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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

#61

Post by Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe »

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.

No it's been impossible without a phone numner for a while now

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

#62

Post by nottorp »

bigB wrote: post #30

My thoughts on this is there is very few things that will stop a sufficiently motivated teenager. I Know this as I have these conversations alot with my kids. They will work around it or go to whatever is out of scope of the blocking. The only thing the Australia Government is great at is political grandstanding, regardless of the party in power.

Heh, stop thinking of porn and similar stuff that a teenager will find a way to circumvent.

It's "normal" sites that are so crippled for minors for fear of liability that you end up telling your kids to just lie they're 24 when signing up.

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

#63

Post by johnisgood »

chii wrote: post #11
budududuroiu wrote: post #5

If Australia genuinely wanted to improve the lives of its children, it would first tackle the loopholes in its child support scheme [1]. But then again, as with Chat Control and other such schemes, “save the children” is used to usher in breaking of all citizens’ privacy. I bet Aus is insanely jealous of China’s mandatory ID checks on their superapps [1] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/08/single-paren...

Whenever a measure is instroduced in law to austensibly "protect the children", it's just merely an appeal to emotion and in fact, is not meant to do what is being advertised. It certainly is meant to increase the power of law enforcement, gov't overreach, and intrusion. It is used to add a chilling effect on any sort of dissent. The same could be said for any measures to protect you from "the terrorists".

Yeah, it has never been about saving the children, or fight terrorism. It has been about control and power. People should read more about Austrian economics / Mises, because despite what their preconceived thoughts may suggest, everyone who thinks this is a bad idea, will like what they will read on Mises' website.

Books like "Anatomy of the State" by Rothbard, "Basic Economics" by Sowell, "The Left, The Right, & The State" by L. H. Rockwell, Jr. or "Lessons for the Young Economist" by Bob Murphy are quite nice. Heck, I would even suggest "The Law" by Frédéric Bastiat.

You do not have to read books however, you can check blog posts.

Website can be found here: https://mises.org. You are looking for "Wire" and "Beginners". Make sure to use the search functionality though, there are a lot of very specific subjects that are "irrelevant" to this case.

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

#64

Post by logicchains »

sixtyj wrote: post #55
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 erec…

>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.

This is hyperbolic crap. Since at least the 70s boys have been growing up with access to adult images and it hasn't "destroyed their brains". Certainly a minority of people have a problem with porn addiction, but even completely banning porn access to teens would just delay this a few years, at the expense of completely destroying internet anonymity.

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

#65

Post by logicchains »

RachelF wrote: post #53
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.

Recently the Australian government's been talking about creating a national "internet hate" database to record criticism of Israel and the IDF, it's likely in service of that, as anonymity makes it harder to silence dissent.

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

#66

Post by brainwad »

gonzo41 wrote: post #47
jaza wrote: post #29

Sounds like Australian kids will just use private / incognito browser windows (aka porn mode) even more than they do already. I fail to see what this new "policy" will achieve, apart from my above point, plus serving as an excuse for Google and pals to subject users to ever more facial recognition and to brazenly collect ever more personal data.

This policy exists because parents won't do parenting anymore. Take away the phones and put a PC in the living room.

There's a collective action problem, though. One parent taking away their kid's phone is just isolating them from their friends, which might be a net negative. However, all the kids having their phones taken away would be a net positive.

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

#67

Post by heavyset_go »

sixtyj wrote: post #55
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 erec…

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

It wasn't difficult to find, it was just in your parents' or siblings' drawers, or your friends had it, or you or someone else had Pay-per-view TV or one of the soft core channels, or you or someone had illegal cable/sattelite, or it was just out in the woods[1] for whatever reason.

No one's minds melted from that.

If access to content is so unhealthy for anyone, then policy should address that. For example, sites should throttle or cut heavy users off. Giving 3D models of our faces + our IDs/passports online just for some government contractor to lose them is a solution looking for a problem that it does not solve well.

Funnily enough, I was going through my grandfather's possessions from when he was a kid and found what can be described as cartoon adult content in with his comic books. This was shit from literally 100 years ago, and yet that generation turned out alright by most standards.

[1] https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_inexplicably_ubiquit...

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

#68

Post by logicchains »

NoPicklez wrote: post #33
__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…

This isn't just asking for your age, its going to require verification of that through ID.

Australia requires ID to purchase alcohol yet alcohol usage among under 18s is widespread.

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

#69

Post by globular-toast »

logicchains wrote: post #64
sixtyj wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 erec…

>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. This is hyperbolic crap. Since at least the 70s boys have been growing up with access to adult images and it hasn't "destroyed their brains". Certainly a minority of people have a problem with porn addiction, but even completely banning porn access to teens would just del…

Ubiquitous high-definition internet porn is completely different from what was available in the 90s, let alone the 70s. What you're saying sounds like "people have been burning herbs for hundreds of years, there's no way cigarettes could be harmful!"

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

#70

Post by potamic »

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".

You're missing the point. If one wants to be anonymous there are ways to do so. If we willingly give up anonymity in exchange for free in certain cases, that's our prerogative, but we must have the choice of not needing to do, when necessary.
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