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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

#211

Post by selcuka »

jp0d wrote: post #29
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…

As an Australian citizen I'm not fully in favour of this. But I think I agree that we need some protection from companies like Meta/Google etc influencing our youth based on the American political "situation".

You are aware that Meta/Google etc are behind this bill, aren't you? They don't want anonymous users. They want fully identified, age-verified ad consumers.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#212

Post by jgaa »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #191

What is it with some of the anglo countries and these ridiculous slides into nannying, vaguely repressive surveillance. It's not even much useful for real crime fighting, as the case of the UK amply and frequently demonstrates.

It's what happens when the people governing is terrified about the people they govern.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#213

Post by megablast »

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…

> your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

Pretty sure google searches have been used in murder trials before, including the mushroom poisoning one going on right now in Victoria.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#214

Post by account42 »

theshackleford wrote: post #170
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…

> 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. This would be completely and utterly unenforceable in any capacity. Budget smartphones are cheap enough and ubiquitious enough that children don't need your permission or help to get one. Jus…

Which is of course why we don't bother making selling cigarettes and alcohol to children illegal. Except we totally do that because it largely works even if sufficiently motivated individuals can and do get around the restrictions.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#215

Post by account42 »

l0ng1nu5 wrote: post #115
marcus_holmes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. This legislation has got nothing to do with moderation or "protecting children" - that's just the excuse that the government is using to push the legislation through. There are better ways of achieving that goal if that was the goal. The actual goal is, as always, complete control over what Australians can see and do on the internet, and complete knowledge of what we see and do on the internet.

Agreed but would also add the ability to prosecute anyone who writes something they don't like/agree with.

They can already do that, see e.g. what the UK is doing in response to tweets. You don't need identity verification to have an ISP tell you the person behind an IP.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#216

Post by account42 »

Nursie wrote: post #125
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

Throwing a lot of manpower at moderation only gets you lots of little emperors that try to enforce their own views on others.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#217

Post by lioeters »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #191

What is it with some of the anglo countries and these ridiculous slides into nannying, vaguely repressive surveillance. It's not even much useful for real crime fighting, as the case of the UK amply and frequently demonstrates.

> vaguely repressive surveillance

It's authoritarianism, and frankly paving the way for fascism. People are already getting visits from the police for unsavory Facebook posts. Be careful not to criticize your government online, because soon every post will be instantly judged by an AI system and you'll be flagged as a disobedient citizen in need of a bit of the old boot.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#218

Post by bombcar »

kolinko wrote: post #164
SlowTao wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thinking back to my teenage years I'm almost certain I would have been tempted to waste too much time online when it would have been better for me to be doing homework or playing sport. That is true. I spent my time coding a 2D game engine on an 486, it eventually went nowhere, but it was still cool to do. But if I had the internet then, all that energy would have been put into pointless internet stuff.

I had internet access since 13yo, although it was the internet of 1996, so it was way more basic. And for me it was a place to explore my passions way better than any library in a small city in Poland would allow. And sure - also a ton of time on internet games / MUDs, chatrooms etc. And internet allowed me to publish my programs, written in Delphi, since I was 13-14yo, and meet other programmers on Usenet. On the ot…

The Internet of 1996 and even of 2006 was a lot more “work” than the direct-into-your-eyebulbs Internet of today.

YouTube didn’t start until 2005! Even just getting Flash working to watch Home*Runner was an effort.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#219

Post by account42 »

Cartoxy wrote: post #148
ActorNightly wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't worry, the rest of the west is doing its best to catch up with you.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#220

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

Ycros wrote: post #79
incompatible wrote: post #27

Do they realise that some of us may be using computers that don't even have a camera, and open source software that could in theory upload any image we like?

It uses a video feed and asks you to look in certain directions. At least the one instance I've encountered did.

Yeah. Certainly something AI generated video couldn’t solve.
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