Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google

abc.net.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 120 posts

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

#81

Post by Exoristos »

heavyset_go wrote: post #67
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 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…

I never encountered any of the things you list, growing up, and would have been shocked if I had. There's a tendency to overgeneralize a culture based on one's own subculture -- or perhaps you're even assuming things after watching too many '80s movies.

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

#82

Post by lnsru »

huijzer wrote: post #73
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…

> BBC Channel 4 had a documentary in which a psychologist described 16-year-old boys with erectile dysfunction coming into his counselling room. I think that must be another medical condition or the boy lied, but we’ve all been 16 here and seriously those problems are extremely unlikely. If there is one problem that 16 year old boys have it is a too active sex drive.

No. We all have been 16 in different world. Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone.

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

#83

Post by AstralStorm »

verisimi wrote: post #80
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 aim is to achieve a panopticon. With a panopticon it doesn't matter whether you are actually being monitored (although it is conceivable that all online data could be reviewed by AI) - the mere idea of being monitored changes behaviour. Loss of anonymity in public spaces, the concern that one's citizen score could be impacted by arbitrary rules, changes behaviour. Everyone will act unnaturally; some people will e…

Panopticons are overrated. After a while, people start ignoring them as we see with social media.

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

#84

Post by aembleton »

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".

That means they can just use 'AI to guess a user's age based on the data the company already has'

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

#85

Post by graemep »

logicchains wrote: post #65
RachelF wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its not going to stop at that either. Once they have a database it will be expanded to include more and more.

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

#86

Post by hilbert42 »

lnsru wrote: post #82
huijzer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BBC Channel 4 had a documentary in which a psychologist described 16-year-old boys with erectile dysfunction coming into his counselling room. I think that must be another medical condition or the boy lied, but we’ve all been 16 here and seriously those problems are extremely unlikely. If there is one problem that 16 year old boys have it is a too active sex drive.

No. We all have been 16 in different world. Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone.

"Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone."

I went to Australian schools. For comparison I'm old enough to remember when a brand of bubble gum came with cards that had photographs of famous female film stars on them. Whenever we boys got duplicate photos we'd swap them with one another (it was pot luck, until we unwrapped the gum we couldn't see the photo).

I recall an incident in the classroom where we were surreptitiously swapping cards whilst the teacher was writing on the blackboard and had her back to us and she suddenly turned around and caught us.

She walked up one of the aisles towards the back of the class where we were and confiscated every last one of the cards. When she'd finished she turned to us and said in a loud, biting and accusative voice for the whole class to hear "You are all filthy-minded boys and you should be fully ashamed of yourselves".

Of the class only about four or five of us were involved and the school was coed, so half the class was girls (they sat on one side of the classroom we boys on the other).

These cards were only film studio PR photos so whilst the women looked well presented and pretty there was nothing whatsoever sordid or salacious about them.

We were between 12 and 13 years of age at the time. For a boy of that age these film star cards were the sexiest thing we could lay our hands on. There were no adult sex shops or under-the-counter mags wrapped in cellophane so one couldn't see before one bought—they came at least a decade later. Pornography of all sorts was illegal no matter one's age.

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

#87

Post by hedora »

ta8645 wrote: post #13
vkou wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The age verification also will inevitably let the authorities create a list of adults to persecute. If your government has slid that far down the dystopian shithole scale, why would they care if the person they are persecuting is an adult or a child?

They don't. That's just a thin veneer of "legitimacy" so they don't have to admit the real reasons, explicitly.

Exactly. Why would a kid looking at wrong-think sign in, only to have their request rejected?

I usually don’t comment on downvotes, but geez. They even admit/brag that this is what they’re up to in the US!

Also, I don’t get the comments elsewhere on this article that hope Trump will block the policy in Australia, even though he’s pushing for identical stuff here.

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

#88

Post by lnsru »

hilbert42 wrote: post #86
lnsru wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We all have been 16 in different world. Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone.

"Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone." I went to Australian schools. For comparison I'm old enough to remember when a brand of bubble gum came with cards that had photographs of famous female film stars on them. Whenever we boys got duplicate photos we'd swap them with one another (it was pot luck, until we unwrapped the gum we couldn't see the photo). I recall an incident in the classroom where…

I feel you very well. At that age I had access to Beate Uchse (sexshop from West Germany) catalogue. Completely innocent by today’s standard. Current kids have access to all the online sites where one must klick „I am 18 or older - Enter“. There are five parents, who doesn’t care about parental control, for one parent who implements it properly.

Edit: today‘s sick content is not comparable to the one from the past.

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

#89

Post by Padriac »

logicchains wrote: post #68
NoPicklez wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's perfectly legal for under 18 year old Queenslanders to consume alcohol.

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

#90

Post by spwa4 »

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".

Except this is giving up anonymity, first, everywhere, not on a few sites. Two, the goal is to find an excuse to arrest you, not to get you to buy a birthday present for your niece when it's time. Well, that, and (this is Australia) to refuse you medical care because you looked up "best cigarette" 10 years ago, as well as refuse you unemployment because you Googled "how do people fake a handicap" after watching office space, 20 years ago.
Post reply on HN