Group repping Big Tech lodged complaint about Australia’s age assurance trial

Objections to age verification tend to come from a few directions. There are those with concerns about user privacy and safety, especially around biometrics, and those who worry about overreach and censorship. There are civil rights and digital rights groups, and lobbies for the porn industry.

And then there is Silicon Valley.

A report in InnovationAus frames the discovery that a participant in Australia’s Age Assurance Technology Trial (AATT) filed a complaint midway through as a mild scandal. The complaint, published this week through a freedom of information request, pointed to conflicts of interest that are openly stated on the AATT’s website. It also says the trial used a “mystery shopping” company that “tried to recruit its own staff to test options like facial and voice analysis.”

In a statement, the complainant, DIGI, says the trial “did not test the technology in a live environment, leaving key questions about user experience, usability, and adoption unanswered, including the likelihood of circumvention.” It says the trial was rushed, and that it favoured a small number of companies relative to the entire global age assurance industry.

DIGI bills itself as “the industry association for companies that invest in online safety, privacy, cyber security and a thriving Australian digital economy.” That is a generous description of a company that looks much like an Australian NetChoice. DIGI’s membership includes many of Big Tech’s biggest guns: Apple, Google, Meta, TikTok and Spotify, to name a few.

Its complaint about exclusion is particularly ironic, given that there has been no secret about concerns in the age assurance industry about the potential for a few major Silicon Valley names to dominate with ease. Google or Meta feeling left out or neglected is a comical stance, given the scale of global influence these companies have.

The kernel of the issue becomes clear in DIGI’s assertion that “the regulatory environment had ‘drastically changed’ since the trial was announced in May 2024 as a way of shielding children from pornography, and had to ‘rapidly pivot’ to support the ban on social media for under-16s.” The association signed on as an advisor to the trial, and Google participated. But it is evident that their interest began to sour as soon as their members’ business interests were implicated in the regulatory discussion.

Companies like Meta and Apple are competitors in the age assurance sector, but only because they have been forced into it. In the U.S., Big Tech’s legal lobby, NetChoice, has relentlessly deployed its legal team to litigate age assurance laws for social media wherever they arise. Australia is simply another front in the battle: witness YouTube’s ongoing campaign to win back an exemption from age checks under the social media law.

The report notes that, following DIGI’s complaint, Google, Meta and TikTok got a private sit-down with Communication Minister Anika Wells, in which the minister stressed that “the trial does not set industry standards or define universal benchmarks for age assurance performance. It does not evaluate the commercial viability of these systems, assess their business models or provide a comprehensive policy recommendation for deployment.”

The AATT has been transparent about its scope. If, as some critics suggest, it is “couched in language of persuasive rhetoric,” one might refer the matter to one of Silicon Valley’s massive, variously branded communications and litigatory organs – or to the White House, which has lately been tossing around its own persuasive rhetoric on the tech barons’ behalf.

Article Topics

Age Assurance Technology Trial  |  Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS)  |  age verification  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  biometrics  |  Digital Industry Group Inc. (DIGI)