Sounds like another attempt to basically to do the porn pass.
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Predicted this sometime back. It is going to slowly become more common. AI, Influence of social media on elections, etc. are spooking a lot of political leaders across ideologies.
The approach Australia is taking is ridiculous though. ID verification just means these services have a register of your citizens’ information. Just do what European governments are looking at: Government as Identity Provider Service. At least that way Meta/Twitter can’t just get it all so easily.
Technically this site counts as “social media” by their definition, any site with interaction between users.
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No wonder Australia is a dystopian police state…
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Fortunately it isn’t yet, as this law hasn’t passed, and hopefully won’t.
It kinda is already:
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it’s so over 
My IQ dropped 20 points while watching this and I still have no idea what she said half of that speech.
The onus will be on tech companies to take reasonable steps to prevent them from accessing the platforms or face fines of up to $50 million. Parents and users who find ways to flout the rules will not face penalties.
“Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians,” he wrote in response to Mr Albanese’s post announcing the introduction of the bill to parliament.
He’s not wrong on that part, because requiring verification, will deanonymize all Australian adults and that really is a form of censorship. There are plenty of reasons to have an anonymous opinion on things when it might go against the flow of what culture finds acceptable. Especially in an age of cancelling and doxxing etc.
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Protecting the kids are always the goto excuse to shit on the general population freedom, security and privacy. Its not just limited to Australia, its everywhere.
My local government just a few months ago implemented a countrywide mitm proxy to intercept all dns queries to popular dns service, all with the cliche white knight excuse to protect the kids and elderly from scams and malware, and to protect the general public from porn sin. They literally used religion, literally mentioned God, angels, heaven and stuff.
Lucky us they did it half assed, yolo without announcement without proper discussion. Just overnight mitm the whole country dns. Shenanigan and all hell break lose afterwards. Payment terminal error out everywhere, people can’t login to their work vpn, schools can’t do remote teach. They even goes as far as hijacking queries to doh and dot server, but since they’re technically an attacker replacing legit doh and doh endpoint cert with their own bogus cert, browser all over showed red warning notice about the attack. Suddenly people realise if they can do that to doh and dot provider, whats stopping them to do the same to banks, tiktok, riot games or whatever. Pushback and outcries poured, they reversed that stupid decision after 2 days lol
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This. They use it as an excuse to do whatever they want, and since children are a sensitive topic, the government is most likely to get the approval of the citizens. If they really care about protecting children, they should start by investigating higher authorities 
Exactly. Blogs and forums are social media too!
I’ve been following THO for years, and I had not seen this video. I did not know things were this bad in Australia. It makes even more sense now why Sessions moved to Switzerland.
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Not trying to be the devil’s advocate here, but is there a practical solution for parents who don’t want their kids to have easy access to NSFW content?
Is there a way to require reliable age verification online without giving away your identity, and allowing a profile to be built on your adult habits on the internet?
Seriously, parents should talk to their kids and explain to them why they don’t want them viewing nsfw material. People need to stop relying on third parties to parent for them.
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Would such a policy be acceptable if age verification could be done in a cryptographically secure manner without fear of being deanonymized, using a digital ID, digital signature, etc.?
At least, if such a mechanism could be implemented, it seems unlikely that it would violate the Privacy Act…
That is not a satisfying answer, at all. Yes, parents should talk to their kids, but the idea that it is enough when NSFW content is pervasive is ridiculous. It’s not just that you have websites that are exclusively dedicated to NSFW that are easily accessible. It’s also that a lot of that type of content is accessible on regular every day websites that everyone of all ages uses, like social media.
Years ago, I remember there being discussions about passing a law that would mandate that all NSFW website use the same domain (.xxx). I remember being open to that idea, but it only covers one piece of the puzzle, and I’m not sure it’s an adequate solution to the problem it aims to solve.
Not sure what to tell you, the best thing you can do is educate your childen. It is ridiculously easy to evade any sort of blocking of these websites. Playing that cat and mouse game is a waste of time.
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