in case they access some adult site from a public or friend's device they don't control is beyond ridiculous.

Privacy protecting, anonymous validation of 18+ status solves the problem, in a way that doesn't require unrealistic "parenting" behavior, protects everyone's privacy, and is even helpful to responsible adult sites.

Condescendingly telling parents to "parent" in a way that is virtually impossible, instead of helping, is just rolling out the red carpet for alternate non-anonymous age verification legislation.

Zero knowledge tech, like end-to-end encryption, protects privacy.

[Palmik]

Children will always be able to use devices or accounts borrowed or bought from adults, regardless of how the initial verification is carried out. Not to mention that the verification key / token / device might also be borrowed or when copied or transferred, depending on how it's implemented.

I think a device level setting is actually quite pragmatic.

[dzikimarian]

What exactly is unrealistic in marking child devices as a child device?

[dormento]

Also known as "parenting". This would be solved long ago if it were not a politically charged topic. So much wasted time, it boggles the mind.

[Nevermark]

I am having trouble understanding how anyone is unaware that children have pervasive and useful access to devices outside of their parent's sphere on a daily basis.

Or why anyone would discourage use of cryptographically hard privacy protecting solutions.

This is the perfect opportunity to take zero knowledge proofs mainstream, like end-to-end encryption, as a solution for myriads of current privacy leaking services and infrastructure.

The alternative to cryptographically protected privacy, is sites increasingly collecting people's identifiable information and associating their identities with access/behavior logs. Information that can never be assumed to stay private.