this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2025
49 points (100.0% liked)

Australia

4339 readers
211 users here now

A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.

Before you post:

If you're posting anything related to:

If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News

Rules

This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:

Banner Photo

Congratulations to @[email protected] who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition

Recommended and Related Communities

Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:

Plus other communities for sport and major cities.

https://aussie.zone/communities

Moderation

Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.

Additionally, we have our instance admins: @[email protected] and @[email protected]

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
49
Australians will soon need their age checked to log into online search tools – here’s why (theconversation.com)
submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
20 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 20 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

how would Qwant have links to the far right 😅

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What the fuck is wrong with boomer Australian law makers hell bent on making Australia more dystopian day by day?!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

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?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 days 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...

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Christ, google must be salivating

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

dOn’T bE eViL

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Do a lot of people log in to search engines?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days 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).

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Sorry I just see a "In compliance with government regulation to provide you with a full set of search results you need to be logged in" prompt in the near future. If they can drive people to log in, or even better/worse make people who haven't had an account create one, I see some big financial incentives for them to do so. Of course that is going to be offset by the potential cost of any breaches, but I can also see the silver lining on that of raising a bigger barrier to entry for any new competition that wants to get started in Australia, and a bit of supporting legislation that blocks "non-compliant" search engines from being accessed in Australia might actual serve to increase lock in. Maybe I am just being paranoid, but when I see an Industry aligned body co-authoring legislation I start to look for their angle.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

@brisk The article says “However, the code does preempt concerns that children might get around controls by simply not logging in to their accounts.”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The actual document is linked in the first paragraph. These are the only sections I can find that seem to care about account holding