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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

#151

Post by Cartoxy »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #101
its-summertime wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slippery slope is specifically about opening the gates to further slipping. This clearly isn't the case since there is going to be slipping regardless of this specific instance going through all the way or not.

> It's wrong to call this a slippery slope because we're not at the top but instead already well on our way down a slope that is indeed slippery. Not a convincing take.

Australia is already living in a full-blown surveillance state. Over 330,000 metadata access requests were approved in a single year—no warrant needed. Agencies like Centrelink, the ATO, even local councils can tap into your private data. Police get access to your web browsing history directly from ISPs without judicial oversight. Encryption is being quietly undermined through laws like the TOLA Act, forcing tech companies to help spy or weaken their own systems. The government now mandates that AI search tools filter and flag content, shaping what people can even find online. When the AFP raided the ABC, they had the legal power to copy, alter, or delete files. Add to that Australia’s deep involvement in the global Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, and it's clear: this isn’t future dystopia, it’s surveillance as a fact of life. NBN monopoly + TR-069 as default hard locked and custom PCB in NBN hardware (even to the point of new PCB runs with all headers and test points even unpopulated removed) it tooks untill the new rev of arriss hardware before they even complied with the GPRD lisenceing. legit!

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#152

Post by closewith »

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…

> Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian.

Not quietly, I don't think. Not like Australia is known for freedom and human rights. It's known for expeditionary wars, human rights abuses, jailing whistleblowers and protesters, protecting war criminals, environmental and social destruction, and following the United States like a puppy.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#153

Post by fc417fc802 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #131
riffraff wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this goes back to the original argument: maybe if you can't avoid causing harm then you shouldn't be allowed to operate? E.g. if you produce eggs and you can't avoid salmonella at some point your operation should be shut down. Facebook and its ilk have massive profits, they can afford more moderators.

> But this goes back to the original argument: maybe if you can't avoid causing harm then you shouldn't be allowed to operate? By this principle the government can't operate the criminal justice system anymore because it has too many false positives and uncaptured negative externalities and then you don't have anything to use to tell Facebook to censor things. > Facebook and its ilk have massive profits, they can aff…

> By this principle the government can't operate the criminal justice system

Obviously we make case by case decisions regarding such things. There are plenty of ways in which governments could act that populations in the west generally deem unacceptable. Private prisons in the US, for example, are quite controversial at present.

It's worth noting that if the regulator actually enforces requirements then they become merely a cost of doing business that all participants are subject to. Such a development in this case could well mean that all the large social platforms operating within the Australian market start charging users in that region on the order of $30 per year to maintain an account.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#154

Post by AnthonyMouse »

coryrc wrote: post #142
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the post people should point to when someone says "slippery slope is a fallacy" in order to prove them wrong, both for the age verification requirements and for making banks do KYC.

But also, your proposal would deter people from reporting crimes because they're not only hesitant to give randos or mass surveillance corporations their social security numbers, they may fear retaliation from the criminals if it leaks.

And the same thing happens for people posting content -- identity verification is a deterrent to posting -- which is even worse than a false positive because it's invisible and you don't have the capacity to discover or address it.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#155

Post by bigfatkitten »

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…

> but they clearly do actually take measures.

Some times, but clearly not often enough.

Does a refusal get more active than a message that says “Our review team has found that [the account’s] post does not go against our Community Guidelines”?

> Then you report something real and it gets lost in an sea of fake reports.

It didn’t get ‘lost’ — they (or their contract content moderators at Concentrix in the Phillipines) sat on it, and then sent a message that said they had decided to not do anything about it.

> What are they supposed to do about that?

They’ve either looked at the content and decided to do nothing about it, or they’ve lied when they said that they had, and that it didn’t breach policy. Which do you suppose it was?

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#156

Post by fc417fc802 »

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?

> but some tiny forum is supposed to be able to get it perfect so they don't go to jail?

Typically you would exempt smaller services from such legislation. That's the route Texas took with HB 20.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#157

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #147
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)…

> 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.

It is in combination with the high rate of false positives, unless you think the false positives were intentional.

> 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.

If they actually required both removal of all offending content and a low false positive rate (e.g. by allowing customers to sue them for damages for removals of lawful content) then the services would exit the market because nobody could do that.

What they'll typically do instead is accept the high false positive rate rather than leave the market, and then the service remains but becomes plagued by innocent users being victimized by capricious and overly aggressive moderation tactics. But local alternatives couldn't do any better under the same constraints, so you're still stuck with a trash fire.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#160

Post by toyg »

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…

The UK PM, Tony Blair, actually pushed the "45 minutes" fabrication. Some of his MPs might have been sceptical, but Blair was very clearly itching to be a wartime PM.

What you describe is more like the debate on continental Europe, which translated in little support (most countries provided help with logistics and minimal "peacekeeping").

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