Article states that sites must demonstrate they are taking reasonable measures to enforce this though - a lot will come down as to how courts interpret that. If they go to the extremes of the KYC laws in australia I imagine a significant fraction of adults will not want to verify their age.
The history is extremely unlikely to be available to the id validator (beyond the domain at most). VPNs can't see the actual history either.
The average PornHub user's history will be full of weird incest shit at the very least, not because of any specific interest in the genre but because so much generic heterosexual porn is labeled as such. Looks really bad for you if it makes the newspaper.
So even "tame" leakage is 100x more embarrassing than it ought to be, and thus snooping on bf/husband's devices to humiliate them over their porn usage is normalized on relationship subreddits. Same goes for them plugging your email address into the password reset form to try to verify whether you have an account on any given site.
That's exactly what they're aspiring to here, following on from a well-established pedigree of Australian lawmakers and their dysfunctional relationship with the Internet.
Example:
Social networks, public media sharing networks, discussion forums, consumer review networks.
[1] https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/Phase...
Tender documents released on Monday show the technical trial is slated to begin “on or around 28 October”, with the provider also expected to assess the “effectiveness, maturity, and readiness” of technologies in Australia.
Biometric age estimation, email verification processes, account confirmation processes, device or operating-level interventions are among the technologies that will be assessed for social media (13-16 years age band).
In the context of age-restricted online content (18 years or over), the Communication department has asked that double-blind tokenised attribution exchange models, as per the age verification roadmap, and hard identifiers such as credit cards be considered.
[1] https://www.innovationaus.com/govt-readies-age-verification-...
[2] https://www.biometricupdate.com/202409/australia-launches-te...
They note that existing age verification setups largely either rely on providing ID, or on a combination of manual and automated behavior profiling (face recognition, text classification, reports from other users), both of which have obvious privacy and/or accuracy issues. The "double-blind tokens" point to a summary by LINC explaining how they _could_ be implemented with zero-knowledge proofs, but I could not find an article or a practical implementation (could just be a mistake on my part, admittedly)
At _best_ you end up with a solution in the vein of Privacy Pass - https://petsymposium.org/popets/2018/popets-2018-0026.pdf - but that requires a browser extension, a functioning digital ID solution you can build on top of, and buy-in from the websites. Personally, I also suspect the strongest sign a company is going to screw up the cryptographic side of it is if they agree to implement it...
The real change though comes from parent's perceptions. Right now there's age limits of 14-years-old on most social media platforms, however most parents just see this as a ToS thing, and nobody cares about actually violating it. Once it becomes law, the parents are suddenly responsible (and liable) for ensuring their children are not breaking the law by accessing social media. It's not going to stop everybody, but it'll certainly move the needle on a lot of people who are currently apathetic to the ToS of social media platforms.
I think the real solution is banning under 18s from having smart phones period.
They sort of naturally do that if you have the appropriate challenges and opportunities around them.
> ancient pyramid aliens or discussions about how veganism will help your body.
There used to be a tabloid called "News of the Weird." This stuff just exists. You'll find it anywhere people gather. We're story tellers. When we don't have a compelling story we just make stuff up. It's identical to the point above.
> even all the adults can't come to a shared understanding of what is "good" or true.
It's not possible. If the children are intended to inherit the future then this is a flawed and reductive strategy. You will not achieve what you seek through parochial means.
Really.. I think your biggest problem should be advertising. It should be nowhere near children. Ban _that_ but keep the social media.
I think the way the EU approached this with their "digital gatekeepers" is smart. Recognize that policing the entire internet isn't possible or even desirable. Focus on those few companies with the largest capacity for harm. Different criteria might be appropriate when focusing on potential harm for children (e.g. Roblox rather than Twitter) but besides a few changes you'll probably end up with roughly the same list.
I'm not sure I'd support an outright ban, but rather very strict monitoring and requirements around moderation, in app purchasing, gambling mechanics, and so on.
This is the same country that brought you "the laws of mathematics are very commendable but they don't apply in Australia".
I foresee a two- or three-tier Internet in the future, and Australia will probably be the first "western" country to block Tor.
They seem to be learning a lot from the Chinese.
Edit: actually never mind it was only active between the years 2007-2012
The Australian way would be to "ban" tor without any particular concern for enforceability or technical feasibility. Any actual blocking would be pushed onto industry somehow, which would then proceed to half-ass it, doing the absolute minimum possible to demonstrate they are complying with regulation.
I like Australia a lot, but a lot of the time it feels like political priority is to "make it look like something is being done". No one would actually care if the blocking worked or not unless the media made a big song and dance about it.
I also wonder how much of this ban is about "punishing" X and Meta in particular - Meta for it's refusal to pay for news and X because they didn't jump to immediately remove stuff the government wanted taken down.
> What even counts as social media?
Anything the government needs more leverage over or wants to shake down for money.
Because it mentions that an account must be linked to an email address or phone number.
Which would be the standard for almost every online service.
[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/F2022L00062/latest/text
[2] https://www.esafety.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-07/Basic...
Facebook, Instagram and X/Twitter are probably what's intended here, but what about Tumblr, DeviantArt or Discord? What about Reddit or a generic forum? What about VRChat or Webfishing?
If this is about protecting children from harmful depictions of body image or misogynistic content, then why not instead propose a law that states online services that allow children to join need to appropriately moderate the content that is shown to children or could face massive fines. I don't necessarily agree with that approach, but at least it would make sense with what their stated objectives are.
I am joking of course, but there is something to ponder about the growing number of childless people over 40 voting with little concern for the long term.
People don't all vote purely on self-interest, some of us vote on how we think human society should be run, and what we think is genuinely best for everyone. Not just for our own immediate bottom line.
This whole ageist line of reasoning is pretty offensive.
the median seventy-five year old’s brain is not in the same condition as the median thirty year old’s
Also, people under 60 still need to test and qualify for a license. So I’m not sure why you went down this comparison route.
Last night they took advantage of the population being distracted by the US election by having an extended parliamentary session to push forward with a second reading of the controversial misinformation bill.
The government and state media apparatus are of course both immune from any penalty under the bill.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/acma-crackdown-social...
Methinks they're, again, using "think of the children" as a bulwark against the inevitability of their own waning power. The more things change...
Can we also prevent under 16s from being exposed to religious teachings?
Meta itself causes harm to users of all ages with their algorithms (like suggested content on the feed) which can't really be turned off, and fueled the misinformation crisis which really took off a few years ago. The social media companies have done a good job of convincing the Australian government to overlook these harms.
1: https://roffey.au/static/submission-social-media-2024.pdf