Australia is introducing age checks for search engines like Google
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
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 to make their products addictive.
Instead, we get insanely invasive half-measures that impede on security, privacy and speech, with the added bonus of politicians whipping people up into moral panics in order to pass them.
Australia really wants to be able to identify and track the ID of all their citizens online. No more Internet anonymity for them.
Like the death chant marches through Australian city streets, burning synagogues, attacking Israeli restaurants, vandalising, threatening, and shoving socialist-activated Palestinian propaganda marches in our faces every second? That criticism?
Looks like the ruling gov still sees their citizens as such
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_transportation?wprov=sft...
It's more like playing dumb, willfully ignoring the issues to serve ulterior motives.
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.
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.
Erectile dysfunction is a physiological issue. It's almost always an issue of blood flow. This young man could have heart failure or some other condition limiting his blood flow to that of an old man.
Not to mention testosterone levels have been declining for what, 70 years? Why are just intuitively, and pre-emptively, blaming random stuff on pornograhpy? You can't do that. You have to show the causation. The world is complicated.
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.
Edit: today‘s sick content is not comparable to the one from the past.
The first step in solving the problem of those prudes trying to build an inescapable surveillance state because there is way too much porn online, is accepting that they’re right that children are going to suffer because of the porn accessible online.
Right, that was the whole point of my comparison.
It's worth reading this short piece about British conductor Sir Eugene Goossens who in the mid 1950s was conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and after a tour of the UK brought photographic material back to Australia that was deemed pornographic by Australian Customs. He was arrested, he resigned and his life was ruined for something many nowadays wouldn't give a second thought about (although different, the tragedy has shades about it reminiscent of what happened to Oscar Wilde): https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/british-conducto...
The Goossens incident was a classic instance of Australian conservatism—conservative values—in action.
It happened some years before my classroom incident but Australian Society's views were essentially still static, not much had changed by then.
That said, things did change and by the mid 1970s Australia had largely caught up with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, nevertheless its society has always retained a high level of conservatism and conservative values about it.
The background behind these new internet regulations is both complex and nuanced. That they've managed to take hold and become law almost without so much as a squeak from the population is partly explained because of that risk averse conservatism but also as there's been no opposition to speak of. By and large, Australians do not complain enough when their politicians enact laws that are authoritarian and unjust. It's rare for Australians to take to the streets on mass and demonstrate. The last time I witnessed that was during the Vietnam demonstrations of the late '60s when a broad cross section of the population took to the streets—and guess what, the laws were changed, politicians actually took note (numbers really matter).
These days demonstrations are largely carried out by minority interests, politicians take little interest and not much happens, and the Establishment still gets its way. The population watches on with little interest and often takes the view that such 'radicals' ought to be off the streets.
The reasons for the population's complacency are too complex to cover here except to make the point again that the conservative nature of Australian society makes it easy for politicians to convince the population that authoritarian law is in Society's best interests. Likewise, politicians are easily convinced by vested interests to that effect for the same reasons.
The large migration of recent decades has brought with it additional complexity, it's changed Australian Society greatly. Migrants have brought both cultural and religious values with them many of which are traditionally conservative (but by nature very different to traditional Australian conservatism). Given migrant numbers, Australia is more conservative now than it was say 30/40 years ago but not to the extent it was in the 1950s.
Moreover, as cultural differences now exist across large sections of the population the Nation no longer speaks with one voice on many issues as it one did (politics back then was fought across a narrow spectrum of interests). These differences not only make governments even more suspicious of their citizenries they also enable power brokers and vested interests to more easily manipulate Government to have it change laws than would have been the situation decades ago when the Nation spoke more with one voice on many issues.
In recent years there have been multiple instances of successive Australian Governments having taken advantage of divided opinion across society to change laws—laws that effectively take power from the Citizenry and cede it to themselves. These privacy-busting authoritarian laws/regulations are now on the statutes simply because there was not enough opposition to them. It's another classic instance of united we stand divided we fall.
And let's not even forget that maybe 50 to 100 years ago, "kids" could more commonly be married and have kids under this arbitrary limit of 18 years old and that did not make them crazier adults than what we have now. At that time, 20 was easily already mid life. Still take care to not compare with countries of today were kids are still able to marry young. These are usually retarded countries were kids are clearly forced and abused to do that.
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...
Kids aren't the same as adults. It's like saying "no one should drive/smoke/drink because kids aren't allowed to".
> 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
You can't be comparing, surely? A drawn picture of breasts compared to the most hardcore and (almost always female) degrading stuff imaginable in 4k?
If any of those things are as harmful as proponents claim, there is no excuse for letting them continue to harm anyone for profit. Children aren't the only sympathetic victims here.
> You can't be comparing, surely? A drawn picture of breasts compared to the most hardcore and (almost always female) degrading stuff imaginable in 4k?
I am. The content of those magazines was horrendous by today's standards. Just because it was drawn does not mean the content itself was wholesome. I was genuinely shocked by what it contained.
Still wouldn't ban it, though.
Without specifics, how was it horrendous by today's standards? As in you'd never see anything on the internet anywhere near as degrading as it?
No, I have not seen anything like that before on the Internet or since, and I hope to never see 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.
In the '70s for most boys that meant finding an occasional issue of one of the adult magazines that was available at regular magazine shops. Mostly Playboy and Penthouse, maybe Hustler if you got lucky.
Those are all very tame compared to what is now readily available for free on the net today.
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 even cheer on these actions for bonus points.
People should be highly wary of ceding further freedom/authority to government, regardless of the 'children/terrorists/drugs/etc excuses'. The government desire to have order, should not be prioritised over individuals right to live freely. Freedoms are not re-granted by governments - getting them back will mean a fight, not a petition.
It's also doesn't justify any additional chilling of free speech.
In practice this isn't how people are using google services though.
What do you think?
Depends how much you share with Google when signed in. If I log out of Google services and browse around the web, my browsing activity is not recorded against my Google account.
Maybe after a decade of wrongful arrests the laws will become more sane and just require server operators to use RTA labels [1] and clients to check for said labels to active optional parental controls as determined by the parents or legal guardians. No 3rd party leaky junk.
[1] - https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single
Depends on the implementation. Germany has digital passports already and for age verification the only data you transmit is your date of birth.
I don't know anything about Ozzy passports tho.
Considering how we have gone from barely any form of tracking only 25 years ago to this. It will get worse.
We apparently live in a world where companies are legally considered to be people, and thus have rights, yet they have no moral obligations whatsoever.
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 was born on 1 Jan 1970, just like their parents.
And yeah, majority of Chinese people use a VPN to get around similar blocks.
As interesting as it is, it should have never come to this.
What about Marginalia? A small operation like Marginalia, if affected, may not have the ressource to implement age check. Is this some kind of regulation capture scheme?
Why don't you just shove a leash up my ass?
If you can shepherd the majority, or at least a larger percentage, then the leaks can be ignored (until they get too big, at which time then consider changes and tweaks).
For the likes of us on HN bypassing these things is a bodily function, however I believe there's a large cohort "out there" for whom it could be a bridge too far. Eg. I doubt too many degrees of separation outside of HN even know of the existence of Marginalia.
Having said that, the existence and purpose of a VPN is probably pretty well spread "out there in the world".
(ignoring the effectiveness of the topic of this thread).
Kid searches for porn and can’t find it. Someone at school recommends incognito/logging out. … So they lock down logged out searches?
Next someone at school puts them onto SearXNG, Yandex, VPNs, etc.
Maybe a percentage of kids will grow up never learning workarounds? Maybe the rest get slightly more tech savvy in a good way… (I’m not pro-11-year-olds watching ultra-depraved snuff but can see occasional bridges to IT know-how. Hope not all workarounds are ultra-appified then.)
I assume that Russian dissidents must ironically use google et al for the same reasons.
What do I say. Every day I'm even more disappointed in people. "So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause."
Grew up in NSW for 25 years. Nothing has changed. A few extra toll roads.
The problem is that the Australian political system needs to appease to the centre. That's how parties get into power. As long as that's the case, it doesn't leave a whole lot of room to meaningfully tackle the problems plaguing the country (in particular, housing).
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...
I believe that acting locally, funding child protection services, providing more boots on the ground, is actual progress (I mean, these organisations are literally called "child protection services", who else better, then?)
I've mentioned this a number of times before: my wife is a teacher and therefore has 'mandatory reporting' responsibilities. The frustration is that, with the resources currently available, they're only able to intervene where a child's life is in immediate danger.
I'm not sure if the bar could be any lower.
I should also make the disclaimer that what I know is second-hand information from my wife, and may be out of date and / or biased due to frustrations due to the misalignment between 'mandatory reporting' and 'what can actually be done'.
I mostly agree with this. Unfortunately I think it is also true of a lot of activist tactics (e.g., big protests), which seem to be more about making their participants feel good than about producing genuine results. It's human nature to lose interest in things when there is no crisis, and to be vulnerable to misdirection.
It's like the old joke about how there's no good time to fix the roof, because when it's raining you can't fix it, and when it's not raining you don't need to fix it. Of course, you have to fix it when it's not raining. Likewise the only real way to avoid this "sense of something being done" is to push sizable changes at a moment when no one thinks they are urgent, and that's often difficult to accomplish.
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".
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.
But you can “save the children” as many times as you want and there will always be another thing to save them from. And it's impossible to measure because obviously you can't go and ask children what they do on internet or what inappropriate content they found intentionally or not.
So perfect topic to work with even without conspiracy to invade grown ups privacy.
The only thing the Australia Government is great at is political grandstanding, regardless of the party in power.
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.
This allows both sides to present an angle of resistance to the opposite. The freedom people will push back against control. The control side will push back against the worst outcomes.
I say this as somebody who is very much against this roll out. There is the middle way of rules and regulations but this is dependent on how you can allow some freedom without becoming too restrictive. This is a wild over correction but I am not surprised. This is, yet another typically aussie politician move. Slowly stepping into authoritarian state behind the guise of jingoistic "she will be right" attitude.
It's also telling that Google and Microsoft aren't in opposition to this new burden, they're giving quiet yet full support. This will *necessarily* entrench the big players through the burden to implement, make it easier to track individuals across different accounts and services, and endanger the privacy and anonymity of all adults in Australia. And I think that's all the goal.
If they cared about protecting kids they'd focus on resources and campaigns to educate parents on using parental controls. Then parents could decide if they care to block these things in their homes. It should be up to them.
The "you can just log out" loophole, that's just boiling the frog slowly. It would be foolish to think that will stay around.
Exactly this.
The other possibility is that Google & Microsoft won't want to hassle people for ID or "papers please" just for liking a post, reviewing a business or sending email.
If I were Google, I'd be worried about losing a LOT of customers who simply won't provide invasive personal details which routinely get stolen in Australia from poorly secured "trusted" organisations like Qantas and Optus.
People won't want to send their ID to "trusted ID contractors" for simple web services because e-Karen has a final solution. I'll close my Google accounts if they ever deny me access on that basis, and I'll take action against the measures in any way I can to make things as uncomfortable as possible for whatever authoritarian government ushers this garbage in.
It's also clear that this data itself is valuable in the first place, and any company ever would love to be handed it for free mandated by law.
I think VPNs are the easiest solution when this gets implemented. Easier than going through an age check.
What can we - the people - do to make our discontent heard?
Living in Australia has been eye opening. I naïvely assumed that mandatory, ranked-choice voting would draw a direct line from popular sentiment to legislative outcome, but that's anything but the case.
Nobody "voted" for this specifically, but every source I have seen says such initiatives are widely supported by the populace. Such as for instance the <16 under social media ban which enjoys very wide support.
https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/51000-support-for-un...
The average australian does not see the internet like you and I do. They see it as just another threat, and one that should be reigned in. Don't get me wrong, I hate this and everything about it, but nobody (rightfully) cares what I think, because i'm a childless nobody who is in the minority on such things.
Feels like Albanese is walking on eggshells at the moment trying to get Trump not to cancel AUKUS, not ramp up tarrifs etc.
Opinion mostly based on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px9qhDGv300&t=688s (and, of course, the US now being essentially a rogue state, and it'll take significant structural change to fix that).
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.
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.
but regardless I will absolutely be implementing a VPN solution to bypass this.
I'm not for a minute saying either the current government, or any past government is either competent or capable of implementing protections which actually work. I am solely saying, these intentions will probably be popular with a lot of parents, and very possibly electorally popular as well, and will be unopposed by the opposition, unless they take a "not going far enough" position.
The Australian Privacy Commissioner, and the CSIRO made substantive submissions to the government regarding use of trusted third parties and homomorphic encryption. I have some doubt the government is interested in listening, but the fact remains there are technologies which can identify you, do KYC 100 points, and not reveal who you are, or where you are going, to the government who issues the ID.
Like many others I've had my google account in continuous use, demonstrated to google through use of things like passkeys and 2FA, for over 20 years. I struggle to think of how most people with a gmail account have not functionally identified themselves to google (most: by no means all)
And yes, I think barely anyone exists who hasn't functionally identified themselves to Google. And I'd venture nobody exists where Google hasn't already built a shadow profile on them (for ad networks); how exactly do people think they've been using Google for "free" all these years?
And good grief the lack of understanding of the basics of consent is downright appalling! It is literally the same logic as a rapist's defense that their victim was promiscuous so they couldn't have been raped!
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?
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.
The problem with laws such as this which rely on benevolent enforcement is that they're volatile. Any country could become fascist, at any time. We're all just sort of hoping that the data and privacy we've all given up isn't used for evil - but certainly the frameworks to use it for evil are there, and are being expanded constantly.