Submitted 21 hours ago by Zagorath@aussie.zone to australia@aussie.zone
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-20/age-assurance-trial-preliminary-report/105440288
Oh this again. I had forgotten about it. According to the bill’s definition of “Social Media”, we (aussie.zone) meet it. Which means we need to somehow adhere to whatever the government deems necessary to confirm our userbase’s ages. Thing is: I can’t see any instance outside the country caring about this law. Why should they?
I genuinely have no idea from a technical standpoint how you’d enforce this.
Which means we need to somehow adhere to whatever the government deems necessary to confirm our userbase’s ages
As I see it, you have three options.
I can’t see any instance outside the country caring about this law. Why should they?
It’s the same as the EU when it creates legislation and says “if you have any European customers, even if they’re not in Europe, you have to comply”. It’s bullshit, and they know it. They can’t even enforce it on non-European companies that do provide a service to people in Europe. This will be enforced by the big guys with a global presence, and it’ll kill off small social media in Australia, while small social media elsewhere will just choose to ignore it.
Adhere to the regulations, whatever the fuck they end up being
I’ll send everyone a DM: “Hey, are you over 18? Yep? cool.”
I have verified that all our users are over 18. 👍
Whole thing is a moral panic. No good evidence exists of harms, but nobody needs evidence to believe what they want to.
You could like ban algorithmic endless feeds if that was bad, you could enforce content moderation standards if bad content was the issue. But no, this is just surveillance state expansion and traditional media handwringing being cheerfully assisted by the feckless “think of the children” crowd.
How many minutes will it take for a 17 year old to break the system this time
About 3 and a half.
This is a fucking waste of taxpayer money and it pisses me off
I have 4 kids, I can parent them without Big Brother. Fuck off Government
Why would a 17 year-old bother breaking it? When I was 17 I would have loved the idea that my younger sibling couldn’t be on social media!
The Aussie Gov spent A$84 million on a net content filter only for a teenager to break it within half an hour of it going live.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 21 hours ago
So we still have no idea how exactly this age verification is supposed to take place in a privacy preserving way.
I still maintain that the only acceptable way to do this is via platform-based APIs and child lock software. Your operating system must have a setting parents can set (locked so children are unable to edit it) with their child’s age. The browser and other apps must check that setting via an API. Websites would check the setting via a browser API.
It puts the onus for actual age verification on parents. So it’s completely privacy preserving. It’s not bypassable by some of the simplest methods like finding a fake photo of a driver’s licence. It’s certainly not going to completely bug out and give nonsense answers like AI age detection from selfies.
The fact that it’s not being done in consultation with platform providers is pretty indicative of the myopic, frankly idiotic approach of both the Labor Party and the Coalition when it comes to tech.
shirro@aussie.zone 19 hours ago
My kids run Arch linux on their desktops. I won’t let them use a closed source foreign adware/spyware operating system that doesn’t give full control of hardware on principle. So operating system restrictions are out of the question for me.
My kids have zero curiosity or interest in social media outside of youtube where they mostly watch really cool stuff which I support or if I think content is low quality it is something we discuss.
I am very content not to engage in social media if age verification proves too intrusive. Its a time waster for me and increasingly I feel like I am responding to prompts to train corporate AIs to replace employees, creatives etc. The human aspect of it all is getting lost. I think we need to learn how to live offline more.
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone 21 hours ago
How does that work for folks that don't have any need to run age verification software? I'm sure as hell not installing it
TimePencil@infosec.exchange 21 hours 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
Zagorath@aussie.zone 20 hours ago
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.