Mediawatch showed something disturbing: Murdoch papers have been actively campaigning for the bill for the last six months. I wonder why? https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/teens/104644976
I don’t see it as a bad thing, if they ask me to verify my age via a driver’s license I’ll just delete my account, none of them are that important that I would give them a copy of my identification.
The legislation actually doesn’t allow them to require you to identify by sending them your licence. I think they’re allowed to request that as one of the options, but it cannot be the only one.
It sounds like the accepted options will probably be either facial recognition via third-party service (can’t wait to do that by pointing my phone at a video of a person on YouTube staring at the camera, like I did for a second backup Gmail account) or an official government age-verification service…which may or may not keep your identity from being tracked through the use of blinded tokens.
main reason for it - no anonymous account on social media for_everyone_. It just another surveillance imposing law.
Not sure if the legislation is good or bad. Time will tell.
Two things are clear though. The large social media platforms are worth billions of dollars and can afford to self regulate. Also they extensively profile users to sell data and targeted advertising and serve targeted content that will keep people engaged (addicted).
I don’t know if they really need age verification when they know all your friends, interests and shopping habits. Their algorithms know you are an Australian teenager as that knowledge is their product.
Hopefully the fediverse and non profit sites don’t get caught up in this. Unfortunately our politicians have very low technical literacy.
When was the last time that politics was concerned with that odd concept called “reality”?
