I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The standard should be that devices ...

renjimen · 2026-03-03T19:00:00 1772564400

It's only effective if "Children's devices are almost always set up by parents", which is a big assumption. My parents were about as tech savvy as you could reasonably expect but I still got away with buying R-rated video games and such. Kids are persistent and the dangers aren't always obvious.

uyzstvqs · 2026-03-04T00:58:23 1772585903

If kids are being persistent and the parent is indifferent to it, then online age verification won't be effective either. Children will just ask mom and dad to verify their Roblox and Discord accounts.

renjimen · 2026-03-05T00:53:29 1772672009

For sure, I'm not blanket supporting age verification technology. Just saying the alternative proposed by the parent commenter isn't very reliable either.

cubefox · 2026-03-03T20:06:29 1772568389

The question is whether parents should bear this responsibility or the state.

renjimen · 2026-03-05T00:56:15 1772672175

Both. The same as for other materials we don't want kids to access, like alcohol. We can't expect parents to always be watching their kids. That's not how societies have ever worked.

But what I'm actually questioning in my comment above is effectiveness of the technology solution proposed at the device level.

hellojesus · 2026-03-05T13:35:15 1772717715

It's effective insofar as the parents secure the device. If it's a general purpose computer, and the parent forgets to lock the bios, kids will just live boot into Ubuntu or some other OS and do as they please.

Or they may install keyloggers (including hardware loggers) to get the parents' password and then go update their account.

Certainly this may help hinder them, but it won't take long for them to learn the basics of curcumvention, and the cost is regulated speech for OS manufacturers.