Unfortunately it is, but we could fix that with only minimally invasive legislation. Right now you either whitelist which breaks half the internet on a recurring basis (things are constantly changing) or you blacklist which is swiss cheese. Either way you're relying on third parties.
I think it would be much better to legally mandate a certain minimum level of self classification for website operators along with a simple and extensible scheme for communicating such. It might also be useful to mandate that devices ship from the OEM with parental control software supporting that standard but honestly I doubt that's necessary - if their were a standardized and above all reliable signal available I think browsers and operating systems would rapidly adopt support for it.
I imagine it could be not trivial to enforce (esp. for offshore web) - but definitely easier than enforcing the same sites to implement much more complicated identity verification (while preferably also not leaking this data).
But that might not even be necessary. A small on-device AI can probably do a decent job classifying pretty much everything we don't want children to see - with and option for parents to override it when needed.
It's quite trivial, actually - the parental control software is designed so that if there are no content tags, then the site does not display. The mandate for websites to tag their content would only need to apply to websites over a certain size, to bootstrap the network effects.
Given that we're at the point where big tech is pushing its regulatory capture legislation aimed at demanding mandatory identification ("age verification" fundamentally boils down to identity verification), I don't think it would be unreasonable for a legislative mandate for every site over a certain size to have to publish tags, and every mobile device manufacturer over a certain marketshare to have to include a parental control solution in the device setup.
Although I'm also left wondering what the state of the art really does look like here, and whether a mandate for tags is even what is needed. The real problems would seem to be twofold - parental controls software isn't included with most devices, and most parents won't go out of their way to seek out a third party option. And second, very few websites aim to serve people under 18, 13, etc to begin with. Rather they like the fiction that their services are "18+" regardless of who is using them. (Mandating tags would serve that last one, but perhaps there is a more direct approach?)
Not quite. I'm suggesting that adoption could be forced if the major browsers refused to load sites that didn't include the tags regardless of whether or not parental controls were enabled. The end result would be that either your site included the tags or else it would not load without some sort of manual user intervention on every visit on windows, ios, etc.
> leaving the open web unaffected
But the entire point here is that there would be a legal mandate for all sites to carry such tags. The goal is to fix the problem that parental controls are spotty and unreliable at best.
> The real problems would seem to be twofold
It's as I previously explained. None of the current options are particularly good even if you are a parent that cares and is willing to invest time and effort.
> they like the fiction that their services are "18+" regardless of who is using them.
That's due to not wanting the liability of a mishmash of laws from different jurisdictions. Nearly all of them treat an 18 year old as an adult so problem solved.
That's entirely separate from these tags BTW. The idea isn't for the site to communicate some arbitrary age appropriateness signal that they as a third party to the family couldn't possibly know. Rather it's to communicate classes of content such as porn, gambling, violence, social media, user generated content, games, that sort of thing.
My point is that you don't even need to mandate it for all sites, and attempting to do is kind of specious based on the existence of foreign sites. Rather you can focus on mandating it for the large consumer-oriented sites, and this will create enough of a critical mass that a web browser with parental controls enabled will have decent functionality.
The difficulty with forcing some uniform mandate onto "all sites" is that the mandate has to be for tags that are faithfully stated, rather than a blanket 18+. And small personal website operators shouldn't be in the position of being forced to determine whether the random stuff on their personal website is specifically suitable for 13+, 18+, etc.
That's the goal of defining the semantics in terms of an open system rather than a closed system - it fails gracefully.
> None of the current options are particularly good even if you are a parent that cares and is willing to invest time and effort.
Pragmatically this is disappointing to hear, but matches everything I've been able to surmise.
> The idea isn't for the site to communicate some arbitrary age appropriateness signal that they as a third party to the family couldn't possibly know. Rather it's to communicate classes of content such as porn, gambling, violence, social media, user generated content, games, that sort of thing.
I think it should be both. There should be a class of tags that assert a site is legally fine for a 13 year old to view in the US, an 8 year old to view in the US, etc, possibly multiplied with jurisdiction. (note the direction there - it's not a statement that there is content unsuitable for a 13 year old, rather it's a warranty that the contents are suitable for a 13 year old). There should also be tags of the content/aim of the site like you've listed.
The settings in the parental control software can then make a good first pass based on age, then content categories, then parents could even allow/disallow specific sites. The point is to provide good defaults, but ultimately keep control of parents rather than giving it away to corporate attorneys as any age verification (ie identity verification) based solution inherently does.
I challenge that anyone believes this, and for my evidence, I would submit all the age based laws that protect children regardless of what parents do.
We have already, long ago, decided that it is the government's job to protect children, at least in cases where parents fail to do an adequate job. That's why I don't see this ending any other way. The march to total domination by the side of the government might be slow, but they already won the war around a century ago (exact timeline for laws protecting children in place of parents is a very long topic and does differ country to country, I recall hearing some places still even let kids buy alcohol if they say it is for their parents to consume).
For most of human history there were few, if any, laws governing how children were raised yet civilization didn't collapse because of that, and, indeed, there were no discernable effects. In many places parental-infanticide was even legal. Yet always parents did their best to keep their children safe in general, because that's what parents naturally do. Somehow its different now to you I guess but I fail to see why. Obviously some parents will do a poor job, that's true about every human thing. If people can't drive we take away their license. If people can't parent, however, we apperently have to bend everything in society to cater to their failure and create a massive surveillance state.