The government’s plan? No idea, because they still don’t have any idea. It might involve requiring you to install software to use any social media legally*. Or it might not require new software, but require you to upload your photo ID or a selfie (on the promise that they will totally delete the photo as soon as they’re finished verifying it, pinky swear!). The law was passed 6 months ago in a rush, and is now 6 months away from coming into effect, but we still don’t know. Because the government did not do its due diligence in planning this out. It didn’t even have sufficient time for proper public submissions.
If you meant my idea? I didn’t specify. It could be designed either way. To assume anyone who hasn’t specified an age is an adult and allow them through, or to block by default in order to ensure age verification is being proactively provided. Personally, I would advocate for the former, but even the latter would be vastly superior to any other system I can think of.
Importantly: it wouldn’t be any software you have to install. It’d be a basic feature of the operating system. Like your operating system probably already has child controls on it; you just don’t use them. (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and at least Ubuntu Linux all certainly do, to different extents.) In the stricter scenario where it blocks if no age is provided, you would have to set your age up through your operating system’s settings. The key is: it relies entirely on trust. You can enter whatever age you like; there’s no checking of your face or your documents, so there’s no possibility of privacy invasion. This provides compliance with the intent of the law for children by requiring parents to enter the correct age for their kids and set sufficient locks on it to prevent the kid easily bypassing it.
* including any Lemmy, Piefed, or Mastodon servers, unless they can receive a specific exemption—and whether fediverse owners try to receive such an exemption and operate legally without age verification, or they implement the system, or they simply try to fly under the radar and hope they don’t get in trouble, is going to be a point that all fediverse admins where either the admin or the server are based in Australia are going to have to consider once the law comes into effect.
TimePencil@infosec.exchange 1 day ago
@ada
Methinks Zag was suggesting (possibly) that 'age verification' should be a *device* and *operating system* (& platform) feature that would be *inactive* by default.
In other words, there should be nothing for an adult (without kids) to do in order for their devices to function as they do now.
A parent would be required to activate a 'child lock' feature on a device before handing it to their kids.
Unfortunately, all governments are too chicken-shit scared to compel parents to do this small thing.
Governments *prefer* the option of compelling ALL users to provide 'age verification' (possibly Gov't issued ID) to the relevant platforms.
For the 'Liberals' this would be a natural extension of their right wing fascism.
For the Labor party, it's merely a reflection of their general incompetence.
@Zagorath
shirro@aussie.zone 1 day ago
The policy is predicated on protecting children for their mental health and development when they are at a very vulnerable age. Not all kids have responsible and capable parents. Lots of kids live in abusive circumstances, with absent/negligent parents and some kids are forced by circumstances to effectively be the the care givers/providers in their household as their parents guardians may be incapable. The world is really fucking sad sometimes.
When you go into a pub or supermarket and ask for a beer or pack of smokes they don’t give them to anyone who doesn’t have a child lock on them. They ask for proof of age. You can defeat that in various ways but they too are illegal and create risks for those involved. It isn’t perfect but it works well enough to reduce harms.
You want something available only to adults, then the convention is you provide proof you are an adult. That is a privacy nightmare if poorly implemented but then so is the entire digital realm right now.
I think we are missing the big opportunity as a society. The social media platforms are making shitloads of money through predatory manipulation of user habits because they get shitloads from advertising. Just ban the fucking advertising. Most of the bad shit goes away overnight because without the advertising the incentives to keep people trapped in a dopamine loop is mostly gone. The platforms either produce viable paid services or people move to community run alternatives like this one.
TimePencil@infosec.exchange 1 day ago
@shirro
The 'ID is required for beer and smokes' example is misleading.
Most adults are NOT required to provide ID to purchase such items. Only those who look "Under 25 years" *may* be required to produce ID, and even then, that ID is NOT recorded. (An exception may the the NT for alcohol sales.)
Requiring the citizenry to provide ID to either a social media entity OR via a government controlled gateway is something that must NOT be tolerated.
A requirement such as this will 'chill' free speech, weaken our democracy, and undoubtedly expose our personal information to hackers.
It's akin to allowing a person to purchase a pen, paper, envelope, and stamps - but then demanding the writer present both their ID and the unsealed letter at a Post Office, so that one's written words may be recorded against one's name.
To paraphrase Robert Bolt, it's akin to "cutting down privacy to protect children from the devil".
If you wish to argue in favour of this incoming law, do so *after* you've sent a copy of your ID to me.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 8 hours ago
Could you tell the guy at the bar I went to a week ago this, please? I got carded for the first time in years (not counting Safer Night Precincts where everyone gets carded) despite being—and looking—in my 30s.
shirro@aussie.zone 1 day ago
The for profit social media companies profile users and know their demographics in great detail. Kids are obviously watching different content to adults. They are in an equivalent position to a bottleshop employee letting a 12 year old walk out with a carton of premixes and claiming they didn’t know. The industry only cares about money and has proven they can’t self regulate.
The only question is how to react. Not whether to react.
The social media companies are obviously scare mongering and spreading misinformation to protect their financial interests. We need to balance peoples very reasonable demands for privacy with holding predatory corporate behaviour to account. The most likely outcome will be a requirement to use a third party age verification service subject to Australian privacy laws to verify a new user to a service so that there is no need to provide that informtion to the social media companies. I might ad that people willingly give their entire life history to Meta along with all their friends, colleagues and family along with photos that allow biometric fingerprinting of their children for life. Yet giving them a simple yes/no to the question of if you are legal age based on a trusted third party is considered intolerable. Seems like a very odd attitude that would only be defended by the social media companies and their shills.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
You’ve basically got it.
My proposal provides two separate options. One, the one I prefer, is exactly what you said. Inactive by default.
But there is a fallback option that I still think is significantly better than any alternative age verification. Which is that if inactive, social media sites would be required to presume you are underage. This would give governments an extra bit of leeway from the problems you’ve described here. It would require everyone to provide “age verification” (in the form of stating your age to the system, proving only that you have admin access to the device which parents should not be giving to children) without compelling turning over sensitive data like photo ID.
TimePencil@infosec.exchange 1 day ago
@Zagorath
Yeah. I used to encounter something akin to the 'fall back' solution when trying to watch the odd video on YT. (The video would usually be something as innocuous as 'Bambi Meets Godzilla'... and f**king Google would want me to Sign In to view it. No.)
No matter how the government tries to protect our community's 'precious little darlings' within a week or two, some teenager will release a fully encrypted app that's onboarded by 'invitation only', where they'll collectively plan to kill us all in our beds!
Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 day ago
The key difference with the YouTube example is that Google requires you to create an account (which helps them track you) and specify the account’s age. They also require proof of ID these days to give you access to age-gated content, which is possible, but quite tricky, to bypass.
The idea with my fallback solution is that it could work completely accountless. Your browser just reads from your operating system what your age is, the same way they can read what screen resolution you have or what version of your browser you’re running.
With robust parental controls in place, an OS should be able to prevent a child from installing any software without the parent’s consent (by the parent typing in a password that the child should not know). If it’s done robustly, the only way a child should be able to get around it is by dual-booting (or live USB-ing) into an entirely separate petition that their parents don’t control. And I’mma be honest, any kid who can figure that part out deserves free reign over their computer.