Out of curiosity, how difficult (from reasonably expensive to impossibly expensive) would it be to build a second internet for children, completely disconnected from what we'd call the adult internet?

If we're going toward this highly curated model, which I'm not against, I'm wondering if this would be a reasonable solution to preventing the exploitation of minors on the internet.

Actually "completely disconnected"? That would be impossibly expensive.

Easier but still hard would be e.g. a child-mode[0] for consumer[1] operating systems that can only connect to a DNS resolver which itself only resolves certified-by-age-rating content. This would "only" be "extremely expensive": people complain about the cost of getting a film an age rating, and they're only 1-3 hours long and don't get near-continuous updates.

My guess, and it is a guess, is that content for children shouldn't be "the internet", but a small and specifically curated collection for each age range[2], essentially the back catalogue of all the things we've already made for kids, from Saturday morning cartoons to Scholastic books. Of course, this is still flawed, hence my parents' generation fretting over D&D, Harry Potter, and anything about sex education (and twice over if it was gay).

[0] or a multitude, corresponding to film content rating systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_picture_content_rating_...

[1] Despite having learned to read with the Commodore 64 user manual, I'd say that if you can get into a command-line OS today with all our easier distractions, then you shouldn't even get asked for such verification.

[2] Even single shows split content in this way, e.g. Sesame Street has different muppets be representative of different developmental stages of kids.

It might be a good business (like youtube for kids) but would it actually be good for kids? They should go outside with their friends, and people in the tech industry should stay away from them. Allegedly good intentions ("help you stay in touch with your friends") will eventually turn into what it always turns into.

I shudder at the mere thought of opening this can of worms, but… have you looked into web3?

This is what AOL/Compuserve were in the very old dialup days. Curated spaces.

At first I thought this sounded implausible, but then I remembered we already have a second internet, largely isolated from the main internet - the darkweb.

are you really under the impression that preventing exploitation of minors is the goal of these online-identification-masquerading-as-age-verification laws?

Prepare for Lords of the Flies: Digital Edition , I'd say.

> I'm wondering if this would be a reasonable solution to preventing the exploitation of minors on the internet

The bulk of exploitation comes from

1. Big tech. I imagine that 90% of "internet for kids" would be Cocomelon AI-generated slop

2. Other kids bullying each other

Not to mention the simple fact that if you shelter kids from any adult content then they'll turn 18 while still having child-like mindset, which means that "exploitation of kids" will turn into "explanation of young adults".