this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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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.
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
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 beer or 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 for kids and adults because without the advertising the incentives to keep people trapped in a dopamine loop is mostly gone. The big platforms either learn how to produce viable paid services or people move to community run alternatives like this one.
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 not only that they didn't know (false) but they want to keep not knowing because it is good for business. 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. People willingly, enthusiastically 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. Giving them a simple yes/no to the question of if you are legal age based on a trusted third party seems a very reasonable request in comparison.
Who's that trusted third party? There's no third party that I trust with that information. I don't want to have to tell the government "I use aussie.zone, and this is my username". I don't want it even without the username part. And I'd trust the government a hell of a lot more with that than any private company.
The problem with your comment is that you're framing it as all about Meta. It's not. It could have been. Maybe even should have been. Have it apply only to specific platforms designated by the Minister. But the way the legislation was written, it applies to all social media. Including Lemmy instances. Including Mastodon. Including old-school forums. This is why all sensible people were opposed to the bill when it went through within a week late last year. Not because the underlying goal is bad, but because it had been rushed through without proper consideration, and it was missing obvious problems that arose from the way it was drafted. Problems which could have been addressed, if they had done a proper inquiry and responded to feedback from experts, knowledgeable amateurs, and the broader public.
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.
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.
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.
The problem at the moment is that the technology does not aid parents in this.
Personally, I would like to see the existence of this sort of age-gating API be mandatory, and set some government guidelines, but leave it up to parents whether or not they wish to use it. Because right now, unless they are hovering over the shoulder of their children every moment they're on a computer, there's literally nothing they can do with available technology to prevent children accessing age-inappropriate material. So a law that can help them out without forcing their hand would be great.
Well said
I don't think you'll find anyone in the fediverse willing to defend face-based age-verification systems. It's a complete farce to pretend it's ever going to be viable, even if you completely ignore all the obvious privacy issues and how easily-bypassed it is. People's faces just have far too weak a correlation with their age to get the kind of bright line result a law like this needs.
Uploading ID is a better option. Still bad because it kills all anonymity/pseudonimity and introduces enormous privacy risks. And is still not difficult to bypass. But if options for age verification were political parties, this would be the LNP, to facial-aging-AI's One Nation.