Here is just one solution that helps parents, and respects everyone's privacy:

    Zero knowledge proofs.

This solution (1) gives sites no user information except 18+ verification, and (2) gives key providers no information about sites clients visit.

    This is what zero knowledge proofs are for.

• Parents jobs get easier.

• Children are less likely to encounter adult material.

• Everyone's privacy is protected.

• Adult sites can verify 18+ ages, without driving users away.

Not solving/mitigating endemic child access to adult sites is (1) a great disservice to parents and children, and (2) makes the success of draconian surveillance legislation MORE likely.

(If you have a critique of this solution, please frame it as an issue to resolve, not a categorical swipe at crafting solutions. The cynical prevalence of the latter is so damaging to these debates.)

Alexander Linton of the Session Technology Foundation on building decentralized messaging and why platform-wide content moderation is impractical on encrypted platforms.

Not familiar with him or the platform. But sounds like an interesting exchange.

Make sure that it's impossible for my online actions to be traced to my identity, and then I don't need privacy, because there is no association that needs to be hidden and protected.

For years, technical people insisted it was the parent’s job to monitor Internet safety. Parents, especially with the advent of social media, hardcore pornography, and every childhood friend having a device, correctly said this was unreasonable and impossible.

Technical people had a chance for two decades to solve this problem on their terms. Instead we collectively decided that anyone articulating this point of view must be a morally panicked maniac, and that this is a problem with “no reasonable solutions” that we would tolerate. Now we don’t get to dictate the terms, because everyone has had enough, and nobody has patience left for kids watching BDSM on their friend’s phones at 12.

Because of our industry’s refusal to take those concerns seriously, we lost our voice, we lost the grounds of sounding reasonable, and the floodgates are now open - for everything. Nobody is listening anymore to our point of view and arguably correctly so.