Fighting the age-gated internet

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

The discussion revolves heavily around proposed legislation aimed at protecting minors online, leading to several distinct, prevalent themes regarding parental responsibility, the true intent behind such laws, and the importance of online anonymity.

Here are the three most prevalent themes:

1. Resistance to Legislative "Solutions" due to Perceived Overreach and Ineffectiveness

Many participants argue that introducing government-enforced identity verification or restrictive laws is an overreach that fails to solve the core problem (often due to existing content circulation via "samizdat" or P2P) while simultaneously creating new dangers, primarily surveillance.

Supporting Quotes:
- Regarding failed technical solutions: "You've failed to solve the porn problem and now you've created a larger grooming/CDM problem" ("casey2").
- On the nature of content sharing: "The point that people are making is that while restricting overt internet porn does remove it from sight of a lot of kids, it will also continue to circulate as 'samizdat' through whatever filesharing mechanisms exist" ("pjc50").
- On legislative intent: "This strikes me as almost conspiratorial thinking... These laws (KOSA, OSA) enjoy broad, bipartisan popularity and politicians are jumping on the bandwagon because they want votes" ("jamesbelchamber").

2. Prioritization of Parental Responsibility Over State Intervention

A strong contingent of users believes the fundamental duty to monitor and educate children concerning online content rests solely with parents, not government regulation, viewing state intervention as a failure of social responsibility.

Supporting Quotes:
- "As a culture we just have to come to accept that parents should be responsible for managing kids’ devices, and provide them with the device-level tools for doing so." ("iamnothere").
- On the limits of state power versus parenting: "If you hand power to the state every time people fail to properly handle their responsibilities, you end up in a dictatorship. It is a parent's responsibility to keep their kids away from the dark corners of the internet." ("seneca").
- "If dad leaves the liquor cabinet unlocked the solution isn’t to ban alcohol. A free and open internet is non negotiable." ("iamnothere").

3. The True Motive is Eliminating Anonymity for Surveillance and Control

A major theme posits that the stated goal of "protecting children" is a pretext ("think of the children") for broader, more insidious goals: implementing a mandatory identity layer for all internet users, benefiting corporations and government surveillance capabilities.

Supporting Quotes:
- "None of these laws are actually about protecting children. That's not the real goal. The real goal is the complete elimination of anonymity on the web, where both private companies and the state can keep tabs on everything you do." ("thewebguyd").
- "I think it's important to not throw babies out with bathwater here... When we can fight on the same side—realizing that sometimes we will fight on opposite sides—it's better for user rights that we do so." ("holmesworcester").
- "The real goal is the complete elimination of anonymity on the web... This is about surveillance of all of us, not 'protecting kids'." ("Noaidi").

🚀 Project Ideas

Parental Device State Dashboard & Collaboration Toolkit

Summary

A unified, privacy-respecting dashboard allowing parents to monitor and collaborate on their children's device usage across multiple platforms (smartphones, tablets, PCs).
Core Value Proposition: Providing accessible, non-predatory software tools for parental oversight, directly addressing the call for better parental control software instead of state interference or mass surveillance.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Parents of digital-native children who find existing parental control solutions inadequate, too technical, or too invasive.
Core Feature	A centralized dashboard displaying application usage summaries, access history (e.g., summary of sites visited, not full content), and a shared whitelist management system.
Tech Stack	Cross-platform agent (React Native/Flutter or native on device) sending encrypted telemetry; Backend using PostgreSQL/Go/Rust; Zero-knowledge proofs for sensitive reporting if needed.
Difficulty	High
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

Users explicitly requested: "Software that parents can install on phones, and computers" and "A way to share, reuse and collaborate on whitelists." (mhitza).
This addresses the desire for practical, device-level tools that avoid the "police state" implications of government mandates, focusing on empowering the parent, aligning with comments like: "It's one size fits all. [iptables is] easier for people (users) to do this instead of getting iptables / pf or whatever configured." (jmclnx - implying a need for easier configuration).

Distributed, Privacy-First Content Annotation Service (DPAS)

Summary

A decentralized service allowing users (especially parents) to create, rate, and share non-invasive content metadata tags (like content category, maturity level, known vectors for concerning material) without exposing raw URLs or user identity to a central authority.
Core Value Proposition: Creating community-driven, privacy-preserving content filtering data sets that can be consumed locally by client-side blockers, satisfying the need for filtering without mandatory ID checks.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Privacy-conscious parents, network administrators, and technically adept users looking for robust, decentralized filtering/blocking mechanisms.
Core Feature	Cryptographically secure, self-signed content-hash/URL-hash to metadata mapping. Users download/sync tag lists to their local firewall/hosts file generator.
Tech Stack	Federated backend nodes (like Matrix or ActivityPub); InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) for distributing large tag sets; Cryptography (e.g., blind signatures or zero-knowledge proofs for reporting consensus).
Difficulty	High
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

This directly addresses the frustration with centralized systems and the desire for community solutions: "A way to share, reuse and collaborate on whitelists. No enforcement of a central authority." (mhitza).
It offers a technical middle ground between "authoritarian control" and "no mechanism at all," focusing on what content is (or isn't) rather than who is viewing it, circumventing the primary concern about state tracking (Gormo, matwood).

Legacy System/Sneakernet Content Sharing Authenticator

Summary

A utility designed to help parents manage "samizdat" content circulation, focusing on identifying and flagging potentially harmful files transferred peer-to-peer or via physical media (SD cards, USB drives).
Core Value Proposition: A desktop application that scans local files/directories against known (but locally stored) hash databases of prohibited content, simulating safety mechanisms for offline transfers.

Details

Key	Value
Target Audience	Parents concerned with distributed/offline content sharing (SD cards, file sharing remnants mentioned by pjc50 and pyuser583).
Core Feature	Offline hash scanning against voluntarily contributed, anonymized banned content databases (e.g., NCMEC hashes or community-curated lists). Reports flagging file locations for parent review.
Tech Stack	Electron/Desktop App (Go/Rust back-end for fast file system scanning); Secure, encrypted local database for storing user-specific hash verification results.
Difficulty	Medium
Monetization	Hobby

Notes

This service explicitly tackles the "samizdat" problem raised by users: "it will also continue to circulate as 'samizdat' through whatever filesharing mechanisms exist... Now we have terabyte SD cards." (pjc50).
It provides a tangible tool for parents who suspect offline sharing, aligning with the sentiment that parents are responsible for managing device content ("As a culture we just have to come to accept that parents should be responsible for managing kids’ devices," iamnothere).