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

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#231

Post by Nursie » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 11:56 AM UTC

cmoski wrote: post #207

Nursie wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I went as far as to look up the last ‘consultation’ on this, and yep, all down to the plumbing lobby, expressing their horror that the general public could be ripped off, scammed even, by unqualified “handymen”, so it must remain illegal to do even the basics if you’re unqualified, even on your own house.

Total rort.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#232

Post by jolmg » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 1:06 PM 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…

> 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.

Why should this be the government's responsibility rather than the parents'?

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#233

Post by tzs » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 1:49 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #230

theshackleford wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cigarettes and alcohol are consumbable products that must be acquired again and again. There are already millions of phones in open circulation and you only need to acquire it once. Even if you could stop phones, you wont stop them from accessing it from literally a near infinite supply of other devices. It's pure and utter fantasy.

Mobile phone plans are still subscriptions and not buy for life things last I checked.

You don’t need a mobile phone plan to use free Wi-Fi to access the Internet.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#234

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #232

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. Why should this be the government's responsibility rather than the parents'?

[deleted]

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#235

Post by qingcharles » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 3:00 PM UTC

SlowTao wrote: post #135

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…

> 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 spent time creating 2D and 3D game engines. It was a lot easier once the Internet arrived to me in 1993. I could connect with other like-minds and found a wealth of useful information.

Sure, there was a lot of dicking around, but overall it was positive.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#236

Post by fc417fc802 » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #180

fc417fc802 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So the companies that exceed the threshold couldn't operate there (e.g. PornHub has ceased operating in Texas) but then everyone just uses the smaller ones. Wouldn't it be simpler and less confusing to ban companies over a certain size unconditionally?

That's hardly a good faith interpretation of the goals behind the Texas law. Also HB 20 was social media deplatformimg, not identification.

Notice that the goalposts shifted subtly from moderation of disallowed content to distribution of age restricted content. The latter isn't amendable to size based criteria for obvious reasons.

Note that I don't think the various ID laws are good ideas. I don't even think they're remotely capable of accomplishing their stated goals. Whereas I do expect that it's possible to moderate a given platform decently well if the operator is made to care.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#237

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:09 PM UTC

jolmg wrote: post #232

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. Why should this be the government's responsibility rather than the parents'?

Why should this be the government's responsibility rather than the parents'?

For the same reason that the government limits smoking and alcohol. Because the parents can't/won't.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#238

Post by fc417fc802 » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 5:30 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #171

fc417fc802 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 m…

> Obviously we make case by case decisions regarding such things. You can make case by case decisions regarding individual aspects of the system, but no modern criminal justice system exists that has never put an innocent person behind bars, much less on trial. Fiddling with the details can get you better or worse but it can't get you something that satisfies the principle that you can't operate if you can't operate…

That doesn't follow. The absolute of a principle being unobtainable doesn't mean it isn't of use. As I stated, you make a case by case judgment when applying it. That you aren't satisfied by the imperfection doesn't imply a lack of usefulness.

I expect you can get quite a bit of moderation for that price. If a given user is exceeding that then they are likely so problematic that you will want to ban them anyway. Speaking from personal experience, the vast majority of users never act in a way that requires attention in the first place.

If the law discriminates on size you don't end up with (or at least exacerbate) the oligarchy scenario. In fact it acts to counter network effects by economically incentivizing use of the smaller services.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#239

Post by jolmg » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 6:17 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #237

jolmg wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Why should this be the government's responsibility rather than the parents'?

Why should this be the government's responsibility rather than the parents'? For the same reason that the government limits smoking and alcohol. Because the parents can't/won't.

A teen can go to the store on their own and consume the cigarettes and alcohol right out the door without the parents knowing. There I can see why the parent would need the collaboration of greater society.

But for a phone? A child/early-teen shouldn't be able to afford a phone nor contract with a cellphone-service-provider being underage. That should be collaboration enough. If they got a phone beforehand, it's because the parents themselves got it for them.

Even considering a mid teen starting work, buying a phone and using it with WiFi, they can only really own things with the parents' approval. They can't really use it enough to form an addiction without the parents noticing and having the opportunity to confiscate it.

Re: Australians to face age checks from search engines

#240

Post by nullc » Wed, Jul 02, 2025, 6:55 PM 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…

And let me guess, this rule isn't eliminated if your property is isolated by a reduced pressure zone device?

I assume that in your post "WA" means Western Australia -- as I can't imagine this kind of absurd protectionism law flying in Washington state, even though it's a little more paternalistic than average for the US.