So, I know this is going to be something folks would disagree with, but I don't think we should allow kids on the internet unsupervised at all.
I think that the Internet should be like liquor: you show your ID to get an account, and access should be strictly controlled to the same extent we expect control of liquor cabinets, and we should have class time dedicated to informing people how to use the internet safely, what the dangers are, as well as a discussion about how porn is illusory/inaccurate/misleading, and how any adult trying to distribute it to the likes of them has ulterior motives.
The problem is you can have child "safety" (hey, most of the threats aren't from the internet!) or you can have privacy on the internet. You can't have both.
I do believe we should be teaching internet safety. I think that would work a lot better than trying to make a "child-safe" environment. Especially since the Republicans want to make such "safety" include no mention of any sexuality they do not approve of.
I think that so long as it is not material that depicts someone who cannot or does not consent to be depicted, as long as it is not material that involves violating someone's consent to participate, all material ought be allowed and consumption of that material ought not be tracked publicly. I would model the burden of control almost identically to liquor, where the primary expectation is that kids stay out of the liquor cabinet and seeing that they do is a parent's responsibility/liability, though with the primary access burden designed to disallow tracking/monitoring.
If the Internet is for porn, the internet is NOT for children.
The problem is that if you have to show your ID to get on you inherently permit tracking of what people consume. See China for an example.
You can very much have both no children and privacy on the internet, to the extent we have either of those things even today.
This is done by a regime wherein primary email addresses are state controlled but secondary ones are not, wherein to get an account with an ISP valid for registration for porn requires a primary email address.
A child being discovered on a service is a reportable event, and only at that point does a warrant have force.
At that point the company that detects the child access reports to the company that holds the registered email account.
That company notifies the post office with the details of the event.
The post office notifies the police.
The police then fine/charge the parent who let their kids onto the internet.
The postal email being used for registering a more anonymous email means the post office has no lookup access of what the user is looking at or registering to.
The secondary email system needs have no visibility beyond the fact of registration.
The porn site has no reason nor access to who owns the secondary email, only the assurance that to register at all requires a real credential.
The reason every measure up until now, and even foreseeable recommended far into the future, has failed, will fail, and should fail? Those measures are designed with the intent to "accidentally" your private porn habits from the get-go.
The most useful of them is "charge parents with the same seriousness of crime when their children access and distribute pornography/internet access as when they access and distribute liquor".
And you think they won't track you back through that?
Look at the NPD data breach. Information is valuable, people will collect it. And it's nowhere near as secure as it should be.
If they could, they already would.
The fact is, if I did something truly illegal, it would take more time and care to remain uncaught than I am willing to expend. This isn't the reason I don't do illegal shit, but it's a damn good reason.
Kids don't have anywhere near the sophistication to learn all that before they sneak onto their parents computer to get on Roblox with some random pedo.
They won't track you back through that any more than they already are. The real effect is that it gives a mandate to parents: treat the computer like the liquor cabinet.
Things have gotten "better" in terms of privacy with SDNS and HTTPS becoming more standard... But if you do something illegal today,
wherever you do it (assuming you don't use proxies or a VPN, which still links back to your name/cc info and who will still release info with a warrant), your identity can and will be turned over to LEO.
My thought is just that there should be mandatory reporting up that same chain that results in restrictions on internet access,
because children don't belong on the internet.
I'm not talking monitoring porn sites, or requiring something new to access porn.
I'm not talking about software or network nannies.
I'm talking specifically about the fact that there should be some manner of legal restrictions on children accessing the internet. It doesn't need to be very easy to enforce or even get oversight on.
Ironically, with 2 factor authentication finally making it's way around, it wouldn't be all that hard to disable an ISP connection on any child-available device when not in supervised use, but I'm not even saying that.
I'm saying something small, something that people are unlikely to fuck up if doing it properly (just register using your Google account that's linked to your postal email), something with low real risk, but with enough of a risk perceived by parents to make them think twice about letting kids use the internet unsupervised.
Much of the issue is that parents don't realize that letting kids on the internet is seriously dangerous.
Hell, I've told this story here, I think, but here goes again: some time in my mid-early 30's, I was on Twitter, and one day someone starts chatting me up about some of my kink related interests, and I figured out pretty quick it was a minor from their apparent maturity and looking at their profile, and I NOPED the fuck away from them. Then a few years later, I ran into that same person, now in their 20's, at a party. They were talking (bragging?) about how they spent their entire teen years trolling for and blackmailing pedos. They didn't even know I was there or that I was someone they tried to pick up (yuck!). I just recognized the name they dropped to someone else they were talking to. I collected my husband and we left the party ASAP.
I seriously worry that person is going to become a child predator some day, or a groomer, if they aren't already.
I warn my friends whenever I become aware of there being 3 or fewer degrees of separation.
I love the internet, but I am SO glad that I didn't have unsupervised access to it before I was 16, and I really think we should cover such topics in modern H&HD classes.