This month the Australian government announced a A$6.5 million commitment to trial an age-verification program that will restrict children’s exposure to inappropriate online content, including pornography and potentially social media. The announcement came out of a National Cabinet meeting geared towards addressing gender-based violence in Australia.
Much has been said about age-checking technologies in the weeks since. Experts point out implementing these tools effectively (so they aren’t easily by-passed) will be complicated – and any such system could come with data security risk. Internet freedom groups have criticised the decision on account of its potential to erode privacy.
