IAB/W3C Workshop on Age-Based Restrictions on Content Access

The young are often unprepared for the sorts of things they might find online.

Maturity, education, and the guidance of responsible adults can help children navigate online interactions, but age is often regarded as the best indicator of how able a person is to cope with exposure to content.

Increasing interest is being shown in the implementation of regulation that restricts what content young people can access online. A recurring theme in these efforts is that it is no longer considered sufficient to rely on self-assertions of age. A number of jurisdictions have enacted—or are in the process of enacting—laws that take steps to provide stronger guarantees that children are not exposed to certain content.

This workshop seeks to perform a thorough examination of the technical and architectural choices that are involved in solutions for age-based restrictions on access to content. We do not expect to identify a single candidate solution, even if that might be an ideal outcome. The goal is to build a shared understanding of the properties of various proposed approaches.

In general, access restrictions are achieved by selectively blocking or filtering. RFC 7754 (Technical Considerations for Internet Service Blocking and Filtering) provides a more general framework for how to think about restrictions on communications. This workshop will build on that work. In particular, it will seek to examine the specific technical considerations that apply when content is legally accessed by some people and restricted for others based primarily on their age.

See the workshop homepage for more information.