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Why is checking age at os-level that bad?
(lemmy.fait.ch)
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this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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It's not needed, thar's the parents job. Not the OS' job
People keep saying this. Is it not within an operating system's purview to provide parents tools to configure what their kid can do with the system? Have parental controls been out-of-scope for all these OSes this whole time?
Whether it should be government-mandated is one question, but it seems more like this "it's the parent's job, not the OS's" has become a tagline that people just repeat rather than really thinking through it.
Is your expectation then that parents should sit over their kids' shoulder every moment that they access the internet? Are our tools not supposed to make that easier to handle?
I thought that this is what you were getting at here, which is why I asked how this was an argument against values held locally on the device.
People usually repeat it for calls for checks on online platforms, not just within the scope of OS - but its primarily stated because people, quite fairly, don't want to see websites having to shut down, or them losing access entirely, or losing access without handing over private data because of parents inability to control their childs access to the internet.
I see the numerous websites having to close down because they can't/won't do the integration.
I mean look at YT.
The stupid COPPA law prevents me from reading funny comments under cartoon intros because youtube couldnt be arsed to prevent kids from using the regular youtube app instead of the "youtube kids" app.
Even some meme clips are barred because youtube thinks they are "for kids" (lmao) (Example. Ironically those videos, when shared, don't have a tracking id in the url and some of the quick access share options like for whatsapp are not available, only the internal share options by the OS)
Another example that grinds my gears on YT:
All of these just because some USA state needed to extend their reach across country borders because they are headquartered there.
Just restrict it to USA-IPs or something. ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
Sure. I think clearly this thread has been talking about the OS piece specifically. I wholly disagree with having some private company that collects IDs and makes the determination themselves. If instead your browser can just ask your device if you have parental controls enabled, then that removes the privacy concern entirely, as far as I know. Is there an extra data point for browser fingerprinting? Yeah, I guess. But I would also assume that anyone who cares to avoid this fingerprinting is going to not have parental controls enabled.
Essentially, I'm confused why the world gave up so quickly on parental controls (not really confused—the alternative provides more surveillance capability).
But even if it happened purely at the OS level, it would be laughably unenforceable at best.
I can easily imagine a piece of software parents can download, for free, that if installed would basically function akin to a virus on someone's computer - it blacklists much of the internet and is updated and maintained by a company that updates the allowed sites and banned sites regularly. It could not be turned off. If it crashes, is ended by force, it automatically reloads - and any attempts to remove it sends emails or text messages to the owners (the parents) who would know something is up. It could be turned off only by the parent putting in a specific password to disable it, and if they forgot, they would have to phone the company to get it reset.
Any responsible parent would install this on the phones and computers of their kids and it would do everything they need.
One thing I said before is the question of what is the research on this, and how do we know child internet safety is actually a problem? I don't know the statistics on this, and I haven't done much studying on it yet. So I will admit that I have been operating under the premise that this is an issue to begin with. Someone mentioned routers with parental blocks. Aside from being able to easily disconnect from the network (inevitability for kids because it's easy and they have plausible deniability, in my opinion), if child internet safety is currently an issue, then clearly there is something about it that isn't working.
Don't get me wrong, it would still require another component whether that be a requirement for websites to query the OS via the browser, or a database of "bad" websites.
Now, if you want there to be an app that handles this, that's your opinion and I respect that. Personally, I would rather it be built into the OS. Least of all because already-on-your-device is easier than something parents need to research and download on their kids' devices. More significantly, if this kind of capability becomes an expectation for your general usage OSes to have, then that's less incentive for some company to come in and try to capitalize off of it and charge $12.99 per month, and then still have incentive to collect and sell data on which sites are being visited. I mean, you can be reasonably sure that Microsoft is gonna do that too, but that would be another reason to switch to a Linux distro that doesn't do that.
I meant there would be no way to stop any OS from just waving users through and automatically converting their account into an 'adult account', or just asking users "Are you 18 yes/no". How many variations of Linux are there now?
I'd be in favour of the government commissioning and funding this and making it free-to-access for parents.
Right, but in this case, the parental controls just wouldn't be doing their job. I mean, you're right—there's nothing you can do about that. But if I'm turning on a setting to enable a parental control and it doesn't enable the parental control, then I'm 1) complaining about Microslop in the case of Windows, or 2) switching my kids to a different distro in the case of Linux. Again, I'm against the idea of government-mandated on the OS side. I'm undecided on the website side of things.
I'm gonna transcribe a section of a comment I made in another post:
That's interesting. I'm in America and, unless it's FOSS, I definitely 100% do not trust a government-commissioned application that needs to see and manage all of my home's network traffic in order to work. Especially not right now.
Well if it's not mandated (on the OS side that you refer to) then sure.
I mean it would be opt-in. Me and you wouldn't ever get it and websites and developers wouldn't be burdened by it. That's the point.
No problem with your excerpt there either.
That:s my primary issue
In a perfect world, I would want APIs and other integrations be made available that will do that and the parent will only need to press a button to allow/deny it.
Not really government mandated but voluntarily by a group that executes the vision of a parent, requested by the government (due to requests by the parental society but not because corps deciding they need/want more controllable elements) and the technical parties (e.g. OS devs) that can integrate the wish.
Unfortunately this will probably be a mandated integration requiring everyone, doesnt matter if a child is existing, to authenticate that they are truly legally able to access the device and/or ressource.
Great, now as a childless person I have to do those things because some were irresponsible and ruined it for everyone :/
I hope I could communicate my issue.
That's my issue too. We're in agreement, but I just wanted to point out that the "it's the parent's job, not the OS's" doesn't communicate that and instead applies a blanket statement that actually undermines what you're saying you want.
The other guy is right when they say it applies to the check existing on the web-level. That is the issue, in my opinion, and I think people are just conflating that issue with the OS value's merit. Having a check at web level is actually what removes the responsibility and capability for parents to parent their children. Having it at the OS level makes it a tool for parents to use. They don't have to set it up, but the idea is that it makes it really easy for parents with zero computer prowess.
Again, should it be government mandated on the OS side? I strongly don't think so. But if anyone has a good solution to not mandate developers to respect the browser's report of the parental controls setting, I'd love to hear it (zero sarcasm, I don't want to have anyone breathing down my neck to implement this stuff either). The best I can think of is to take advantage of AI, but I can see why it could be unsavory. Should the browser itself carry a database of sites it has scanned and then use that to determine whether a site is safe? Should it query a user-owned model that's more customizable for the parent's tastes? Can we get that to run locally for everyone?