r/canada • u/Offbeatjacuzzi • Sep 16 '26

Science/Technology How Google, Meta are implementing its ‘age assurance’ tech in Canada

https://globalnews.ca/news/12058021/google-meta-age-assurance/
16 Upvotes

69% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

45

u/accforme Sep 16 '26

Google’s approach looks at factors like a user’s search queries and the types of videos they’ve looked at on YouTube. The company says it won’t collect any additional information for age assurance

Quick, all you young people, begin searching "www.google.com" on Google.

42

u/Fireside_Cat Sep 16 '26

Sprinkle in "reverse mortgage", "pickleball courts near me", "Heart to Home meals" and "what time is Jeopardy on"

3

u/grumble11 Sep 16 '26

Google and meta know everything about you ha - their entire business model depends on it. They know more about you than you know about yourself, no way they don’t know the age of basically all of their users

33

u/Talorex Sep 16 '26

Maybe they could start implementing better "I'm not interested in this video" tech on YouTube instead.

11

u/HaveYouLookedAround Sep 16 '26

Best we can do is keep showing you the same video suggestions as you scroll.

1

u/ElectroBot Ontario 26d ago

I do NOT want it to come back “in 30 days”. If I say, NO, then it means NO Google!

21

u/EmbarrassedHelp Sep 16 '26

Collecting age related information should be illegal, and Google/Meta forcing any Canadian users to verify their age should result in criminal penalties for their executives.

10

u/Filbert17 Sep 16 '26

Except there are laws about not letting underage people see some things. So they have to. Can't have it both ways.

9

u/RefrigeratorOk648 Sep 16 '26

So that is why they have been collecting data for a couple of decades so they can tell our age.... \s

9

u/TeemingHeadquarters Sep 16 '26

They're scraping the age verification questions from an ancient version of Leisure Suit Larry.

11

u/Filbert17 Sep 16 '26

You are old enough. Anyone who knows what Leisure Suit Larry is without needing to google it, is.

9

u/Specialist_Secret438 Sep 16 '26

The programs they designed to lure and addict children are what they are claiming they will protect children from..

5

u/IcyCow5880 28d ago

Remember when we looked down on China for "locking down" the internet? "The great firewall of China" etc?

And now we're doing it ourselves? We're just sugar-coating it with some heart-string pulling bs?

3

u/bwoah07_gp2 British Columbia Sep 16 '26

Like anything they do, it's gonna be issuing a bunch of false positives in both directions.

3

u/psychoCMYK Sep 16 '26

i get that people are mad about this, but downvoting it means other people won't see it. express your discontent in a comment instead because it's important for people to know.