Brickbat: Don't Look Down Under

Australia now requires internet search engines to blur violent and sexual images to reduce the chances that minors can see them. By June, they must also determine whether account holders are at least 18 years old using a range of methods, such as digital ID, facial age estimation, credit card checks, parental verification, or AI inference. For minors and those who are not signed in, explicit material must be filtered from results, and autocomplete suggestions must avoid sexual or violent language. The law also requires content related to suicide or self-harm to be downranked, while crisis resources are placed high in the results. These obligations also apply to AI-generated search outputs, including systems like Google's Gemini. Opponents say these requirements raise concerns about accuracy and privacy, and even supporters admit they face challenges in defining and detecting harmful content without also blocking legitimate information.

Comments

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

But kids can watch reruns of the A Team shooting up the place with machine guns.

[Stuck in California]

But nobody died in the A Team.

Seriously. I remember once episode a helicopter got shot down. Blew up in the air, smashed into a cliff, fell 500 feet to the bottom of the cliff, blew up again, and the next shot was four people running out of the helicopter. Edit to add a link to the scene I vaguely remembered.

I think there were deaths or gunshot wounds for plot reasons, but it was like 3 or 4 total and all named characters. Otherwise, a million bullets, bombs, grenades went flying but none of the extras ever got hurt. It was miraculous. The exact opposite of Star Trek red shirts.

[Fist of Etiquette]

They are, after all, a penal colony.