Create 2025-07-18-decentralized-age-verification.md

Author: kdenhartog

_posts/2025-07-18-decentralized-age-verification.md

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+---
+layout: thought
+title: "Decentralizing Age Verification with SSI: Separating Content Moderation from Guardianship"
+date: 2025-07-18
+excerpt: "Age verification laws are coupling content moderation with guardianship problems, reducing user agency because of our centralized trust architectures. By separating these concerns and leveraging client-side filtering technologies, we can create more private and decentralized solutions for protecting children online without compromising everyone's Web experience."
+tags: [SSI, Web]
+comments: false
+---
+
+Today, we see that age verification laws are being passed which are enshrining the heuristic that we can perform age checks and protect people below a certain age through content moderation. However, we ended up on this solution of centralized content moderation because of the very architecture of the centralized trust model established by the digital credentials we rely on. That centralization led us down a path to coupling a generic content moderation problem and a guardianship problem as a means to an end of protecting children. The byproduct is that it’s reducing the agency of everyone on the Web because servers need to by default assume users aren’t old enough unless we can prove it with a third party attested claim. There’s actually a more private and decentralized way to solve the problems if we separate the content moderation and guardianship problem.
+
+To solve the content moderation problem we rely on the assumption that content can be classified so that it can be separated into buckets of safe and unsafe content on a granular level. This is an assumption that has to hold whether it’s done in a centralized way with age verification credentials (so the server can filter out the content before sending it) or an alternative way such as with client side filtering like safebrowsing and Adblock lists work which are more private and decentralized alternatives to content moderation.
+
+Today these lists work by classifying content based on the origin and filtering the request in the browser. However, with safebrowsing V5 Google Chrome is introducing the use of on device real time classification to detect sites that impact users security in real time. The same model could be theoretically be repeated with any content in an HTML page. Alternatively, the server could tag it directly in HTML and then lists or configurations that the browser relies upon would filter it out locally before rendering the content. So that’s makes the content moderation more private because it happens completely on device. Furthermore, it becomes a more generally applicable approach to content moderation which may be useful for blocking any form of content on the Web. For example, I configure my Twitter account to block all tweets that mention Elon Musk, but theoretically with this system I could apply it across the Web. However, this system has to be opt out at least in order to provide the agency principle.
+
+Now, I’m sure many of you are already thinking that the children will just opt out, but that is where the guardianship problem comes in to play. Today, the most effective forms of enforcement of these content filtering systems occurs within schools via IT administrators applying device management policies or network level blocking. So, if we extended these capabilities to configure the generic content filtering at the operating system level then the browser or other applications on the device rely upon those features to make sure the content filtering actually happens on the children’s devices and doesn’t get bypassed. Additionally, if the browser is not able to determine that the content is safe, it could be configured by default to blocking the site and allow bypass approvals from an authorized guardian such as the school IT administrator, a teacher, or a parent. Alternatively, it could be configured to allow access to the content but log it so the school lists could be updated.
+
+Furthermore, since parents could utilize these same theoretical operating system guardianship features (or provide consent for the IT admins at their school to configure it through BYOD policies) such that these devices can’t bypass the system it becomes a more technologically appropriate solution that allows parents, teachers, and IT admins to fluidly enforce as it aligns with their individual morals when raising their child. For example, guardians may choose to allow access to sensitive books or block sites relevant to topics they deem unsuitable for their children but other guardians are all right with. In this way we don’t end up with centralized institutions of the content platforms or the governments issuing the credentials or the regulators determining which content needs to be filtered. 
+
+In this way, we decentralize the enforcement out to millions of school districts or well informed parents acting as guardians that should understand these problems and are well versed in the cat and mouse game of content filtering bypasses. Furthermore, digital credentials still come into use here too but we subtly shift the trust triangle to make it work.
+
+For example, let’s say that a teacher has a managed device and wants to reference a specific blocked page or a child wants access to a specific chat feature in a game at home for a limited period of time. Then the operating system would be configured to recognize and trust the teacher’s or parent’s DID which could issue a digital credential authorizing permission to access the content. In this way, the browser (or other applications) and operating system work in tandem to act as the verifier not the centralized site server. Furthermore, because there’s only a limited number of guardians who could issue these credentials the system doesn’t need to fall back to a small number of centralized well known issuers or content classifications that enforce their moral discretion onto large populations of people. Instead, people would be able to selectively either self moderate or defer moderation rights to a guardian which as Ada Palmer points out in the blog post I linked previously is the most effective method of moderation today. 
+
+To understand how this might appear, from a user experience perspective the child would attempt to access a piece of content like normal and it would be blocked. The child’s browser (the verifier) would then request the operating system (the holder) provides a valid credential. If it has one it presents it, otherwise the operating system reaches out to the parent or teachers device to get issued a new credential. A notification would pop up on the guardians device where a clear prompt would identify what the credential is for, how long it’s used for, and maybe even whether it should be logged by the operating system so it can be sent back to the guardian for later review. Side note, this might actually be a circumstance where phone home is a feature rather than a bug to help parents monitor the content their children are accessing.
+
+In this way, by subtly shifting who plays what role we’ve reused the technology for the same purposes, but in a more decentralized way because the issuance is not bound to only a small select number of institutions but it is still scalable. Furthermore, the solution is more private for everyone on the Web because sites do not get required to collect personal data. However, they do still have a responsibility to tag content using the content tags that are required by regulators. Additionally the user can configure their content moderation themselves or defer it to third parties of their choosing like we do with Adblock lists depending on how granular the classification problem becomes. In this way, we achieve a more private and secure solution that remains scalable, allows individuals or guardians to self moderate as is best aligned with their moral discretion, and this is achieved because we opt for a decentralized architecture both in terms of credential issuance and in the sense of content moderation lists where users opt in.
+
+In summary, this is just one example of how the choices we make for the trust architecture have a profound impact on the solutions we end up on. It acts as a blueprint too for how we can think about different approaches for other use cases that balance tradeoffs by using decentralized trust as a means to an end not a liability to be avoided. I hope this helps exemplify more meaningfully too for how we can leverage these technologies in an alternative way that leads to more equitable outcomes for all and remain aligned with our principles.