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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 I

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.

trollbridge 1y ago
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".
- worthless-trash 1y ago
  But will be mandated now.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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.
  - Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1y ago
    No it's been impossible without a phone numner for a while now
    - herbst 1y ago
      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 1y ago
        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?
  - dannyw 1y ago
    You will eventually be forced to give a phone number, which in many countries including Australia, require an ID to open.
- potamic 1y ago
  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.
- aembleton 1y ago
  That means they can just use 'AI to guess a user's age based on the data the company already has'
- spwa4 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  > 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.
RachelF 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    Its not going to stop at that either. Once they have a database it will be expanded to include more and more.
  - exodust 1y ago
    > "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?
- elyobo 1y ago
  Reasonable assumption but really our politicians just are that dumb.
  - MonkeyClub 1y ago
    Dumb people don't rise to seats of power. It's more like playing dumb, willfully ignoring the issues to serve ulterior motives.
- spacephysics 1y ago
  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
sixtyj 1y ago
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.
- logicchains 1y ago
  >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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
    > 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.
- 1y ago
SlowTao 1y ago
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.
KurSix 1y ago
It's hard not to see how this could erode anonymity and free expression over time
verisimi 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Panopticons are overrated. After a while, people start ignoring them as we see with social media.
Bender 1y ago
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 https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single
7bit 1y ago
> 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.
Smoosh 1y ago
> 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.

trollbridge 1y ago

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".

worthless-trash 1y ago
But will be mandated now.
heavyset_go 1y ago
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 1y ago
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.
- Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe 1y ago
  No it's been impossible without a phone numner for a while now
  - herbst 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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?
- dannyw 1y ago
  You will eventually be forced to give a phone number, which in many countries including Australia, require an ID to open.
potamic 1y ago
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.
aembleton 1y ago
That means they can just use 'AI to guess a user's age based on the data the company already has'
spwa4 1y ago
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 1y ago
> 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.

RachelF 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  Its not going to stop at that either. Once they have a database it will be expanded to include more and more.
- exodust 1y ago
  > "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?
elyobo 1y ago
Reasonable assumption but really our politicians just are that dumb.
- MonkeyClub 1y ago
  Dumb people don't rise to seats of power. It's more like playing dumb, willfully ignoring the issues to serve ulterior motives.
spacephysics 1y ago
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

sixtyj 1y ago

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.

logicchains 1y ago
>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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  > 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.
1y ago

SlowTao 1y ago

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.

KurSix 1y ago

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

verisimi 1y ago

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 1y ago
Panopticons are overrated. After a while, people start ignoring them as we see with social media.

Bender 1y ago

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 https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single

7bit 1y ago

> 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.

Smoosh 1y ago

> 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.