Australians will soon need their age checked to log into online search tools – here’s why

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• Tenderizer@aussie.zone ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Just use Qwant. They won’t even LET you log in.

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• Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Christ, google must be salivating

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• MalReynolds@slrpnk.net ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again.

  Oz gov yet again doing something unfathomably stupid with tech privacy, shocked I tell ya. Might have to point my SearxNG instance VPN endpoint somewhere else, maybe, see how it pans out…

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• BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Do a lot of people log in to search engines?

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  • Ilandar@lemmy.today ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Most people a) have a Google and/or Microsoft account b) use Google or Bing to search the web and c) don’t clear their cookies at the end of a session. So by default, most would be signed into their search engine (though perhaps without even knowing).

    Some search engines like Kagi also require their users to login (because it is a paid service).

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  • Eyekaytee@aussie.zone ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I login to Ecosia to see how awesome I am, in this case I am a

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• brisk@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Interestingly apart from effectively mandating “safe search” on by default, this doesn’t appear to attempt to restrict users who aren’t logged in.

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  • whybird@aus.social ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    @brisk I thought the same, though also I presume you’d have to be logged in to turn safe search off.

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    • brisk@aussie.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I don’t see anything in the document suggesting that, although there’s also nothing stopping companies from doing that.

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  • shads@lemy.lol ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Seems like a case of a Industry lobby group getting out ahead of the government to try to push an agenda to me.

    Logged in users are worth more than logged out users as far as digital profiling and advertising so let’s conceal the juicy stuff behind a log in. Doing it this way makes the government the scapegoat. So I would guess 100% compliance isn’t anything too concerning, they just want to juice their numbers to make line go up.

    If Google & Microsoft have to degrade our privacy and freedoms to raise their Oceania region profitability by 0.00000001% that’s a price they are happy for us to pay.

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    • brisk@aussie.zone ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I don’t see anything in the document as written that would stop users who aren’t logged in from turning off safe search etc… Of course it’s in the company’s interest to interpret it that way, but I would think an honest interpretation based on the current document would dramatically reduce the user value of being logged in to a search engine.

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• Eyekaytee@aussie.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  we’re gonna fumble our way forward one way or another!

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