Workshop: “Child Safety on the Web”

[tjwhalen]

Describe the web problem you think needs solving

Governments around the world increasingly look for methods to protect the safety of children as they participate online, and recently have been passing mandates for sites to identify or verify the age of visitors to alter functionality or exclude them from content. Those mandates often introduce risks to privacy and free expression, including surveillance of everyone's reading and writing online, breaches of sensitive data, preventing children from accessing important information, or blocking/taking down websites altogether. It would be helpful to find ways to support parents and children as they navigate access to appropriate Web content, without increasing privacy risk or impeding free expression.

Describe some use cases and requirements in detail

• how do parental controls or user safeguards work on the Web and how can we improve them?
  • can we find alternative approaches that don't, for example, rely on the collection of government IDs?
• focus on architectural considerations in the workshop (rather than policy debate)

Workshop is an opportunity to:

• propose and review potential solutions and how they could be adopted or deployed on the Web
• map out the space of solutions (in different layers of the stack)
• better understand some of the proposals being developed (e.g., from major tech firms)
• brainstorm technical designs and identify areas of interest for further standardization work

Possible topics:

• standards for sites to self-label content, through appropriate metadata
• ways for users to communicate to sites that they are trying to avoid certain types of content ("safe mode")
• how we can adapt protocols and formats to help endpoints provide better 'hooks' (i.e., as in RFC 8674)

Potential outcomes:

• a shared understanding of the range of different approaches available.
• an understanding of the technical challenges in each approach.
• an understanding of the governance and policy challenges in each approach.

There may need to be some preparatory work done to survey existing options to lay the groundwork for a productive workshop.

^^
Above material excerpted from email thread, much thanks and all credit to contributors, cc-ed here for further discussion: @npdoty, @mnot, @martinthomson, @sandandsnow, @bvandersloot-mozilla

[iadawn]

Just to add that this has quite a bit of overlap when considering safety on the web for people with disabilities. In particular where they have care support or care workers who assist them in online dealings.

[wareid]

This is a topic that the Publishing industry has a big interest in, particularly on the retailer/reading platforms side. Over the years we've explored a variety of ways to figure out how to organize and filter content for specific audiences. It might be worth looking at some of Publishing's metadata standards for how Publishers/Authors can identify their content:

• ONIX Codelist 203 - https://ns.editeur.org/onix/en/203
• BISAC Fiction categories - https://www.bisg.org/fiction
• Thema - https://www.editeur.org/files/Thema/1.6/v1.6_en/20251004_Thema_v1.6_en.html

On the retail side, many have tooling or checks in place to flag adult content if it is not already identified through metadata as being for adults. There is some challenge in establishing and managing these checks and rules because laws differ around the world on what ages content can be shown to, what content is considered inappropriate, and how to differentiate content. A classic example is "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov in comparison to "50 Shades of Grey" by E.L. James and what audiences those books can be shown to.

[simoneonofri]

An analysis/options from European Parliament.

[plehegar]

TAG session on planning for a potential Workshop on Technical Architectures for Age-Based Restrictions on Content Access

[npdoty]

European Commission is soliciting feedback on guidelines for compliance with the Digital Services Act requirements on ensuring safety and privacy for minors:
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/commission-seeks-feedback-guidelines-protection-minors-online-under-digital-services-act
... and proposing development of one particular method of age verification, a precursor to EU Digital Identity Wallets.

[xfq]

In terms of internationalization, some initial ideas:

Mapping to local systems?

Mappings between the potential W3C values and established regional rating bodies.

Allow metadata with natural language to carry language and direction metadata

For example, if we use the HTML meta element:

<meta name="content-advisory:themes" lang="en" content="violence;strong-language">
<meta name="content-advisory:themes" lang="ja" content="暴力;強い言葉遣い">

[dontcallmedom]

see also the recent discussion on the topic at the EuroDIG 2025 conference

[simoneonofri]

Here's what's happening in Italy

[tjwhalen]

text that could be included in Call for Participation (under development):
Workshop on Age-Based Restrictions on Content Access

Brief summary
This workshop seeks to perform a thorough examination of the technical and architectural choices that are involved in deploying 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.

Potential dates and location
2025-10-07 through 2025-10-09, London UK

Position Papers
Individuals interested in participating in this activity can indicate their interest by submitting a short position paper

Topics of interest include:

• Surveys of the common features of regulation on age restrictions
• Analysis of the technical requirements that might apply
• Identification of other key factors to consider in the design of a technical architecture, including, but not limited to, privacy, equity of access, market dynamics (such as centralization), vulnerability to circumvention, cost, accuracy, jurisdiction/geolocation, and censorship
• Details of possible technical architectures, whether in whole or part:
  • For determining the age of people
  • For identifying content that might need to be restricted
  • For controlling access to identified content
  • Comparisons of different technical architectures
  • Examination of how technical architectures might interface with or rely upon regulation or other governance structures
  • Feasibility of different approaches
  • Exploration of the ramifications of choosing different technical architectures

Summary Report
A report will be published after the conclusion of the workshop. That report will include:

• A list of attendees and primary affiliations (anonymity or exclusion can be requested)
• A summary of topics discussed including general trends and key viewpoints expressed
• Resolutions that participants reached, if any
• Recommendations for future research or standards development

Program
This workshop is expected to be a 2.5 day in-person event. The bulk of the program will consist of a series of sessions that each focus on a specific topic.
Each session will start with a small number of presentations of material from participants based on their position papers. These presentations will help establish a common understanding of the topic in order to better facilitate discussion. The bulk of each session will be spent on discussion: first to clarify understanding, then to identify key issues, and - where appropriate - to explore potential paths to constructive outcomes.

[martinthomson]

The final text.

[tjwhalen]

Updated Call for Participation text, for reference: W3C announcement (posted 15 July).

Note:

• Remote participation may be offered at the Program Committee's discretion.
• Position papers due 08 August 2025

Logistics

• Paper submissions due by: 2025-08-08
• Invitations to attendees sent: 2025-08-15
• Workshop date: 2025-10-07 through 2025-10-09
• Workshop location: London, UK

Participants who need extra time to make travel arrangements should indicate this in their submission; we will endeavour to make an early determination about their submission if possible.