Australians to face age checks from search engines
213 comments
·July 1, 2025hilbert42
abtinf
> Another questionable measure by Government to protect our mollycoddled, insufficiently-resilient society
Complains about mollycoddling.
> a better approach would be to limit
Immediately proposes new mollycoddling scheme.
hilbert42
Mollycoddling kids is one thing, we've always done that to some extent. Mollycoddling adults is another matter altogether.
xboxnolifes
Both proposals are mollycoddling children. It just happens that one of them inconveniences adults.
tacticus
> That said, a better approach would be to limit kids under certain age from owning smartphones with full internet access. Instead, they could have a phone without internet access—dumb phones—or ones with curated/limited access.
This wouldn't allow them to watch gambling ads or enjoy murdoch venues.
hilbert42
Oh, the cynicism of some people. :-)
Yes, that empire exported itself to where it would have the greatest effect—cause the most damage.
SlowTao
> Thinking back to my teenage years I'm almost certain I would have been tempted to waste too much time online when it would have been better for me to be doing homework or playing sport.
That is true. I spent my time coding a 2D game engine on an 486, it eventually went nowhere, but it was still cool to do. But if I had the internet then, all that energy would have been put into pointless internet stuff.
kolinko
I had internet access since 13yo, although it was the internet of 1996, so it was way more basic.
And for me it was a place to explore my passions way better than any library in a small city in Poland would allow.
And sure - also a ton of time on internet games / MUDs, chatrooms etc.
And internet allowed me to publish my programs, written in Delphi, since I was 13-14yo, and meet other programmers on Usenet.
On the other hand, if not for internet, I might socialise way more irl - probably doing thing that were way less intelectually developing (but more socially).
It just hit me that I need to ask one of my friends from that time what they did in their spare time, because I honestly have no idea.
johnisgood
I had the Internet when I was a kid and I ended up being a software engineer with useful skills in many different areas.
You are wrong to blame the Internet (or today LLMs). Do not blame the tool.
Sure I consumed sex when I was a kid, but I did a fuckton of coding of websites (before JavaScript caught up, but in JavaScript) and modding of games. I met lots of interesting, and smart people on IRC with mutual hobbies and so forth. I did play violent games, too, just FYI, when I was not making mods for them.
pferde
Could the difference between your experience and that of today's teenagers be in the fact that in your time, there were no online content farms hyperoptimized for maximum addictiveness, after their owners invested millions (if not billions) into making them so?
theshackleford
I had the internet as a youth, and it is pretty much entirely responsible for me having been able to build a social network and social capabilities, build the career I have today and ultimately break out of poverty.
Tade0
My take is just like we have allowance to introduce children to the concept of money, parents could use data allowance to introduce children to the concept of the internet.
The worst content out there is typically data-heavy, the best - not necessarily, as it can well be text in most cases.
closewith
That's a naïve view of the internet, where much of the worst experiences children have are in text via chat.
Tade0
Pretty sure a picture is still worth a thousand words. Also text is something you can prepare for, police if need be.
Random visual internet content? Too many possibilities, too large a surface area to cover.
florkbork
I find I am broadly supportive of these laws (The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024), even if this specific regulation is a bit of pearl clutching wowserism.
Why? If you read the original legislation https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
You get 30,000 civil penalty units if you are a scumbag social media network and you harvest someone's government ID. You get 30,000 civil penalty units if you don't try to keep young kids away from the toxic cesspool that is your service, filled with bots and boomers raving about climate change and reposting Sky News.
This absolutely stuffs those businesses who prey on their users, at least for the formative years.
And when I think about it like that? I have no problem with it, nor the fact it's a pain to implement.
kypro
100% agree.
The framing that explicit material is bad for kids, while probably true, is besides the point. Lots of things a parent could expose a child to could be bad, but it's always been seen as up to the parent to decide.
What the government should do is ensure that parents have the tools to raise their kids in the way they feel is appropriate. For example, they could require device manufactures implement child-modes or that ISP provide tools for content moderation which would puts parents in control. This instead places the the state in the parental role with it's entire citizenry.
We see this in the UK a lot too. This idea that parents can't be trusted to be good parents and that people can't be trusted with their own freedom so we need the state to look after us seems to be an increasing popular view. I despise it, but for whatever reason that seems to be the trend in the West today – people want the state to take on a parental role in their lives. Perhaps aging demographics has something to do with it.
dzhiurgis
Australian gov can’t even enforce vape ban, how you’d expect smartphone ban to be enforced?
florkbork
What if the point isn't to enforce at the user level, but at the company level?
30,000 penalty units for violations. 1 unit = $330 AUD at the moment.
theshackleford
> That said, a better approach would be to limit kids under certain age from owning smartphones with full internet access. Instead, they could have a phone without internet access—dumb phones—or ones with curated/limited access.
This would be completely and utterly unenforceable in any capacity. Budget smartphones are cheap enough and ubiquitious enough that children don't need your permission or help to get one. Just as I didnt need my parents assistance to have three different mobile phones in high school when as far as they knew, I had zero phones.
account42
Which is of course why we don't bother making selling cigarettes and alcohol to children illegal. Except we totally do that because it largely works even if sufficiently motivated individuals can and do get around the restrictions.
marcus_holmes
2025: if you're logged in, then we check your age to see if you can do or see some stuff
2027: the companies providing the logins must provide government with the identities
2028: because VPNs are being used to circumvent the law, if the logging entity knows you're an Australian citizen, even if you're not in Australia or using an Aussie IP address then they must still apply the law
2030: you must be logged in to visit these specific sites where you might see naked boobies, and if you're under age you can't - those sites must enforce logins and age limits
2031: Australian ISPs must enforce the login restrictions because some sites are refusing to and there are loopholes
2033: Australian ISPs must provide the government with a list of people who visited this list of specific sites, with dates and times of those visits
2035: you must be logged in to visit these other specific sites, regardless of your age
2036: you must have a valid login with one of these providers in order to use the internet
2037: all visits to all sites must be logged in
2038: all visits to all sites will be recorded
2039: this list of sites cannot be visited by any Australian of any age
2040: all visits to all sites will be reported to the government
2042: your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case
Australian politicians, police, and a good chunk of the population would love this.
Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian. It's all "beer and barbies on the beach" but that's all actually illegal.
naruhodo
Mate...
> 2038: all visits to all sites will be recorded
That's been the case since 2015. ISPs are required to record customer ID, record date, time and IP address and retain it for two years to be accessed by government agencies. It was meant to be gated by warrants, but a bunch of non-law-enforcement entities applied for warrantless access, including local councils, the RSPCA (animal protection charity), and fucking greyhound racing. It's ancient history, so I'm not sure if they were able to do so. The abuse loopholes might finally be closed up soon though.
https://privacy108.com.au/insights/metadata-access/
https://delimiter.com.au/2016/01/18/61-agencies-apply-for-me...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-18/government-releases-l...
https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2023/government-acts-to-finall...
SlowTao
I cannot find it any more due to the degradation of Google but there was a report on the amount of times this data was access in NSW for 2018 (?). It was something like 280,000 requests for that year alone!
marcus_holmes
I didn't know that. Thanks
closewith
Yes, the 2038, 2040, and 2042 scenarios are already reality in most of the world. We're in the dystopian nightmare.
incompatible
> 2042: your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case
We already reached that point several years ago.
marcus_holmes
yeah true, I should have made it more explicit that it's your entire browser history, and every criminal case
bravesoul2
Interesting question is warrant or no warrant required?
pmontra
> 2039: this list of sites cannot be visited by any Australian of any age
Block lists are not new. For example Italy blocks a number of sites, usually at DNS level with the cooperation of ISPs and DNS services. You can autotranslate this article from 2024 to get the gist of what is being blocked and why https://www.money.it/elenco-siti-vietati-italia-vengono-pers...
I believe other countries of the same area block sites for similar reasons.
megablast
> your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case
Pretty sure google searches have been used in murder trials before, including the mushroom poisoning one going on right now in Victoria.
m3sta
Australian politicians, police, and a specific chunk of the population would be exempt from this... like with privacy laws.
marcus_holmes
indeed. Rules for thee but not for me.
SlowTao
As others have pointed out how many of these are already present here. I suspect the rest of your time line is far to optimistic in how long it will take to get there. I suspect that with the pace of decline most of that will be enacted in the next 5 years.
I would like to say "It is all because of X political party!" but both the majors are the same in this regard and they usually vote unanimously on these things.
tbrownaw
> 2030: you must be logged in to visit these specific sites where you might see naked boobies, and if you're under age you can't - those sites must enforce logins and age limits
Some states in the US are doing this already. And I think I saw a headline about some country in Europe trying to put Twitter in that category, implying they have such rules there already.
closewith
> Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian.
Not quietly, I don't think. Not like Australia is known for freedom and human rights. It's known for expeditionary wars, human rights abuses, jailing whistleblowers and protesters, protecting war criminals, environmental and social destruction, and following the United States like a puppy.
bravesoul2
US is the same but with a different leash-holding country.
southernplaces7
What is it with some of the anglo countries and these ridiculous slides into nannying, vaguely repressive surveillance. It's not even much useful for real crime fighting, as the case of the UK amply and frequently demonstrates.
jgaa
It's what happens when the people governing is terrified about the people they govern.
florkbork
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
Read the legislation. Ask yourself if it's better for a country's government or a foreign set of social media companies to control what young people see. One has a profit motive above all else. One can be at least voted for or against.
bobbyraduloff
Taken straight from the new regulation: “Providers of internet search engine services are not required to implement age assurance measures for end-users who are not account holders.”
How can you argue any of this is NOT in the interest of centralised surveillance and advertising identities for ADULTS when there’s such an easy way to bypass the regulation if you’re a child?
jackvalentine
Australians are broadly supportive of these kind of actions - there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect.
Can’t say I blame them.
AnthonyMouse
> there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect.
This view is manufactured. The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it. The fact is that moderation is hard and in particular excluding all actually bad things without also having a catastrophically high false positive rate is infeasible.
But the people who are the primary victims of the false positives and the people who want the bad stuff fully censored aren't all the same people, and then the second group likes to pretend that there is a magic solution that doesn't throw the first group under the bus, so they can throw the first group under the bus.
cmoski
I think it is less about stopping them from seeing naked pictures etc and more about stopping them getting sucked into the addictive shithole of social media.
It will also make it harder for the grubby men in their 30s and 40s to groom 14yo girls on Snapchat, which is a bonus.
marcus_holmes
This. This legislation has got nothing to do with moderation or "protecting children" - that's just the excuse that the government is using to push the legislation through. There are better ways of achieving that goal if that was the goal.
The actual goal is, as always, complete control over what Australians can see and do on the internet, and complete knowledge of what we see and do on the internet.
florkbork
Pfft. https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
Read it. It is specifically targeting companies who currently run riot over young individual's digital identity, flog it off to marketers, and treat them as a product.
l0ng1nu5
Agreed but would also add the ability to prosecute anyone who writes something they don't like/agree with.
globalnode
i think governments are confused by the internet. on the one hand business uses it to save money and pay taxes. broligarch's get rich from it. yet it exposes the unwashed masses to all sorts of information that might otherwise face censorship. theres always sex and drugs you can use as a reason to clamp down on things. the tough thing for them will be how do you reign in the plebs while also allowing business and advertising to function unfettered... tough times ahead :p
p.s. i agree with your comment.
jackvalentine
> This view is manufactured. The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it. The fact is that moderation is hard and in particular excluding all actually bad things without also having a catastrophically high false positive rate is infeasible.
Manufactured by whom? Moderation was done very tightly on vbulletin forums back in the day, the difference is Facebook/Google et al expect to operate at a scale where (they claim) moderation can't be done.
The magic solution is if you can't operate at scale safely, don't operate at scale.
AnthonyMouse
> Manufactured by whom?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
> Moderation was done very tightly on vbulletin forums back in the day, the difference is Facebook/Google et al expect to operate at a scale where (they claim) moderation can't be done.
The difference isn't the scale of Google, it's the scale of the internet.
Back in the day the internet was full of university professors and telecommunications operators. Now it has Russian hackers and an entire battalion of shady SEO specialists.
If you want to build a search engine that competes with Google, it doesn't matter if you have 0.1% of the users and 0.001% of the market cap, you're still expected to index the whole internet. Which nobody could possibly do by hand anymore.
g-b-r
Were web searches moderated?
bigfatkitten
> The premise is that better moderation is available and despite that, literally no one is choosing to do it.
It’s worse than that. Companies actively refuse to do anything about content that is reported to them directly, at least until the media kicks up a stink.
Nobody disputes that reliably detecting bad content is hard, but doing nothing about bad content you know about is inexcusable.
AnthonyMouse
Your link says the opposite of what you claim:
> Meta said it has in the past two years taken down 27 pedophile networks and is planning more removals.
Moreover, the rest of the article is describing the difficulty in doing moderation. If you make a general purpose algorithm that links up people with similar interests and then there is a group of people with an interest in child abuse, the algorithm doesn't inherently know that and if you push on it to try to make it do something different in that case than it does in the general case, the people you're trying to thwart will actively take countermeasures like using different keywords or using coded language.
Meanwhile user reporting features are also full of false positives or corporate and political operatives trying to have legitimate content removed, so expecting them to both immediately and perfectly respond to every report is unreasonable.
Pretending that this is easy to solve is the thing authoritarians do to justify steamrolling innocent people because nobody can fully eliminate the problem nobody has any good way to fully eliminate.
Nursie
> The fact is that moderation is hard
Moderation is hard when you prioritise growth and ad revenue over moderation, certainly.
We know a good solution - throw a lot of manpower at it. That may not be feasible for the giant platforms...
Oh no.
AnthonyMouse
This is the weirdest theory. The premise is that you admit the huge corporations with billions of dollars don't have the resources to pay moderators to contend with the professional-grade malicious content by profitable criminal syndicates, but some tiny forum is supposed to be able to get it perfect so they don't go to jail?
SchemaLoad
I'm split on it. 100% agree that kids being off social media is better for society. But I can't see how it could be enforced without privacy implications for adults.
fc417fc802
Perhaps enforcement at the user end isn't what's needed. A perfect solution is likewise probably unnecessary.
As but one possible example. Common infrastructure to handle whitelisting would probably go a long way here. Just being able to tag a phone, for example, as being possessed by a minor would enable all sorts of voluntary filtering with only minimal cooperation required.
Many sites already have "are you 18 or older" type banners on entry. Imagine if those same sites attached a plaintext flag to all of their traffic so the ISP, home firewall, school firewall, or anyone else would then know to filter that stream for certain (tagged) accounts.
I doubt that's the best way to go about it but there's so much focus on other solutions that are more cumbersome and invasive so I thought it would be interesting to write out the hypothetical.
ptek
Are you 18 or older?
You don’t get that notification show up when you buy alcohol or cigarettes at a shop, would have been easier being a minor buying beer. The porn companies know what they are doing or they would create a adults robots.txt and published a RFC. Hope they won’t ask for age verification for the shroomery
SchemaLoad
Yeah that seems pretty reasonable. Apple and Google could extend their parental controls to send a header or something flagging an under age user, for sites to then either block, or remove social elements from the page.
Seems like right now the Aus Government isn't sure how they want it to work and is currently trialing some things. But it does seem like they at least don't want social media sites collecting ID.
null
2muchcoffeeman
Don’t buy them devices and lock down your computer and networks.
I guess if a teenager is enterprising enough to get a job and save up and buy their own devices and pay for their own internet then more power to them.
null
SchemaLoad
Obviously an impossible task. Kids need computers for school, and every school provides laptops. Kids don't need access to social media.
bigfatkitten
If you read through the issues that ASIO says they are most concerned about, it’s clear that companies like Meta have a lot to answer for.
https://www.intelligence.gov.au/news/asio-annual-threat-asse...
hilbert42
We don't need ASIO to tell us that. The real problem is that early on when Big Tech first took a stranglehold of the internet in the early 2000s that governments failed to regulate, they did SFA despite the warning signs.
At the time it was obvious to many astute observers what was happening but governments themselves were mesmerized and awed by Big Tech.
A 20-plus year delay in applying regulations means it'll be a long hard road to put the genie back in tbe bottle. For starters, there's too much money now tied up in these trillion-dollar companies, to disrupt their income would mean shareholders and even whole economies would be affected.
Fixing the problem will be damn hard.
BLKNSLVR
Even harder now that the US President is siding with the tech broligarchy since it aligns perfectly with the America First ideology.
(It may be the last thing that the US has the world lead on)
It's also why legislation protecting privacy and/or preventing the trade of personal information is almost impossible: the "right" people profit from it, and the industry around it has grown large enough that it would have non-trivial economic effects if it were destroyed (no matter how much it thoroughly deserves to be destroyed with fire).
marcus_holmes
I just read through that, and it doesn't even mention Meta. Why do you think this is about "companies like Meta"?
homeonthemtn
But never will~
Palmik
It's interesting how all countries work in tandem implementing these measures. UK, EU, some US States and now Australia all require or will soon require age verification under certain conditions.
It seems like it would make more sense to implement it at the browser level. Let the website return a header (ala RTA) or trigger some JavaScript API o indicate that the browser should block the tab until the user verifies their age.
riffraff
I think lawmakers gravitate towards "required identification" because 1) it's easier to put blame on a single website than on whatever browser + the websites 2) it matches th experience of age restriction for movies and magazines, where age is enforced by whoever sells you the thing or allows access 3) client side restrictions seem easier to circumvent 4) some lawmakers probably think grown ups shouldn't watch porn either.
IMO an "ok" solution to the parents' requirements of "I want my kids to not watch disturbing things" might be to enforce domain tags (violence, sex, guns, religion, social media, drugs, gambling, whatever) and allow ISPs to set filters per paying client, so people don't have to setup filters on their own (but they can).
But it's a complex topic, and IMO a simpler solution is to just not let kids alone in the internet until you trust them enough.
bn-l
> Age assurance methods can include age verification systems, which use government documents or ID; age estimation systems, which typically use biometrics; and age inference systems, which use data about online activity or accounts to infer age.
Oh how convenient.
Cartoxy
Aims to protect kids online, but it could easily go too far. It covers way more than just search engines—pretty much anything that returns info, including AI tools.
It pushes for heavy content filtering, age checks, and algorithm tweaks to hide certain results. That means more data tracking and less control over what users see. Plus, regulators can order stuff to be removed from search results, which edges into censorship. Sets the stage for broader control, surveillance, and over-moderation. slowburn additions all stack up. digital ID ,NBN monopoly ISP locked DNS servers . TR-069 etc etc. Hidden VOIP credentials. Australia is like the west's testing ground this kind of policy it seams.
shirro
This looks like a voluntary industry code of conduct made by US companies Microsoft, Google etc. I am not aware of any legislation that would require this in Australia. If the commissioner thinks the industry codes are insufficient she might advise the government that a legislative approach is required but she is not an Australian politician and was not elected by anyone here.
The eSafety commissioner is an American born ex-Microsoft, Adobe and Twitter employee who was appointed by the previous conservative government. I wouldn't be so sure her values are representative of the so-called Australian nanny state or the Australian Labor Party.
Sevrene
I’m an Australian who values privacy and civil liberties more than most I meet.
While I yearn for the more authentic and sincere days of the internet I grew up on, I recognize very quickly by visiting x or facebook how much it isn’t that, and hasn’t been for a long time.
I think this bill is a good thing and I support it.
SturgeonsLaw
I’m an Australian who values privacy and civil liberties more than most I meet, and that's why I think this bill is horrible, is full of unintended consequences, and will be worked around by kids who care to do it.
florkbork
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....
Read the bill. Gov ID collection is just as much a violation as failing to take any action
hilbert42
"I’m an Australian who values privacy and civil liberties more than most I meet."
Same here. Early on, if I found a site interesting I'd often follow its links to other sites and so on down into places that the Establishment would deem unacceptable but I'd not worry too much about it.
Nowadays, I just assume authorities of all types are hovering over every mouse click I make. Not only is this horrible but it also robbs one of one's autonomy.
It won't be long before we're handing info that was once commonplace in textbooks around in secret.
fc417fc802
Aren't privacy and civil liberties fundamentally at odds with centralized government issued ID checks? How can you claim to value the former while supporting a plan to require the latter?
In the days before electronics were endemic, physically checking a photo ID didn't run afoul of that as long as the person checking didn't record the serial number. But that's no longer the world we live in.
marcus_holmes
I don't understand why you think this bill and that phenomenon (the fact that Xitter or Facebook aren't like the old days of the internet) are connected, can you explain why you think this, please?
veeti
Evidently the bar for valuing such things is set very low in Australia.
g-b-r
This is the account's first message here in two years
theshackleford
>I think this bill is a good thing and I support it.
Uhuh.
>I’m an Australian who values privacy and civil liberties more than most I meet.
No you're not.
frollogaston
The AI-based version of this looks fine, the ID checks are odd though
amaterasu
The co-leads on drafting the code are rather interesting:
> Drafting of the code was co-led by Digital Industry Group Inc. (DIGI), which was contacted for comment as it counts Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo among its members.
shirro
Yes. As usual people commenting based on their biases instead of comprehending the text. This is a proposal made by predominantly US companies (a country that actually has mandatory proof of age to access digital services in several states) to a US born eSafety commissioner who previously worked for Microsoft, Adobe and Twitter.
Not really sure what this has to do with the Australian government or Australian people. We can't even properly tax these foreign companies fairly. If we did try to regulate them the US government would step in and play the victim despite a massively one sided balance of trade due to US services being shoved down our throats. We need to aggressively pursue digital sovereignty.
fc417fc802
Do you suppose this is born of a desire to more easily identify people, or primarily as a regulatory fence to prevent upstart competitors? Perhaps both?
ethan_smith
Australia's been down this road before with the failed 2019 age verification bill and the Online Safety Act. The technical implementation challenges are enormous - from VPN circumvention to privacy risks of ID verification systems.
frollogaston
Well the age assurance is only for logged-in users, so they can just log out.
postingawayonhn
The article doesn't quite spell it out but I assume you won't be able to turn off safe search unless you log in with a verified 18+ account.
frollogaston
It does say "default" which implies you can turn off the filter, but yeah it's not very clear and does make a big difference. For example, YouTube already won't let you view flagged content without signing in.
SchemaLoad
This is how Youtube works now. Age restricted videos can't be viewed without logging in.
hilbert42
Unfortunately, two problems with that approach, Goolge with fingerprinting, cookies, IP addresses etc. will still know who you are. Second, even in the rare event that you are able to make yourself anonymous then the search results you're dished up can be filtered without your knowledge.
That would have the same effect.
bigfatkitten
You’d have a hard time finding a 12+ year old who doesn’t know what Incognito mode in Chrome is for.
_aavaa_
Ahh yes, a technological solution to a political problem.
senectus1
hmmm another slef hosting service to knock up. proxied search engine.
bamboozled
I guess they should just succumb to the US big tech machine without trying anything. I get the sentiment thought, maybe doing something that won't work is worse than doing nothing.
A resident of said country here. Another questionable measure by Government to protect our mollycoddled, insufficiently-resilient society.
That said, a better approach would be to limit kids under certain age from owning smartphones with full internet access. Instead, they could have a phone without internet access—dumb phones—or ones with curated/limited access.
Personally, I'm not too worried about what risqué stuff they'll see online especially so teenagers (they'll find that one way or other) but it's more about the distraction smartphones cause.
Thinking back to my teenage years I'm almost certain I would have been tempted to waste too much time online when it would have been better for me to be doing homework or playing sport.
It goes without saying that smartphones are designed to be addictive and we need to protect kids more from this addiction than from from bad online content. That's not to say they should have unfettered access to extreme content, they should not.
It seems to me that having access to only filtered IP addresses would be a better solution.
This ill-considerd gut reaction involving the whole community isn't a sensible decision if for no other reason than it allows sites like Google to sap up even more of a user's personal information.