this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
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Privacy

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Some ideas re: age verification (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 weeks ago by mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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There has been a lot of swirl around various pieces of age verification legislation and how different platforms and operating system developers are responding. I believe strongly in privacy and that the responsibility for the online activities of children is that of the parents. That said, as a parent, I think we need better tools available, especially for those who are less technically inclined. Here are my ideas:

  • A standard needs to be established that is open source and cross platform.
  • It should run at the OS level.
  • It should be controlled by someone with administrator access to the device / OS (a parent in the case of devices used by children).
  • It should be completely optional for that administrator whether they want to turn it on or not.
  • The only input should be birth year of the child whose account is being set up. No other personally identifiable info should be included.
  • All relevant sites/apps/platforms such as social media and NSFW sites should be required to honor the age indicator.

It needs to be assumed that at some point, any kid who really wants to learn will find a way to circumvent any controls but parents do need better tools.

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[–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The only input should be birth year of the child whose account is being set up. No other personally identifiable info should be included.

Found a bug. You're trying to reduce the information, but you can't extrapolate someone's age from their year of birth. You need the full date to compare with the current date. Storing someone's full DOB is obviously more PII but it's essential.

[–] Ltcpanic@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

From a policy perspective, one compromise is building in this kind of ambiguity, for privacy sake. When policy specifies 13 years+1, the tradeoff is a max of +364 days in the worst case: someone who we know is born in 2015, is def 13 in 2029

[–] mrnngglry@sh.itjust.works 0 points 1 week ago

That is intentional. It provides a reasonable approximation of age while maintaining privacy. The big gaping hole someone pointed out to me is who gets to determine what is blocked? I don’t have a great answer for that. I imagine it would be the type of thing settled in courts. Personally, my biggest concerns are social media and access to AI. I think those two things are more harmful to the development of young minds and their mental wellbeing than anything NSFW.