Australians to face age checks from search engines • Hacker News Board

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#201

Post by florkbork » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 9:43 AM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #15

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #10

As an australian citizen i'm all for it. Look at how the internet and social media has destroyed our current youth and their naivety and sense of emotional security. They all act like they're living in soviet russia at this point and have become so hard and jaded. Better I give a little bit of pii than some kid grows up too early. Would you be able to tell the difference if this policy came from a place of compassion…

> They all act like they're living in soviet russia Nothing says “not living in Soviet Russia” like having to show your papers to access information.

https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

Literally right there in the bill, showing your papers and the company collecting is just as much of an offense as them doing nothing to stop kids from being run through the misinformation mill.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#202

Post by kypro » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

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…

100% agree.

The framing that explicit material is bad for kids, while probably true, is besides the point. Lots of things a parent could expose a child to could be bad, but it's always been seen as up to the parent to decide.

What the government should do is ensure that parents have the tools to raise their kids in the way they feel is appropriate. For example, they could require device manufactures implement child-modes or that ISP provide tools for content moderation which would puts parents in control. This instead places the the state in the parental role with it's entire citizenry.

We see this in the UK a lot too. This idea that parents can't be trusted to be good parents and that people can't be trusted with their own freedom so we need the state to look after us seems to be an increasing popular view. I despise it, but for whatever reason that seems to be the trend in the West today – people want the state to take on a parental role in their lives. Perhaps aging demographics has something to do with it.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#203

Post by arresin » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 9:49 AM UTC

> Age assurance methods can include age verification systems, which use government documents or ID; age estimation systems, which typically use biometrics; and age inference systems, which use data about online activity or accounts to infer age.

Oh how convenient.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#204

Post by Erikun » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 9:49 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #190

falcor84 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's easier to put your query into the address bar than to open a dedicated search page, and most people use Chrome with the default being Google search.

Absolutely no one searches for porn on Google except if they don't know the URL of an aggregator. Which that one kid will tell everyone if they don't.

More people than searches for free fonts at least (couldn’t think of a good comparison search term to “Free porn” off the top of my head) https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#205

Post by cmoski » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 9:49 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #67

jackvalentine wrote: post #6

Australians are broadly supportive of these kind of actions - there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect. Can’t say I blame them.

> there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect. This view is manufactured. The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it. The fact is that moderation is hard and in particular excluding all actually bad things without also having a catastrophically…

I think it is less about stopping them from seeing naked pictures etc and more about stopping them getting sucked into the addictive shithole of social media.

It will also make it harder for the grubby men in their 30s and 40s to groom 14yo girls on Snapchat, which is a bonus.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#206

Post by ta12653421 » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 9:54 AM UTC

pferde wrote: post #186

johnisgood wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the Internet when I was a kid and I ended up being a software engineer with useful skills in many different areas. You are wrong to blame the Internet (or today LLMs). Do not blame the tool. Sure I consumed sex when I was a kid, but I did a fuckton of coding of websites (before JavaScript caught up, but in JavaScript) and modding of games. I met lots of interesting, and smart people on IRC with mutual hobbies a…

Could the difference between your experience and that of today's teenagers be in the fact that in your time, there were no online content farms hyperoptimized for maximum addictiveness, after their owners invested millions (if not billions) into making them so?

back then the web (or prior networks like Gopher, Usenet) were used and filled mainly by professionals working in the one or another field; and if you were online, you demonstrated already a basic tech undertstanding, since it wasnt as convenience as today. Sure, porn existed early on; but the "entertaining web content" was just not existing as today.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#207

Post by cmoski » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 9:58 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #200

cmoski wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of people changing their own light fittings. I have never heard about laws against plumbing but I don't see them stopping old mate from doing it. Electrical work can be pretty dangerous...

Yeah, here in WA at least, there are signs up in the plumbing section of Bunnings saying “Stop! DIY plumbing is illegal! Only buy this stuff if you’re getting a professional to fit it!” The reasoning is often “people might contaminate the water supply for a whole street!” Which just points to poor provision of one way valves at the property line. But yeah, illegal. I agree there are limits with what you want to do on…

Well there you go. Probably thanks to a plumbing lobby. Lucky we moved out of WA.

A lot of laws can be interpreted as reccomendations :)

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#208

Post by shirro » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 10:09 AM UTC

amaterasu wrote: post #60

The co-leads on drafting the code are rather interesting: > Drafting of the code was co-led by Digital Industry Group Inc. (DIGI), which was contacted for comment as it counts Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo among its members.

Yes. As usual people commenting based on their biases instead of comprehending the text. This is a proposal made by predominantly US companies (a country that actually has mandatory proof of age to access digital services in several states) to a US born eSafety commissioner who previously worked for Microsoft, Adobe and Twitter.

Not really sure what this has to do with the Australian government or Australian people. We can't even properly tax these foreign companies fairly. If we did try to regulate them the US government would step in and play the victim despite a massively one sided balance of trade due to US services being shoved down our throats. We need to aggressively pursue digital sovereignty.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#209

Post by johnisgood » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 10:14 AM UTC

ta12653421 wrote: post #206

pferde wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could the difference between your experience and that of today's teenagers be in the fact that in your time, there were no online content farms hyperoptimized for maximum addictiveness, after their owners invested millions (if not billions) into making them so?

back then the web (or prior networks like Gopher, Usenet) were used and filled mainly by professionals working in the one or another field; and if you were online, you demonstrated already a basic tech undertstanding, since it wasnt as convenience as today. Sure, porn existed early on; but the "entertaining web content" was just not existing as today.

Yes, especially IRC. What people call today "gatekeeping" is exactly what gave IRC networks value.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#210

Post by ptek » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 10:14 AM UTC

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.

Hmm people will go back to using lingerie catalogs or start using LLM prompts?