Australia to Make Search Engines Do Age Checks in Surprise Move

New rules come amid plan to ban children under 16 from having social media accounts

- Jonathan Pearlman

SYDNEY - In a surprise move, Australia will require search engines such as Google and Bing to check the ages of users and restrict content for those under 18 as part of world-first measures aimed at protecting young people from inappropriate and harmful content.

These requirements come as the government plans to introduce on Dec 10 a ban on children under 16 having social media accounts.

The new rules, due to take effect at the end of December, require search engines to introduce age checks for account holders.

These platforms would then need to, "at a minimum," filter out pornography and extremely violent material, as well as take steps to prevent young users from accessing self-harm material.

Failure to comply could result in fines of up to A$49.5 million (S$41.3 million).

Professor Lisa Given, an expert on technology use at RMIT University, told The Straits Times that the new rules for search engines "really came very much out of the blue".

She said people will still be able to use search engines without registering, but the searches will then have a default high-level safety setting. This will result in blurred images for search results that involve violent and pornographic images.

"Nobody knew this was on the cards," she said.

"Requiring everyone to verify their age to have a search account seems like a very broad brush to deal with the problems they are trying to solve. The government could, for instance, instead target specific sites, such as (pornographic sites)," she added.