Do Not Turn Child Protection Into Internet Access Control

Age verification is expanding beyond adult websites into social media, messaging, gaming, and even operating systems like systemd. The author argues this conflates content moderation with guardianship, creating a general internet access-control layer rather than a targeted child-safety tool. The real harms to children come from recommendation systems and dark patterns, not open access. Age-verification infrastructure is easy to bypass, costly to everyone's privacy, and once built, tends to expand beyond its original purpose. The better approach is local, endpoint-based content filtering under parental and community control, not centralized identity checks.