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Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

abc.net.au

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Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#51

Post by BLKNSLVR »

muteor wrote: post #36
__d wrote: post #28

Anyone who cares will ask their mates at school, who will assist them to set up a VPN and thus circumvent this silliness. Then the same people who've pushed this solution to their perceived problem will start to target VPNs. The real question is whether they then attempt to ban VPNs. The streamers would likely join in on that, which might be sufficient lobbying for the government to accept it? Fortunately, my 12yo wa…

Kids will just ask strangers to verify the age for them or use a strangers token. I can see the WhatsApp token swapping groups already, you know just the sort of place children will meet actually dangerous people.

I mean, on the flipside, it's teaching kids to think outside the box...

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#52

Post by BLKNSLVR »

worthless-trash wrote: post #45
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theoretically: Vote for parties that are not actively hostile towards the people. Practically: nothing. Democracy has largely failed and in many countries you can, at best, pick between right wing assholes that work against your best interests and leftwing idiots that work against your best interests.

Which party is that ? Because I'm not seeing one.

Neither of the major two, that's for darn sure.

Some of the smaller ones have some tech savvy, but they're a long way off making any kind of a dent, and also seem to be going backwards in popularity.

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#53

Post by RachelF »

heavyset_go wrote: post #40

This is just a step towards killing anonymity and free speech online, as well as a hand out to shady government contractors. We are going to have to give our IDs and biometrics to untrusted 3rd parties just because some people don't like the idea of other people's kids using the internet. If these sites are so bad, maybe laws should instead target that problem. For example, make it illegal for social media companies…

The "online safety" of kids is just an excuse, I suspect.

Australia really wants to be able to identify and track the ID of all their citizens online. No more Internet anonymity for them.

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#54

Post by willvarfar »

trollbridge wrote: post #41
heavyset_go wrote: post #40

This is just a step towards killing anonymity and free speech online, as well as a hand out to shady government contractors. We are going to have to give our IDs and biometrics to untrusted 3rd parties just because some people don't like the idea of other people's kids using the internet. If these sites are so bad, maybe laws should instead target that problem. For example, make it illegal for social media companies…

Newsflash: pretty much every site like Google already knows exactly who you are. We gave up anonymity a long time ago in exchange for "free".

Google is one of the few free mail+everything+else providers that still lets people sign up and not give any kind of real-world identity. So you can, on a clean phone or laptop or whatever, create a new gmail account without any kind of auth and maintain that persona.

In practice this isn't how people are using google services though.

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#55

Post by sixtyj »

heavyset_go wrote: post #40

This is just a step towards killing anonymity and free speech online, as well as a hand out to shady government contractors. We are going to have to give our IDs and biometrics to untrusted 3rd parties just because some people don't like the idea of other people's kids using the internet. If these sites are so bad, maybe laws should instead target that problem. For example, make it illegal for social media companies…

I am old enough to remember how hard it was to find access to adult mags.

I understand that they want to make it harder for kids to access the flood of material that will destroy their brains before they even realize it.

Unlimited access to materials not intended and understandable by evolving kids’ brains is not really good.

BBC Channel 4 had a documentary in which a psychologist described 16-year-old boys with erectile dysfunction coming into his counselling room.

Of course, it depends on how to do it technically, face id is maybe unnecessarily too much... and also the question is whether we want to pass more data to the FAANG giants…

Edit: Ok, not hard…But access was not instant and ubiquitous as it is now. IMHO that makes the difference.

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#56

Post by dannyw »

willvarfar wrote: post #54
trollbridge wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newsflash: pretty much every site like Google already knows exactly who you are. We gave up anonymity a long time ago in exchange for "free".

Google is one of the few free mail+everything+else providers that still lets people sign up and not give any kind of real-world identity. So you can, on a clean phone or laptop or whatever, create a new gmail account without any kind of auth and maintain that persona. In practice this isn't how people are using google services though.

You will eventually be forced to give a phone number, which in many countries including Australia, require an ID to open.

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#57

Post by SlowTao »

heavyset_go wrote: post #40

This is just a step towards killing anonymity and free speech online, as well as a hand out to shady government contractors. We are going to have to give our IDs and biometrics to untrusted 3rd parties just because some people don't like the idea of other people's kids using the internet. If these sites are so bad, maybe laws should instead target that problem. For example, make it illegal for social media companies…

Because we could see the direction this was going, for well over a decade now I have been slowly stepping away from internet use outside of what is absolutely necessary or just mundane.

Considering how we have gone from barely any form of tracking only 25 years ago to this. It will get worse.

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#58

Post by anal_reactor »

What I love the most about this whole thing is that it's about limiting people's access to porn while evidence that porn is bad for you is dubious at best, while the real problem is big tech using algorithms to feed people's stupidity and addiction on personal basis... which as dystopic as it sounds, has been documented, proven, and accepted as the new normal. And with the new law it gives said big tech access to even more information about the user to target them with garbage even more effectively.

What do I say. Every day I'm even more disappointed in people. "So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause."

Re: Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

#60

Post by SlowTao »

__d wrote: post #28

Anyone who cares will ask their mates at school, who will assist them to set up a VPN and thus circumvent this silliness. Then the same people who've pushed this solution to their perceived problem will start to target VPNs. The real question is whether they then attempt to ban VPNs. The streamers would likely join in on that, which might be sufficient lobbying for the government to accept it? Fortunately, my 12yo wa…

It will be interesting to see this in action. It could be like any jail breaking scene, becomes an arms race between the jail and those trying to escape it.

As interesting as it is, it should have never come to this.

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