Google has announced that it will extend age verification controls to Australian users who want to access adult content on YouTube and Google Play.
In the coming month, the search giant will introduce age verification checks. Australian users will be asked to provide additional proof of age when attempting to watch adult content on YouTube or download content from Google Play.
The move aims to provide users with “age-appropriate experiences,” says Samantha Yorke, Google’s head of government affairs and public policy, in a blog post. “As part of this process, some Australian users may be asked to provide additional proof of age when attempting to watch adult content on YouTube or download content from Google Play. If our systems are unable to establish that a viewer is over the age of 18, we will ask them to provide a valid ID or credit card to verify their age,” she adds. .
Provide official identification documents
Google considers a valid ID to be government issued, such as a driver’s license or passport.
The company assures that if a user uploads a copy of their ID, it will be “stored securely, will not be made public, and will be deleted” once the person’s date of birth is verified.
It does, however, clarify that it will not only use a person’s ID to confirm their age, but also to “enhance our verification services for Google products and protect against fraud and abuse.”
Google explains that this measure responds to the Australian government’s 2022 “Online Safety” declaration (restricted access systems), which requires platforms to take steps to confirm that users are over 18 before they can access content. potentially inappropriate for minors. This statement has been introduced as part of the Online Safety Act. Age verification measures have already been implemented in the European Union under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive.
Parental supervision tools on Quest and Instagram
To ensure a consistent experience, users who attempt to access age-restricted YouTube videos on “most” third-party websites will be redirected to YouTube to identify themselves and verify their age in order to view them. “This helps to ensure that wherever a video is discovered, it can only be viewed by the appropriate audience,” says Samantha Yorke.
Meanwhile, Meta is rolling out parental supervision tools on Quest and Instagram, saying it will allow parents and guardians to be “more involved in their teens’ experiences”. The supervision tool for Instagram will allow parents and guardians to see how much time their teens are spending on the platform and set time limits, get notified when their teens share that they have reported someone and see and receive updates on the accounts their teens follow and the accounts their teens follow.
There are also plans to add additional features, including the ability for parents to set the hours their teens can use Instagram and the ability for more than one parent to oversee a teen’s account. The Instagram monitoring tool is currently only available in the United States, but Meta says a global rollout is planned in the “coming months.”
For now, teens will need to launch Instagram’s parental supervision in-app on mobile devices, Meta says. But the company says parents will have the option to launch in-app supervision on desktop by June. “Teens will need to approve parental supervision if their parent or guardian requests it,” adds Meta.
As for the virtual reality parental supervision tools introduced in Quest, they will be rolling out over the next few months, starting with extending the existing unlock pattern on Quest headsets to allow parents to use it to prevent their teen to access experiences they deem inappropriate.
Meta launches the “Family Center”
Additionally, Meta has created what it calls the “Family Center” to give parents and guardians access to supervision tools and resources, including the ability to monitor their teens’ accounts in Meta technologies. , set up and use supervision tools, and access resources on how to communicate with their teens about internet use.
“Our vision for Family Center is to empower parents and guardians to help their teens manage their experiences through Meta technologies, all from one central location,” the company says.
The action taken by the two tech giants follows the parliamentary committee leading the inquiry into Australia’s social media which released its findings earlier this week. In her findings, she believes that online harms would be reduced if the federal government legislated to require social media companies to set default privacy settings for child-owned accounts to the highest levels, and if all devices digital cameras sold in Australia contained optional parental control features.
Source: ZDNet.com