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Google will soon ask Australian users to show ID to view some content
- XorNot 5y agoWelp time to re-up a mulvad subscription I guess. The Australian government has been embracing cronyism and corruption for a while, but until half the country stops rewarding the incumbent party with votes while complaining about everything they do because "the other guys will be worse" then here we are.
- BLKNSLVR 5y agoSemi-ironically, the site pops up a full screen "subscribe with email address" window upon loading. There's an easily visible link to close it without subscribing but fuck it's tone deaf for a site called "reclaim the internet".
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoAlthough the title is correct, it's worth noting that Google is not doing this because it thinks it's fun to require verification. The Australian government is requiring google to take this action.
- moltke 5y agoThe incentives of the two organizations are aligned. It makes sense and is very unfortunate that they capitulate so easily. It's yet another example of why you shouldn't rely on anything from Google.
- jaquer_1 5y agoGoogle is taking part, end of story.
- karpierz 5y agoHeadline: Google follows local laws. Alternate-universe headline: Google uses monopolistic power to ignore government regulation for profit. Which do you prefer?
- falcolas 5y agoByline: Uses uploaded validation beyond the scope of the law using their patented “improve our services” playbook. (from TFA) Google is going too far.
- nhinck2 5y agoIf Google (in Australia) does use this information for any purpose other than confirming age then they have broken the law.
- hackyhacky 5y agoHow about: Australia forces company to comply with oppressive surveillance state restrictions, cynically deployed in the name of safety?
- karpierz 5y agoMaybe in an alternate reality where Rupert Murdoch was in the business of informing the people.
- johannes1234321 5y agoGoogle creating attention probably is best that short befor an election.
- LewisVerstappen 5y ago>"If our systems are unable to establish that a viewer is above the age of 18, we will request that they provide a valid ID or credit card to verify their age.” I don't think Google is complaining too much. Especially if it gives them an excuse to collect credit card data (reducing a significant amount of friction when they sell YouTube premium / google drive subscriptions).
- whimsicalism 5y agoNot sure how you concluded that from this quote
- RobertMiller 5y agoA simple "the law requires us to" somewhere in that quote would have gone a long way to convey displeasure at their arm being twisted. But nothing in that quote suggests any arm twisting, and why should google of all corporations be given the benefit of the doubt? They look like eager and willing collaborators.
- emteycz 5y agoSo why they didn't try to require ID for all the previous years until laws required it?
- syshum 5y agoLarge Corporations will often have government enact laws they know would be unpopular policies for a variety of reasons... Many times companies will even publicly opposes the very laws they actually support behind the scenes. Not saying that is the case here, but it pretty common for corporations to use government as their tool
- RobertMiller 5y agoIf they want us to believe they're displeased at this requirement, why don't they say so? Google has certainly complained and protested about other laws before. > In response to multiple complaints we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 15 results from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaints that caused the removals at LumenDatabase.org:
- nojs 5y agoOk, so what’s the real reason the government wants this?
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoWell, the Australian government has shown it's willing to throw people into camps against their will, so...greater control of the population would be my guess. You know. To keep kids safe.
- forum_ghost 5y agoThey want us to live in Utopia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJYaXy5mmA8
- RobertMiller 5y agoThe "Five Eyes" anglosphere establishment uses Australia as a testbed for authoritarian measures that may later be implemented in the others.
- aaa_aaa 5y agoFor the greater good. </s>
- wutbrodo 5y agoThe ~only reason gov't ever does anything is because they think it looks good to voters. And any given voter doesn't have "wants" or "beliefs", just violent mood swings and social performance. This isn't really even a bug of government's! Government action is very often valuable and necessary. But the incentive structure is such that modeling the gov't as a somewhat-rational entity with well-formed desires is usually not the correct frame to start with, IMO
- codewithcheese 5y ago"because the voters want it" is just how they spin it, the reason is to have a chilling effect on expressing dissatisfaction with whatever party is in power.
- Siira 5y agoPerhaps there is some Chinese influence in this governmental decision, as well. They benefit from normalizing oppression.
- dijonman2 5y agoChina and Australia are very close. China is Australia's largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for nearly one third (31 per cent) of our trade with the world. https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/china/china-country-brief https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/china/china-country-brief The CCP is evil.
- scarab92 5y agoAustralia trades with China, particularly in minerals, but the countries are not on good terms. Australia has multiple WTO cases running against China, and the Australian government frequently calls out CCP misbehaviour. In turn, China has placed tarrifs on higher value Australia products like seafood and wine. It's similar to the Germany / Russia relationship, economically necessary but with frequently conflicting social principles.
- superkuh 5y agoThat's interesting. Is the Australian government requiring me (superkuh) to take action to follow their absurd laws for my dot com website too? I definitely have Australian users. I guess what I'm asking is if this is something Google is doing pro-actively to cover their asses after a general law was passed, or if the Australian government has explicitly contacted Google (alphabet) about this?
- stubish 5y agoThe Australian Government is only targeting big social media. They are requiring big social media to be able to identify users so they may be prosecuted for defamation. They and the courts don't care about sites that an insignificant number of people follow (yet). Age verification on Google is just the start. Soon you won't be able to use Twitter, Facebook or comments sections on Australian news sites without sending them ID or using a VPN. Tumbler, Pinterest and hacker news have not yet been targeted.
- batch12 5y agoI am curious if the ID will be validated somehow or just dates checked. If the former, I wonder of this endpoint would be given to any site owner to validate age. If the latter, I can imagine someone creating a "this ID does not exist" service to fill this need. More likely VPN providers are about to get a bump in clientele.
- bl4ckneon 5y agoIt would probably be an automatic system somehow just looking at the dates. Imagine someone wanting to watch a video and then submitting their ID and getting the message back "thank you, you will be able to access this content in a few hours once we have verified your ID". You would have just lost that person for a long time.
- codedokode 5y agoIn theory, IDs can be verified against government-owned database. That's how online ID verification for payment systems works in Russia.
- dannywarner 5y agoThe Australian government made a big push to make Google and Facebook pay Australian news sites for links to content on their platforms. Google made a number of moves to head that off, including pumping money into local initiatives and a deal with the local media companies. Not fighting back hard against the current social conservative government's moves on censorship and cracking down on online rights is consistent with Google's other moves to protect profits and avoid paying media companies for links.
- pkaye 5y agoMaybe they saw it was inevitable since the EU is already doing this. Maybe a majority the citizen of these countries are okay with the tradeoffs.
- proactivesvcs 5y agoIronic headline for a site which immediately throws up a full-page interstitial asking for my email address.
- nmilo 5y agoHow is that ironic?
- reaperducer 5y agoThe same way "rain on your wedding day" is ironic. It's not.
- mechanical_bear 5y agoOooh oooh, do the spoons one next!
- jjice 5y agoEmail and government ID are very different, and the headline isn't coming off as a hit piece, so I don't think this is ironic.
- quickthrower2 5y agoYeah that pattern makes me think "this is spam"
- josephcsible 5y agoWill Google in Australia have a button that lets you skip the identification process but see the content anyway? No, so those aren't even remotely similar.
- BigJono 5y agoSo are all the Fox News idiots that wanted to come and liberate us from authoritarianism going to do it already? Or is that just for liberal state governments with barely any power that don't share your political views?
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y agoThey're waiting for all the liberal actors to move home from Canada after Trump got elected.
- extheat 5y agoFirst step is to go after censorship
- wutbrodo 5y agoUh, in the eyes of a Fox News viewer, doesn't Australia count as "a liberal state government that doesn't share [their] political views"? What does this comment even mean? It reads like GPT-1 spent too much time on /r/politics
- BigJono 5y agoState as in not federal. Not state as in nation. 1/8th of the country takes a different approach to a public health crisis and suddenly every hot take American conservative talks about invading the country. But the federal government uses us as a testing ground for technological authoritarianism for the better part of a decade and it doesn't get reported at all, even within Australia, except for on tech sites and other left-leaning places. If you, as an American, are worried about authoritarianism within your own country, stamping this steady ramping of it out in other allied western nations should be a key priority. But the only time I've ever heard an American news network even talk about Australia was about the Melbourne lockdowns, with completely incorrect facts everywhere, making an absolute mountain out of a molehill.
- weq 5y agoFox Is pushing this agenda in Australia. Murdoch plays our governments like his private backgammon table. "Conversative Liberal" party in Australia = "Rust belt GOP" party in US Australia is what happens when you sell off your land to the highest bidder, throw your consistution out the window and let the Capitalists take over.
- simion314 5y agoWe really need to have the OS and browser cooperate on this, otherwise we will need to show our ID to each website we visit. But browser makers are busy with chasing benchmarks or other less relevant stuff that are fun for devs to work on or that might make more money.
- overboard2 5y agoNo, we don't need browsers cooperating with this.
- simion314 5y agoWhy? it would not be forced on you but think about this super easy scenario. 1 I buy a device for my child and I set it up and enter his birthday, say he is under 13 2 I buy me a device , setup my account and enter my credit card to use the Store , the OS now is 100% sure I am an adult 3 The browser on our devices knows our ages now 4 13+ , 18+ webpages will mark this in the header , the browser on the child phone knows to not just allow the child to click "I am 18+ old" , the browser on my device would check my settings and say if I am a religious guy I tell the browser not to show the pages to me. 5 if you can't or won't tell your OS or browser your age either send your ID card to all websites or don't go there, big websites will respect local laws so maybe you can have luck with a VPN or some small website that does not care about local laws in a different country. I suggest this idea as an alternatives to having to send ID card copy to each websites, I am not advocating for UK or Australian laws to be made default everywhere.
- flerchin 5y agoSure it could come in via user agent. I would worry that governments would then attempt to regulate and lock down browsers such that Free Software is no longer viable, or even legal.
- simion314 5y agoI think most of us know that clicking "I am 18+" is a joke, governments will eventually look into this and not because politicians want to make it harder for them to access this pages but because activists and religious groups will put pressure on them (I seen with my own eyes religious people exiting from a party because the leadership allowed gays to have a parade in the city, and if in your region/country there are many religious people like this the politicians will try to get their votes) , so the tech sector needs to find a solution for this that is privacy friendly. At this moment I can use my bank and PayPal from Linux so there is no technical reason that prevents open source software to implement it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kzrdude 5y agoSince EU already has this, it's been very few videos on yt where this has been asked. I just avoid them.
- bleuchase 5y ago> Since EU already has this, it's been very few videos on yt where this has been asked. I just avoid them. Do you think that may be part of the purpose of such a system?
- kzrdude 5y agoNope, it's an unintended consequence, I think the political motivation is naivistic. It turns into a kind of censorship, but was conceptualized as a speed bump.
- ailef 5y agoI've noticed the restriction on some YouTube video as well. With one account of mine I'm able to see them though, even if I don't remember giving my credit card details or ID. I created this account a long time ago so I might be wrong. I think they asked for my phone number for verification instead.
- rabuse 5y agoAlmost every invasive thing in our lives is because of "think of the children".
- dudul 5y agoYou can sometimes substitute with "to fight terrorists" if you need to vary your discourse a bit.
- gruez 5y agoOr more recently, "to fight anti-vaxxers"
- chickenpotpie 5y agoCan you give an example? Not sure what you mean.
- gruez 5y ago1. vaccine passports (the QR code kind, because it invites the possibility of mass data collection) 2. freezing "freedom convoy" participants' bank accounts without a court order
- inter_netuser 5y agosomehow i don't think the invasive measures will go away with artificial placentas and factories that pop out healthy and ready 25-35 year old professionals/drones. what will we think of then?
- yakshaving_jgt 5y ago…A very different approach to the dating scene?
- vimda 5y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocal...
- jmrm 5y agoWhat kind of problem solves this measure? If someone think that minors won't access adult content that person is pretty naive. Only with TV shows, series, movies, music, and games they are going to watch a lot of violence and sex scenes, and most of us knows there are a lot of easy ways to access to this kind of content outside mass media. Letting the usefulness of this measure aside, I think there should be other ways to get your age without using your ID, like using a credit card for example. I don't know if there is any way to get the age of a person using the credit card, to be honest, but at least is an identification method with a expiring date and possibilities to cancel in any moment, not a unique number you can't never change in your whole life (at least in most Western countries I know).
- jlund-molfese 5y agoI don’t disagree with anything you said, but some countries, like the US, don’t have a national ID system. So we usually have the option of using one of several different ways to verify our identities[1] for commercial services. Unfortunately most still do give you fixed numbers that don’t change unless you move to another state. 1. https://help.id.me/hc/en-us/articles/360017833054 https://help.id.me/hc/en-us/articles/360017833054
- Broken_Hippo 5y agobut some countries, like the US, don’t have a national ID system This is.. not quite true. Social security numbers are used this way (even if they aren't intended to be such a thing) and passports are essentially a national ID system. My passport is the only valid ID that I have - of course, I live outside the US and have to have the nearest US embassy renew it. (I don't qualify for Norwegian IDs yet, and my immigration card is a supplement to my passport instead of actual ID)
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoAn American passport ID number changes every ten years, causing lots of problems when foreign banks (like Chinese ones) try to use it as a stable ID number. Source: personal experience.
- perihelions 5y agoThis dovetails nicely with Google unilaterally deciding to age-restrict things like presidential candidate campaigns. https://www.lefigaro.fr/medias/la-video-d-eric-zemmour-restreinte-par-youtube-20211202 https://www.lefigaro.fr/medias/la-video-d-eric-zemmour-restr...
- hanniabu 5y agoImo all ads should be age restricted
- shadowgovt 5y agoWhile it is unilateral, it appears that the triggering effect for the age restriction is the content of the video, not the fact that a politician put it up.
- jdrc 5y agoAge verification sounds like an application of zero-knowledge proofs
- WinterMount223 5y agoCould you explain further?
- iso1210 5y agoImagine you are visiting hacker news, and for some reason you have to prove your age, but you don't want HN to know who you are, nor your age identity site to know you're going to HN One way to do this off the top mf my head would be HN issues a unique number (say 4096 bit) to you when you create an account You send that number to your identity provider along with confirming proof of age The identity provider signs that the number is valid and posts it to a public source HN downloads a list of 4096 bit numbers posted in the last 5 minutes and confirms the one associated with your account is on the list HN will know that "Identities-r-us.com" has proven your age, but nothing else IRU know you had to age approve a site, but there are many sites downloading the lists so they don't know which one
- WinterMount223 5y agoThat sounds better if you don’t trust the websites but worse if you don’t trust the government or the central checker.
- iso1210 5y agoThe central checker knows you've proven your age, but not where you've proven it. As someone else points out, you send a message to your ID provider 17 requesting the minimum required fields and an anonymous token provided by HN, the ID Provider returns that (over18=yes, token=1234567....) which is signed, you then send the returned payload to the server you're asking, saying "I used Identity provider", and HN (assuming it trusts your ID provider) can confirm that. HN knows the IP you're connecting from and the identify provider (say the Austrailian government) The Austrailian government doesn't know where you're connecting to, just that you are trying to prove you are over 18. The unique random number HN provides confirms it's not someone else's token, but it doesn't link to HN I assume there's a proper standard which does this
- manytree 5y agoSounds like exact quandary that the emerging DID spec (Decentralized Identifiers) [https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/ https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/] is hoping to solve. I.e. you can submit your proof of age to an attestation service (in this case, perhaps the australian government itself) and receive an anonymous DID from which you can issue proofs of age without revealing other aspects of your identity.
- tomjen3 5y agoWould that also work the other way around? Ie would it mean the Australian government wouldn’t know anything other than you wanting to prove your age to somebody? Otherwise it seems a terrible idea.
- manytree 5y agoYeah, the DID you receive from the attestation service can be used multiple times, and is assumed to be immutable, so you sign messages with your private key to prove ownership of the DID but generally reveal no other information. One concern would be that a backend integration might exist between the Australian government’s attestation service and Google’s system, in which case there might be benefit to the existence of an alternative public institution that is committed to privacy which has the demonstrated authority to verify age.
- klabb3 5y agoYes, but I find this unlikely to be endorsed by governments in the short term. It'd be great if the law said that it's (very) illegal for the verifying party to share or store any of the PII, including with the government.
- Semaphor 5y agoFor YouTube, that has been the case for a while in Germany. Certain videos (usually semi-pornographic, I think I only encountered it for black metal music videos) will require age verification. And that is despite my Google account being 18 years old…
- numlock86 5y ago> Australian government forces Google to soon ask Australian users to show ID to view some content There, I fixed it. I'm getting tired of every headline trying to bash on Google/Facebook/etc. for clicks.
- Ansil849 5y agoDo you also have this same opinion on Google's Project Dragonfly (Google's censored Chinese search engine)? That is, that people shouldn't have "bashed" Google, since it was the Chinese government "forcing" them?
- DaltonCoffee 5y agoNeeding gov't ID to follow search links is dystopian, and antithetical to the original spirit of the Internet. Google should flat out refuse when governments make these requests.
- mechanical_bear 5y agoAgreed, and not sure why the early downvote wave you experienced there. I am surprised to see this sort of sentiment downvoted on HN.
- oblak 5y agoI've done my part to correct this injustice. I am curious what kind of person downvotes such opinions edit: point taken. I had read the "google should flat out refuse to follow the law" bit. oops
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoI'll explain why I downvoted - because I get a little bit sick of these slippery slope arguments that every time Google has to follow a law that, while controversial, is not exactly the last breath of a despotic régime, that people love to decry Google as "being evil". The fact is, there are gray areas. When it comes to government regulations, tech companies essentially have 2 options: comply or leave the country in question (note Google has already tried to lobby against the law in question). While "leave" sometimes is the only moral option, I totally disagree that this law warrants Google leaving Australia.
- Semaphor 5y agoI find it somewhat hilarious that a site "reclaim the net – Push back against online censorship, cancel culture, and privacy invasion. Informed by principles on digital rights" wants me to give them my email for their newsletter on my very first visit. Before showing me the article, or anything. Yes, I would like to reclaim the net. From sites such as that one.
- dimitrios1 5y agoI used to believe, at least in the early days, that these tech companies were successful in upholding the values of freedom of expression, speech, and exchange of information, subsequently the values that the early internet itself formed around. They were anti-authoritarian. Now it seems they willingly accept being pushed around, succumb to any request to compromise its values in the interest of shareholder value, and willingly collude with authoritarian requests from governments. It's all so typical, in a way. Whatever shred of idealism I had left for these companies is now completely gone.
- ludamad 5y agoThe problem is that the more a company wants to draw a line in the sand against a government, the more it must be a monopoly of some kind otherwise be replaced by someone who doesn't
- dimitrios1 5y agoI find the reverse to be true. It is only when a company becomes a monopoly does it begin acting in this way. It becomes hellbent on maintaining that monopoly.
- moonshinefe 5y ago> Governments all over the world have started pushing for ways to collect ID on social media users, often under the guise of providing a safe space for kids online. Does anyone know how these work on a technical level? Are they actually verifying these IDs with some sort of government API? What's preventing people from just sending fake IDs? I'm also curious how non-tech giants are going to implement this. It's a big ask for small websites run by single or small groups of people. If they face consequences too, it seems like a win for the social media sites to keep their market positions. Finally, what's preventing the children from just using non-tech giant sites to get at adult content? If it's literally just for Facebook, Youtube and the like, it'll be about as useless as the "Click here to confirm you're 18+!" verifications since they'll just search elsewhere, on one of the millions of other adult content sites...
- zo1 5y agoOne would imagine, but the state of "KYC" in the wild is much less pretty. Some governments don't even have a national identity card (USA, UK) to verify. So instead they verify driver's licenses, passports, utility bills. Others use credit agencies, half-baked and built-up-over-time databases of who knows what, facial recognition, etc. Kicker, most border control checks are no more advanced than looking up a traveler's name surname and date of birth in old lists.
- stavros 5y agoDon't they already? I've been asked for a credit card or ID to watch certain YouTube videos, and I'm not even in Australia.
- Strom 5y agoYes this same system is already enforced for Europeans and has been since 2020.
- lelandfe 5y agoImportant to note that YouTube added this in the EU back in 2020: https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/using-technology-more-consistently-apply-age-restrictions/ https://blog.youtube/news-and-events/using-technology-more-c...
- codedokode 5y agoRegarding adult content, don't you think that there is a better solution? Websites could add a HTTP header containing content rating; if the header is missing then it is considered 18+ content. Browsers use this header to restrict access according to OS settings. This way the problem can be solved without any IDs and credit cards. Also I don't understand why age verification is needed for Google Play. Isn't adult content already banned there?
- EastSmith 5y agoIs there a KYC service where I can proof I am 18+, without actually revealing my information to Google, Facebook, etc. Will Google and Facebook support it unless required by law?
- throwawaymanbot 5y ago
- monkeydreams 5y agoGiven that both major parties in Australia have a bad history of bad tech law, I'm not hopeful that even the upcoming election would get in the way of this one.
- stubish 5y agoI think this is more about getting people on board with requiring social media to be able to identify users, which is also happening. People hate having to provide ID to Facebook so that they can be identified when the law asks, and the chilling effects of de-anonymization. But stopping kids viewing decapitation videos, sure.