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Australians to face age checks from search engines

(ia.acs.org.au)
139 points stubish | 2 comments | 01 Jul 25 23:59 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jackvalentine ◴[02 Jul 25 01:03 UTC] No.44439355[source]▶
Australians are broadly supportive of these kind of actions - there is a view that foreign internet behemoths have failed to moderate for themselves and will therefore have moderation imposed on them however imperfect.

Can’t say I blame them.

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bigfatkitten ◴[02 Jul 25 01:16 UTC] No.44439415[source]▶
If you read through the issues that ASIO says they are most concerned about, it’s clear that companies like Meta have a lot to answer for.

https://www.intelligence.gov.au/news/asio-annual-threat-asse...

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1. hilbert42 ◴[02 Jul 25 01:42 UTC] No.44439548[source]▶
We don't need ASIO to tell us that. The real problem is that early on when Big Tech first took a stranglehold of the internet in the early 2000s that governments failed to regulate, they did SFA despite the warning signs.

At the time it was obvious to many astute observers what was happening but governments themselves were mesmerized and awed by Big Tech.

A 20-plus year delay in applying regulations means it'll be a long hard road to put the genie back in tbe bottle. For starters, there's too much money now tied up in these trillion-dollar companies, to disrupt their income would mean shareholders and even whole economies would be affected.

Fixing the problem will be damn hard.

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2. BLKNSLVR ◴[02 Jul 25 02:00 UTC] No.44439625[source]▶
Even harder now that the US President is siding with the tech broligarchy since it aligns perfectly with the America First ideology.

(It may be the last thing that the US has the world lead on)

It's also why legislation protecting privacy and/or preventing the trade of personal information is almost impossible: the "right" people profit from it, and the industry around it has grown large enough that it would have non-trivial economic effects if it were destroyed (no matter how much it thoroughly deserves to be destroyed with fire).