Keeping The Internet Safe For Children, The Easy, Free Speech, Privacy Preserving, Way

MPs don't not want to protect the children from dodgy content. They don't give a damn about children's welfare: if they did, they would make sure there were jobs for the kids to go to when they left school. Something that stopped happening in the 1980's.

The Treasury and the Cabinet want the money. Hence the focus on You Tube, TikTok and other companies with billions in the bank and business operations in the UK. If a website has no business presence in the UK, its owners can legally ignore Ofcom.

MPs, and civil servants, don't want the dodgy content, or at least, they don't want it so darn easily available. Far-left extremism literature is okay when it is only available in three specialist bookshops in the UK, but geez, when it's available by going the The Guardian's website... that's too easy. So they should like the first part of my solution.

The Children's White List. This is a list of sites where the Government deem children are allowed to go. What's on the White List? Not a lot. Wikipedia; the BBC; any .gov.uk website; You Tube for kids; online libraries; Child Helplines, that sort of thing. Like the Children's section in bookshops and libraries. Let's have an app that allows them access to their school's website and resources (left to the developers as an exercise), and university websites. Maybe it could be held on the device, maybe by ISPs. It's not permanent and can and should be updated frequently. Start small and add.

Age Verification by device. The OS by default is set to filter all internet traffic through the White List. In the OS Settings, there is an option to Age Verify. Take that, and a little app will ask for random digits from the user's NI number (in the UK), which will be sent to a Government database, which will answer YES or NO depending on how old it thinks the user is. The database will keep a record of the device IMEI, date and time of the request (to handle repeated requests that may be someone trying to guess). Nothing else. If the device gets a YES it will activate the option to remove the White List filter, which the user can select. There will also be an option to Impose White List, which will de-activate the option to remove the White List and revert to the filter. To remove the filter, use the Age Verify option again. Re-setting the device re-imposes the White List, but re-booting after an upgrade doesn't. You get the idea.

How do your kids now access You Tube? It's not on the White List, so they need a device that belongs to someone who is Age Verified. That would be the parents. The kids can't open a parental device. The parents aren't going to give away their NI numbers. Nor are they going to hand over their device to their kids.

The OS makers could sort this out in about, oh, five days or less. The Government could set up a basic White List and change it as time goes on. Free speech is for adults, not kids, and the White List does not affect kids.

So, done, modulo details.

(A prize for identifying that quote.)