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Australians to face age checks from search engines

ia.acs.org.au

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Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#141

Post by SlowTao »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #24

2025: if you're logged in, then we check your age to see if you can do or see some stuff 2027: the companies providing the logins must provide government with the identities 2028: because VPNs are being used to circumvent the law, if the logging entity knows you're an Australian citizen, even if you're not in Australia or using an Aussie IP address then they must still apply the law 2030: you must be logged in to vis…

As others have pointed out how many of these are already present here. I suspect the rest of your time line is far to optimistic in how long it will take to get there. I suspect that with the pace of decline most of that will be enacted in the next 5 years.

I would like to say "It is all because of X political party!" but both the majors are the same in this regard and they usually vote unanimously on these things.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#142

Post by coryrc »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #90
bigfatkitten wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your link says the opposite of what you claim I don’t know where you got that from. Meta’s self-congratulatory takedown of “27 pedophile networks” is a drop in the ocean. Here’s a fairly typical example of them actively deciding to do nothing in response to a report. This mirrors my own experience. > Like other platforms, Instagram says it enlists its users to help detect accounts that are breaking rules. But those…

Your claim was that they "actively refuse" to do anything about it, but they clearly do actually take measures. As mentioned, the issue is that they get zillions of reports and vast numbers of them are organized scammers trying to get them to take down legitimate content. Then you report something real and it gets lost in an sea of fake reports. What are they supposed to do about that? It takes far fewer resources to…

> What are they supposed to do about that?

Do like banks: Know Your Customer. If someone performs a crime using your assets, you are required to supply evidence to the police. You then ban the person from using your assets. If someone makes false claims, ban that person from making reports.

Now your rate of false positives is low enough to handle.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#143

Post by Cartoxy »

rendall wrote: post #129
strken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Inconvenience" is downplaying the impact of not letting adults use incognito mode to search for things. Yes, right now search engines are only going to blur out images and turn on safe search, but the decision to show or hide information in safe search has alarming grey areas. Examples of things that might be hidden and which someone might want to access anonymously are services relating to sexual health, news stori…

Also porn. Let's be honest, all of this energy expenditure is about porn.

is it tho because we have been doing porn since forever and porn is not gatekeeperd by SE at all.

seams like long term slow burn to Gov tendrils just like digital ID and how desperate the example came across as to show any real function, contradictory even.

Pivot, what about the children. small steps and right back on the gradient of slippyslope we are

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#144

Post by palmfacehn »

defrost wrote: post #42
frollogaston wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when any anti-Iraq-invasion material was considered "misinformation" in the US. Wonder how it went in Australia, since they were also very involved.

My recollection of the time is that most citizens that paid attention and a majority of the politicians in the UK and AU were fully aware the "intel" was sketchy and the motivations impure .. the debate was less about the information quality and more about the obligation to partner with the US in the invasion. The UK PM and the AU PM backed the US position and sent troops in (in the AU case they even sent in advance…

My anecdotal, non-Aussie observation: Yes, doubts over the WMD debacle were shouted down as nutty conspiracy theory. The usual rhetoric was employed, "If such a wide ranging conspiracy were truly afoot, wouldn't someone blow the whistle?"

Afterwards the same people who employed this rhetoric claimed they, "Always knew the claims were false".

There was definite risk of loss of political capital for would be dissenters. Politicians may or may not have had skeptical reservations. It is moot point if they didn't proactively dissent. Similarly, it isn't especially meaningful in the context of this discussion if those who did dissent were locked out of popular media discourse. The overall media environment repeated the claims unquestioningly. Dissent was maligned as conspiracy theory.

Another interesting manifestation were those who claimed that WMDs were found. Clearly the goal posts were shifted here. Between those who were "always suspicious" and those who believe that the standards of WMDs were met, very few people remain who concede that they were hoodwinked by the propaganda narrative. Yet at the same time, it isn't a stretch to observe that a war or series of wars was started based on false premises. No one has been held to account.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#145

Post by Nursie »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #139
Nursie wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact is that moderation is hard Moderation is hard when you prioritise growth and ad revenue over moderation, certainly. We know a good solution - throw a lot of manpower at it. That may not be feasible for the giant platforms... Oh no.

This is the weirdest theory. The premise is that you admit the huge corporations with billions of dollars don't have the resources to pay moderators to contend with the professional-grade malicious content by profitable criminal syndicates, but some tiny forum is supposed to be able to get it perfect so they don't go to jail?

> The premise is that you admit the huge corporations with billions of dollars don't have the resources to pay moderator

My contention is more that they don’t have the will, because it would impact profits and that it’s possible that if they did implement effective moderation at scale it might hurt their bottom line so much they are unable to keep operating.

Further, that I would not lament such a passing.

I’m not saying tiny forums are some sort of panacea, merely that huge operations should not be able to get away with (for example) blatant fraudulent advertising on their platforms, on the basis that “we can’t possibly look at all of it”.

Find a way, or stop operating that service.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#146

Post by closewith »

Tade0 wrote: post #138
hilbert42 wrote: post #13

A resident of said country here. Another questionable measure by Government to protect our mollycoddled, insufficiently-resilient society. That said, a better approach would be to limit kids under certain age from owning smartphones with full internet access. Instead, they could have a phone without internet access—dumb phones—or ones with curated/limited access. Personally, I'm not too worried about what risqué stuf…

My take is just like we have allowance to introduce children to the concept of money, parents could use data allowance to introduce children to the concept of the internet. The worst content out there is typically data-heavy, the best - not necessarily, as it can well be text in most cases.

That's a naïve view of the internet, where much of the worst experiences children have are in text via chat.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#147

Post by fc417fc802 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #127
fc417fc802 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Active refusal can (and commonly does) take the form of intentionally being unable to respond or merely putting on such an appearance. One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were generally taken down rapidly. Post acquisition such content seemed to disappear approximately overnight. If the system is patholo…

> One of the curious things about Twitter pre-aquisition was that underage content somewhat frequently stayed up for months while discriminatory remarks were generally taken down rapidly. Post acquisition such content seemed to disappear approximately overnight. This isn't evidence that they have a system for taking down content without a huge number of false positives. It's evidence that the previous administrators…

I agree that on its own it isn't evidence of the ability to respond without excessive false positives. But similarly, it isn't evidence of an inability to do so either.

In the context of Australia objecting to lack of moderation I'm not sure it matters. It seems reasonable for a government to set minimum standards which companies that wish to operate within their territory must abide by. If as you claim (and I doubt) the current way of doing things is uneconomical under those requirements then perhaps it would be reasonable for those products to be excluded from the Australian market. Or perhaps they would instead choose to charge users for the service? Either outcome would make room for fairly priced local alternatives to gain traction.

This seems like a case of free trade enabling an inferior American product to be subsidized by the vendor thereby undercutting any potential for a local industry. The underlying issue feels roughly analogous to GDPR except that this time the legislation is terrible and will almost certainly make society worse off in various ways if it passes.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#148

Post by Cartoxy »

ActorNightly wrote: post #94
ratchetgo1 wrote: post #82

Grand Fascist State Censor Julie Inman Grant strikes again. Another disgraceful loss of privacy for the country defining anglophone technological totalitarianism.

Meh, this is minor political fluff. Australia is still doing quite good.

in the digital rights and government spying department --- maybe VS china or Nkorea but in the "west" we are profanely the worst. easily.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#149

Post by closewith »

naruhodo wrote: post #86
marcus_holmes wrote: post #24

2025: if you're logged in, then we check your age to see if you can do or see some stuff 2027: the companies providing the logins must provide government with the identities 2028: because VPNs are being used to circumvent the law, if the logging entity knows you're an Australian citizen, even if you're not in Australia or using an Aussie IP address then they must still apply the law 2030: you must be logged in to vis…

Mate... > 2038: all visits to all sites will be recorded That's been the case since 2015. ISPs are required to record customer ID, record date, time and IP address and retain it for two years to be accessed by government agencies. It was meant to be gated by warrants, but a bunch of non-law-enforcement entities applied for warrantless access, including local councils, the RSPCA (animal protection charity), and fuckin…

Yes, the 2038, 2040, and 2042 scenarios are already reality in most of the world. We're in the dystopian nightmare.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#150

Post by 1718627440 »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #95
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t buy them devices and lock down your computer and networks. I guess if a teenager is enterprising enough to get a job and save up and buy their own devices and pay for their own internet then more power to them.

Obviously an impossible task. Kids need computers for school, and every school provides laptops. Kids don't need access to social media.

No? This was how it was for me. And the only downside was, that all the other kids are glued to their smartphones.

Why is this even controverse. Is there any rational reason why kids should have smartphones? The only reason I see is to let the big companies earn money and because adults don't want to admit, that they are addicted themselves.

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