[heavyset_go]

This is just a step towards killing anonymity and free speech online, as well as a hand out to shady government contractors.

We are going to have to give our IDs and biometrics to untrusted 3rd parties just because some people don't like the idea of other people's kids using the internet.

If these sites are so bad, maybe laws should instead target that problem. For example, make it illegal for social media companies to make their products addictive.

Instead, we get insanely invasive half-measures that impede on security, privacy and speech, with the added bonus of politicians whipping people up into moral panics in order to pass them.

[RachelF]

The "online safety" of kids is just an excuse, I suspect.

Australia really wants to be able to identify and track the ID of all their citizens online. No more Internet anonymity for them.

[logicchains]

Recently the Australian government's been talking about creating a national "internet hate" database to record criticism of Israel and the IDF, it's likely in service of that, as anonymity makes it harder to silence dissent.

[graemep]

Its not going to stop at that either. Once they have a database it will be expanded to include more and more.

[exodust]

> "criticism of Israel"

Like the death chant marches through Australian city streets, burning synagogues, attacking Israeli restaurants, vandalising, threatening, and shoving socialist-activated Palestinian propaganda marches in our faces every second? That criticism?

[spacephysics]

Jokingly, it’s not surprising given many of their short-term ancestors were prison guards or criminals.

Looks like the ruling gov still sees their citizens as such

[Smoosh]

“England transported an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 convicts and political prisoners, as well as prisoners of war from Scotland and Ireland, to its overseas colonies in the Americas from the 1610s until early in the American Revolution in 1776, when transportation to America was temporarily suspended…”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_transportation?wprov=sft...

[elyobo]

Reasonable assumption but really our politicians just are that dumb.

[MonkeyClub]

Dumb people don't rise to seats of power.

It's more like playing dumb, willfully ignoring the issues to serve ulterior motives.

[sixtyj]

I am old enough to remember how hard it was to find access to adult mags.

I understand that they want to make it harder for kids to access the flood of material that will destroy their brains before they even realize it.

Unlimited access to materials not intended and understandable by evolving kids’ brains is not really good.

BBC Channel 4 had a documentary in which a psychologist described 16-year-old boys with erectile dysfunction coming into his counselling room.

Of course, it depends on how to do it technically, face id is maybe unnecessarily too much... and also the question is whether we want to pass more data to the FAANG giants…

Edit: Ok, not hard…But access was not instant and ubiquitous as it is now. IMHO that makes the difference.

[huijzer]

> BBC Channel 4 had a documentary in which a psychologist described 16-year-old boys with erectile dysfunction coming into his counselling room.

I think that must be another medical condition or the boy lied, but we’ve all been 16 here and seriously those problems are extremely unlikely. If there is one problem that 16 year old boys have it is a too active sex drive.

[lnsru]

No. We all have been 16 in different world. Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone.

[const_cast]

I have zero reason to believe pornography is the culprit.

Erectile dysfunction is a physiological issue. It's almost always an issue of blood flow. This young man could have heart failure or some other condition limiting his blood flow to that of an old man.

Not to mention testosterone levels have been declining for what, 70 years? Why are just intuitively, and pre-emptively, blaming random stuff on pornograhpy? You can't do that. You have to show the causation. The world is complicated.

[hilbert42]

"Now pornography starts at 10 using classmate’s cellphone."

I went to Australian schools. For comparison I'm old enough to remember when a brand of bubble gum came with cards that had photographs of famous female film stars on them. Whenever we boys got duplicate photos we'd swap them with one another (it was pot luck, until we unwrapped the gum we couldn't see the photo).

I recall an incident in the classroom where we were surreptitiously swapping cards whilst the teacher was writing on the blackboard and had her back to us and she suddenly turned around and caught us.

She walked up one of the aisles towards the back of the class where we were and confiscated every last one of the cards. When she'd finished she turned to us and said in a loud, biting and accusative voice for the whole class to hear "You are all filthy-minded boys and you should be fully ashamed of yourselves".

Of the class only about four or five of us were involved and the school was coed, so half the class was girls (they sat on one side of the classroom we boys on the other).

These cards were only film studio PR photos so whilst the women looked well presented and pretty there was nothing whatsoever sordid or salacious about them.

We were between 12 and 13 years of age at the time. For a boy of that age these film star cards were the sexiest thing we could lay our hands on. There were no adult sex shops or under-the-counter mags wrapped in cellophane so one couldn't see before one bought—they came at least a decade later. Pornography of all sorts was illegal no matter one's age.

[lnsru]

I feel you very well. At that age I had access to Beate Uchse (sexshop from West Germany) catalogue. Completely innocent by today’s standard. Current kids have access to all the online sites where one must klick „I am 18 or older - Enter“. There are five parents, who doesn’t care about parental control, for one parent who implements it properly.

Edit: today‘s sick content is not comparable to the one from the past.

[philistine]

You are not describing anything resembling what kids today are exposed to. There is no scarcity. Any phone can access an endless scrolling list of pornographic videos. Kids can spend hours scrolling and watching new-to-them pornography for free.

The first step in solving the problem of those prudes trying to build an inescapable surveillance state because there is way too much porn online, is accepting that they’re right that children are going to suffer because of the porn accessible online.

[hilbert42]

"You are not describing anything resembling what kids today are exposed to."

Right, that was the whole point of my comparison.

[hilbert42]

In the above comment I should have mentioned how risk averse and conservative Australian society is, and it was even more so at the time that incident took place in the classroom—especially so in sexual matters.

It's worth reading this short piece about British conductor Sir Eugene Goossens who in the mid 1950s was conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and after a tour of the UK brought photographic material back to Australia that was deemed pornographic by Australian Customs. He was arrested, he resigned and his life was ruined for something many nowadays wouldn't give a second thought about (although different, the tragedy has shades about it reminiscent of what happened to Oscar Wilde): https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/british-conducto...

The Goossens incident was a classic instance of Australian conservatism—conservative values—in action.

It happened some years before my classroom incident but Australian Society's views were essentially still static, not much had changed by then.

That said, things did change and by the mid 1970s Australia had largely caught up with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, nevertheless its society has always retained a high level of conservatism and conservative values about it.

The background behind these new internet regulations is both complex and nuanced. That they've managed to take hold and become law almost without so much as a squeak from the population is partly explained because of that risk averse conservatism but also as there's been no opposition to speak of. By and large, Australians do not complain enough when their politicians enact laws that are authoritarian and unjust. It's rare for Australians to take to the streets on mass and demonstrate. The last time I witnessed that was during the Vietnam demonstrations of the late '60s when a broad cross section of the population took to the streets—and guess what, the laws were changed, politicians actually took note (numbers really matter).

These days demonstrations are largely carried out by minority interests, politicians take little interest and not much happens, and the Establishment still gets its way. The population watches on with little interest and often takes the view that such 'radicals' ought to be off the streets.

The reasons for the population's complacency are too complex to cover here except to make the point again that the conservative nature of Australian society makes it easy for politicians to convince the population that authoritarian law is in Society's best interests. Likewise, politicians are easily convinced by vested interests to that effect for the same reasons.

The large migration of recent decades has brought with it additional complexity, it's changed Australian Society greatly. Migrants have brought both cultural and religious values with them many of which are traditionally conservative (but by nature very different to traditional Australian conservatism). Given migrant numbers, Australia is more conservative now than it was say 30/40 years ago but not to the extent it was in the 1950s.

Moreover, as cultural differences now exist across large sections of the population the Nation no longer speaks with one voice on many issues as it one did (politics back then was fought across a narrow spectrum of interests). These differences not only make governments even more suspicious of their citizenries they also enable power brokers and vested interests to more easily manipulate Government to have it change laws than would have been the situation decades ago when the Nation spoke more with one voice on many issues.

In recent years there have been multiple instances of successive Australian Governments having taken advantage of divided opinion across society to change laws—laws that effectively take power from the Citizenry and cede it to themselves. These privacy-busting authoritarian laws/regulations are now on the statutes simply because there was not enough opposition to them. It's another classic instance of united we stand divided we fall.

[greatgib]

In the last 30 years it never was difficult. I remember very well that as a kid it was easy to buy them from kiosks despite being far from old enough. Otherwise there was books, movies on tv, things circulating at school like materials from parents found and stolen by kids...

And let's not even forget that maybe 50 to 100 years ago, "kids" could more commonly be married and have kids under this arbitrary limit of 18 years old and that did not make them crazier adults than what we have now. At that time, 20 was easily already mid life. Still take care to not compare with countries of today were kids are still able to marry young. These are usually retarded countries were kids are clearly forced and abused to do that.

[heavyset_go]

> I am old enough to remember how hard it was to find access to adult mags.

It wasn't difficult to find, it was just in your parents' or siblings' drawers, or your friends had it, or you or someone else had Pay-per-view TV or one of the soft core channels, or you or someone had illegal cable/sattelite, or it was just out in the woods[1] for whatever reason.

No one's minds melted from that.

If access to content is so unhealthy for anyone, then policy should address that. For example, sites should throttle or cut heavy users off. Giving 3D models of our faces + our IDs/passports online just for some government contractor to lose them is a solution looking for a problem that it does not solve well.

Funnily enough, I was going through my grandfather's possessions from when he was a kid and found what can be described as cartoon adult content in with his comic books. This was shit from literally 100 years ago, and yet that generation turned out alright by most standards.

[1] https://dangerousminds.net/comments/the_inexplicably_ubiquit...

[Exoristos]

I never encountered any of the things you list, growing up, and would have been shocked if I had. There's a tendency to overgeneralize a culture based on one's own subculture -- or perhaps you're even assuming things after watching too many '80s movies.

[heavyset_go]

I am speaking from experience. I don't know anyone growing up who didn't have a friend share a Playboy with them, see risque things on TV, or when dial up was a thing, did not use the Internet to search for "boobs".

[philipallstar]

> If access to content is so unhealthy for anyone, then policy should address that

Kids aren't the same as adults. It's like saying "no one should drive/smoke/drink because kids aren't allowed to".

> cartoon adult content in with his comic books. This was shit from literally 100 years ago, and yet that generation turned out alright by most standards

You can't be comparing, surely? A drawn picture of breasts compared to the most hardcore and (almost always female) degrading stuff imaginable in 4k?

[heavyset_go]

If laws were consistent, they'd apply equally to tobacco and alcohol, but they get special carve outs to cater to entrenched industry.

If any of those things are as harmful as proponents claim, there is no excuse for letting them continue to harm anyone for profit. Children aren't the only sympathetic victims here.

> You can't be comparing, surely? A drawn picture of breasts compared to the most hardcore and (almost always female) degrading stuff imaginable in 4k?

I am. The content of those magazines was horrendous by today's standards. Just because it was drawn does not mean the content itself was wholesome. I was genuinely shocked by what it contained.

Still wouldn't ban it, though.

[philipallstar]

> The content of those magazines was horrendous by today's standards

Without specifics, how was it horrendous by today's standards? As in you'd never see anything on the internet anywhere near as degrading as it?

[heavyset_go]

Gang r*pe, the violent kind and by and against what we'd now say are those who could not consent to that even if they wanted it to happen.

No, I have not seen anything like that before on the Internet or since, and I hope to never see it.

[logicchains]

>I understand that they want to make it harder for kids to access the flood of material that will destroy their brains before they even realize it.

This is hyperbolic crap. Since at least the 70s boys have been growing up with access to adult images and it hasn't "destroyed their brains". Certainly a minority of people have a problem with porn addiction, but even completely banning porn access to teens would just delay this a few years, at the expense of completely destroying internet anonymity.

[globular-toast]

Ubiquitous high-definition internet porn is completely different from what was available in the 90s, let alone the 70s. What you're saying sounds like "people have been burning herbs for hundreds of years, there's no way cigarettes could be harmful!"

[tzs]

> This is hyperbolic crap. Since at least the 70s boys have been growing up with access to adult images and it hasn't "destroyed their brains".

In the '70s for most boys that meant finding an occasional issue of one of the adult magazines that was available at regular magazine shops. Mostly Playboy and Penthouse, maybe Hustler if you got lucky.

Those are all very tame compared to what is now readily available for free on the net today.

[verisimi]

The aim is to achieve a panopticon.

With a panopticon it doesn't matter whether you are actually being monitored (although it is conceivable that all online data could be reviewed by AI) - the mere idea of being monitored changes behaviour. Loss of anonymity in public spaces, the concern that one's citizen score could be impacted by arbitrary rules, changes behaviour. Everyone will act unnaturally; some people will even cheer on these actions for bonus points.

People should be highly wary of ceding further freedom/authority to government, regardless of the 'children/terrorists/drugs/etc excuses'. The government desire to have order, should not be prioritised over individuals right to live freely. Freedoms are not re-granted by governments - getting them back will mean a fight, not a petition.

[AstralStorm]

Panopticons are overrated. After a while, people start ignoring them as we see with social media.

[trollbridge]

Newsflash: pretty much every site like Google already knows exactly who you are. We gave up anonymity a long time ago in exchange for "free".

[heavyset_go]

That's not an excuse to add unaccountable 3rd parties to the mix that will take videos of your face and pictures of your IDs just to use the internet, and who will subsequently lose control of that data in inevitable breaches.

It's also doesn't justify any additional chilling of free speech.

[willvarfar]

Google is one of the few free mail+everything+else providers that still lets people sign up and not give any kind of real-world identity. So you can, on a clean phone or laptop or whatever, create a new gmail account without any kind of auth and maintain that persona.

In practice this isn't how people are using google services though.

[dannyw]

You will eventually be forced to give a phone number, which in many countries including Australia, require an ID to open.

[Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe]

No it's been impossible without a phone numner for a while now

[herbst]

I made a Google account without even owning a number a few days ago. Afaik only one of my Google accounts has a phone number and pretty sure that's only because AdSense.

[Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe]

My tinfoil hat theory is that if it doesn't ask for a phone number then it already has a very precise shadow profile about you. Being on linux+firefox+grapheneos compared to windows+chrome+android probably means a lot in that regard.

What do you think?

[spwa4]

Except this is giving up anonymity, first, everywhere, not on a few sites. Two, the goal is to find an excuse to arrest you, not to get you to buy a birthday present for your niece when it's time. Well, that, and (this is Australia) to refuse you medical care because you looked up "best cigarette" 10 years ago, as well as refuse you unemployment because you Googled "how do people fake a handicap" after watching office space, 20 years ago.

[exodust]

> pretty much every site like Google already knows exactly who you are

Depends how much you share with Google when signed in. If I log out of Google services and browse around the web, my browsing activity is not recorded against my Google account.

[aembleton]

That means they can just use 'AI to guess a user's age based on the data the company already has'

[worthless-trash]

But will be mandated now.

[potamic]

You're missing the point. If one wants to be anonymous there are ways to do so. If we willingly give up anonymity in exchange for free in certain cases, that's our prerogative, but we must have the choice of not needing to do, when necessary.

[Bender]

And this will lead to demand for ID-validated specific proxy malware that detect who has authenticated with ID services and give others a way to browse the web normally again through them. Those with the ID proxy malware will take the fall for anything the rest of us using the proxy do.

Maybe after a decade of wrongful arrests the laws will become more sane and just require server operators to use RTA labels [1] and clients to check for said labels to active optional parental controls as determined by the parents or legal guardians. No 3rd party leaky junk.

[1] - https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single

[7bit]

> We are going to have to give our IDs and biometrics to untrusted 3rd parties just because some people don't like the idea of other people's kids using the internet.

Depends on the implementation. Germany has digital passports already and for age verification the only data you transmit is your date of birth.

I don't know anything about Ozzy passports tho.

[SlowTao]

Because we could see the direction this was going, for well over a decade now I have been slowly stepping away from internet use outside of what is absolutely necessary or just mundane.

Considering how we have gone from barely any form of tracking only 25 years ago to this. It will get worse.

[Smoosh]

> If these sites are so bad, maybe laws should instead target that problem.

We apparently live in a world where companies are legally considered to be people, and thus have rights, yet they have no moral obligations whatsoever.

[KurSix]

It's hard not to see how this could erode anonymity and free expression over time