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Rather than age verification, this is what we should be doing instead:

Don't let phone manufacturers lock the bootloader on phones. Let the device owner lock it with a password if they decide to. Someone will make a child-friendly OS if there is demand. Tech-savvy parents should be able to install that on their kid's phone and then lock the bootloader.

What about non-tech-savvy parents?

There should be a toggle in the phone's settings to enable/disable app installation with a password, like sudo. This will let parents control what apps get installed/uninstalled on their kid's device.

But what about apps or online services that adults also use?

Apps and online services can add a password-protected toggle in their user account settings that enables child mode. Parents can take their child's phone, enable it, and set the password.

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All it takes is some password-protected toggles. They will work better than every remote verification scheme.

The only problem with this solution is that it does not help certain governments build their global mass surveillence and propaganda apparatus, and tech companies can't collect more of your personal info to sell, and they can't make your devices obsolete whenever they want.

3 comments

We all demand Windows but without ads, but that doesn't cause the market to spit one out. The OS market isn't a healthy market, and government is stepping in here in part because of that market failure to provide a satisfactory solution here.

The smartphone OS market is not healthy precisely because manufacturers lock their bootloaders (among other anti-competitive tricks, like a proprietary IMS stack), which stifles market competition. The desktop OS market does not have this problem. There are many Linux distros and they're getting better everyday, they'll eventually replace Windows as Windows slowly enshittifies.

This approach makes sense to me, though I'd expand password to be a broader term because people might prefer different authentication methods or approving a request to install software from their own device or so

Why necessarily with a password - what's wrong with the option to say "only allow installation of apps suitable for under 13s"?

The idea is to let parents decide which apps are suitable for their child, for each child. Password-gating app installation (just like sudo on Linux) is not only easier to implement and use, but also much more flexible and powerful than a fixed age-based rating system.

It also prevents the legitimization of app store monopolies because no centralized authority is needed to create or enforce a rating system. And there will always be apps that don't comply with a rating system out of privacy concerns (it leaks the user's age, which is just an extra data point to track you with), and then they'll eventually try to ban non-compliant apps from running on the device completely. That's what enforcing an age-based standard would take. And even then it would still not fulfill its (claimed) purpose that well.

Principle-wise, parenting should be the responsibility of parents, not governments or corporations. Those large organizations have their own agendas which are somewhat misaligned with the individual human being.