>>>>>>> now if only parents were given these options to indicate their child is using a device.. we could do away with all this Online Safety Act nonsense...

THIS

Holy shit. This is such an obvious fix. And it shuts up those surveillance state goons immediately.

My God, why have we tried to summon up the ghost of 1984 when such a simple fix as this will do.

Parents can lock devices into "child mode" that emits "user is child" headers. Websites can then block.

The blast radius is zero.

Good God, we need to fast track this into browsers right now. If we hurry we might be able to point to this as the technical fix.

Once some of the infrastructure exists, OS vendors can hook into it.

Firefox devs - please do this right now. Please spearhead this.

I might have to vibe code an advocacy site for the spec and set up a GitHub / RFC process.

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tangotaylor 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Parents can lock devices into "child mode" that emits "user is child" headers. Websites can then block.

CA tried this with AB 1856. I wasn't a fan of this (neither was EFF) because of the privacy and tracking concerns of blasting the fact that the user is a child to all websites.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/05/one-step-forward-two-s...

It would better for the block to happen at the device level. That is, the browser knows it's on a child's device and has a whitelist of allowed sites.

There is already an RTA (Restriced to Adults) header where the website self-labels that it's for adults only and the browser can block it while protecting the user's privacy. I'd prefer expanding the use of RTA.

	▲	dageshi an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No offense but if you're proposing a solution that involves whitelists... that solution has already failed. The web is too big and changes too much and that's before we get to the issue of applying laws to a whitelist based on different juristictions worldwide. And I have to question, who would administer it? The parents? They won't. Google or Apple? Why do they want to deal with irate parents or culture wars around what is or is not on the list? There is obvious increasing demand for this from parents, politicians are going to act on it, I think a "this is a child" header is the only one that actually really works. It works for the parents because it's easy to setup. It works for websites because they can cleanly identify a child and filter content if appropriate. It seems to me that every other solution than a "this is a child" header is either impractical or way worse.

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bonoboTP 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This will work... if you think this is their true motivation, and the panopticon itself isn't the true end goal.

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dijit 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I agree, and I agree with the enthusiasm on which you bring in.

I've long since considered that the efforts for online child safety should be pointed at educating parents and spearheading some kind of certification of compliance for child safety of software and websites.

[this product is certified to adhere to EU:CSA]

Then you can block everything not certified, and the software that does the blocking would also be certified, the two major prongs you need (endpoints and sites working together: else they're blocked). The rest of the money goes to education for parents about this fact, and the dangers of not doing it, and how to do it.

This is super "easy" (when comparing to the effort it would take for putting backdoors in everything).

Which is why I think that the reason is definitely not child safety, and more about crime control.

Me talking about UK blocking people unless they ID themselves in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6979295

Me talking about how its disingenuous because we have superior technical solutions to this particular issue last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45010902

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alexandre_m 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That works well for controlled devices like phones, tablets, and TVs, but it’s much harder on desktops unless you expect parents to become IT administrators.

	▲	Paracompact 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What's wrong with asking the user on account creation and OS install?

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inigyou 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

California AB1043, in other words

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spiderfarmer 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Make a website about that. I’ll spread it.