Australians will soon need their age checked to log into online search tools – here’s why
Before December search engines such as Google will need to implement several other measures aimed at protecting children online.
Yep… the social media age verification was the thin end of the wedge.
The answer to kids accessing age inappropriate content is education and parental supervision, not censoring the internet and infringing on all the adults. But then the government couldn’t push laws to increase surveillance and receive popular support.
I really wish I’d had the time and energy to degoogle and had never started using cloud storage. I’m going to have to back up all of my photos in case I lose access when I refuse to hand over my ID. (Which I should have already done.)
I also really should have switched to Duck Duck Go ages before this
Christ, google must be salivating
dOn’T bE eViL
What the fuck is wrong with boomer Australian law makers hell bent on making Australia more dystopian day by day?!
Do you mean to say what is wrong with US multinational tech companies forcing Australians to log into their services so they can extract more value from them under the cover of a voluntary industry code of conduct they wrote and submitted to their US born ex-employee that isn't mandated by any Australian legislation and isn't part of any Australian party policy to my knowledge?
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...
Interestingly apart from effectively mandating "safe search" on by default, this doesn't appear to attempt to restrict users who aren't logged in.
@brisk I thought the same, though also I presume you’d have to be logged in to turn safe search off.
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.
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.
Do a lot of people log in to search engines?
I login to Ecosia to see how awesome I am, in this case I am a
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).
we're gonna fumble our way forward one way or another!
Just use Qwant. They won't even LET you log in.
EDIT: I think Qwant may have some ties to the far-right. So maybe not Qwant. But I'm not gonna bother checking.
how would Qwant have links to the far right 😅
Found it: "Partly owned by Axel Springer SE"
