@taylan @yrrsinn @cy @jpaskaruk >It's like saying an OS shouldn't have an audio stack because what if the government uses it to spy on people's private conversations.
An OS shouldn't have an audio stack with built-in default-enabled functionality that records all input audio and transmits to a remote server, as obviously the government will require that the audio recording is sent to their server.

>An optional DoB field that allows applications to query it and block access to websites that advertise a minimum age via an HTTP header, is just a very simple feature that increases freedom by giving parents more capabilities.
That is very different to what you originally wanted.

Implemented in that way, it would still enhance mass surveillance (still next for an explanation) and if there is a header at all that sets a minimum age, then governments will of course mandate that sites set a ridiculous minimum age.

For example, the government will require that gnu.org is 18+, as those "naughty jokes" will "traumatize the children" and then children wouldn't learn that freedom even exists.

That is not something that will increase freedom - at best it'll do nothing to freedom, at worst it'll decrease freedom.

>then maybe the client happens not to make any additional HTTP requests to the server because the user was blocked, and the server can't even tell this apart from the case of the user deciding to close the tab after looking around on the front page.
Actually, metadata will be leaked by such implementation - it'll be easy to utilize JavaScript to narrow down the age to the exact day.

«age-18+ header» --> «no additional request» --> age <18
«age-12+ header» --> «additional request» --> age >12 & <18
etc.

A more advanced attack, especially over days and months, or if the attacker is able to playing around with setting the date etc with JavaScript would allow determining the exact DoB.

>watch silly Mr. Beast videos
Mr. Beast videos are probably more mentally harmful than proprietary pornography.

>Kids can also use the web for research.
Kids won't be able to do research, as sites with lots of information like Wikipedia, would be forced by the government to set the age filter to 18+.


>I've had an LLM generate some slop since I'm lazy (see screenshot) and it claims that up to 25-30% of the total industry revenue is still from ads.
Please consider why you would boil an ocean to get an answer that is most likely wrong.

>It's not unreasonable to think that ad revenue from minor site visitors accounts for up to 5% of the total revenue of the entire industry. That's enough to make them not want to do anything against it. Why would a soulless corporation willingly give up a few percent of its revenue for some moral reason that's not enforced?
The proper solution to that problem is for the government to do their job and make advertising with proprietary malware JavaScript illegal.

>A lot of porn is very violent, and sexual gratification is a huge dopamine hit. Mix in bad parenting / immoral family values and you get an extremely dangerous person.
A lot of assumptions seem to be made here. Even then, I don't think the problem is the proprietary porn - it's the bad parenting.

>There are cases out there in which minor teenage boys are gang-raping little children, forcing the victim to perform acts they saw in porn. It's hell out here, and porn is making it worse.
That's terrible, but hasn't the rape rate been reducing for most countries?

I would also question as to why a gang of teenage boys were left unsupervised for long time periods with little children?

>Just a more feature-rich free software system, completely under the control of the owner of the computer
If you don't control the software, it is not free software, therefore you should not use such proprietary system.

>so parents gain additional capabilities to prevent their kids from accessing harmful content.
Parents should rather teach their kids of avoid accessing harmful things - restricting them is only going to make the kids want to access what is forbidden.

>the age of the kid doesn't even need to be revealed to any server; the server just passively informs the client of the age limit and then everything is handled silently at the client side.
As I pointed out, the age is leaked via omission.