Governments are ruining the internet to protect kids but there is a much better way
As strict child safety laws and age gates threaten web privacy, forcing ISPs to ship routers with default family DNS filters offers a leaner solution.
In this editorial I will expound on what I think to be the best solution, namely, ISPs being required by law to ship routers to customers with a family DNS pre-configured. Candidate family DNS services that I am thinking of include Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.3 and CleanBrowsing’s Family Filter- this is not an exhaustive list, but two popular ones that exist. I believe that this solution would help to offer a baseline level of protection for families, remove the risk of too much data collection by governments, and leave adults free to adjust their DNS settings if they want unrestricted access to the internet.
By shipping routers with family filtering on by default, the script gets completely flipped, parents wouldn’t need to worry about kids stumbling on adult content, because it is largely going to be blocked. As many of these DNS services are free, it also means that parents don’t have to pay monthly subscriptions like they do now for some parental control apps. It also removes the need to configure software or research software.
I have no problems with that as a default position, but it won't sufficiently work; Facebook is allegedly "safe".
No. The problem is these trillion dollar corporations need to start to pay to maintain a safe environment for it's users. They just don't want to pay for it.
I watched a video recently of a poor woman who lost her YouTube channel with some 30,000 subs to a "hacker" (probably a successful phish). She could not speak with a human being. She spent a week trying to get advice from people anywhere on Twitter, Reddit, wherever - "what can i do?". The community gave her advice which finally achieved a result. But two weeks of severe stress when Google should be forced to offer a helpdesk service with a defined human response time.
They're trillion-dollar companies. Jesus. They can bloody well afford it. Force them.
I find it hard to understand why the operating system should be responsible for age verification. It is the website offering content that requires age verification that is responsible.
The Swiss people have voted in favour of an approach that is likely to come into effect in early 2027.
In my opinion, this is an API-based solution that deserves to be implemented.
Conclusions
The Swiss e-ID provides a - from consumer perspective - simple way of asking a user to prove that they are of age, or to provide their name. The API is (once the setup is done) rather simplistic. The really spectacular part about this is that the information received is provided by the swiss government, securely validated and satisfies legal requirements. It has the same value as being shown a physical passport, but without having to show more information than necessary.
It remains to be seen if verifiers adhere to the data minimization or ask for to many details like full name or birthdate unnecessarily. As with the permissions management for mobile apps, a company could ask for too much and refuse to work with less. The swiyu app unfortunately does not offer to transfer less than the requested data. Hopefully the Swiss government consumer protection and data protection services can get companies to refrain from gathering unnecessary data.
Its because corrupt corporations and governments want to be in our computers. Its all about profit and control. Welcome to George Orvill 1984, only its 2026.
All in all, it’s a meaningful outcome for a community that spent months worried about what age verification would mean for distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, and Linux Mint, none of which have birth-date collection built into their setup flows today
You underestimate just how many parents do not care. Two examples: 1st: a 15-year-old falling asleep in class. Does no homework, ever and makes no progress, grades through the floor. He was playing on his Xbox until 5AM, the chat logs were there for all to see. Both parents professionals. Took no action. I doubt he graduated. 2nd: Mum picks her kids up from school, she was using her phone while driving and almost ran into another mother and child on the pedestrian crossing outside the school. Whether they’re oblivious, are hiding their heads in the sand, or they just do not care (and addicted themselves), education for parents is pointless. The only ones who will try are those who would have rules and boundaries anyway.
Pressure has got to be applied to companies like META, ROBLOX, etc... who know exactly what they are doing. Their users are nothing but a means to harvest data and make eye-watering profits. The kids who lack parenting and are really addicted will get around age verification in the blink of an eye. Politicians need to do something, and need to be seen doing something, but they’re going about it the wrong way. Hit the companies.
Apparently California has exempted Linux from age verification. Interestingly the original sponsor of the bill pushed this amendment for Linux to be excluded(?)
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