Technology

“When it detects a user may be under 18, Google will notify them that it has changed some of their settings and will offer information about how users can verify their age with a selfie, credit card, or government ID.”

Selfies are useless as proof for young adults and people with a young face. No algorithm can tell a 17.11 yo from a 18 yo so it will flag every single one of them.

This is a way to normalize handing over your details for the next generations. Nothing more.

The good news isn that once teens figure out that other browsers and search engines don't stop them from finding porn they might stick with them.

But they already did that to target ads. Someone found a way to repackage an existing feature for their performance review?

That's weird, the computer says everyone was born January 1, 1900.

I'd say it's bound to be more difficult for Google, as every Youtube comment for example, sounds like being made by an 8 yo. Whereas Meta can just tell. You're still on Facebook? Probably 50+... And on WhatsApp, the amount of boomer memes re-posted would be an immediate tell...

It's gonna think I am a 7 year old girl with the shit I search for and keep on my google cloud. 😭

Time to flood their AI with a ton of skibidi toilet and 'what the sigma' memes, so it confuses everyone for eight year olds.

They already know, they are just making it user facing.

This just sounds like an excuse to get more training data. Like those companies that use AI to guess someone's age based on a photo while their website is covered in AI images.

“When it detects a user may be under 18, Google will notify them that it has changed some of their settings and will offer information about how users can verify their age with a selfie, credit card, or government ID.”

This will definitely not be used to get a massive amount of face and ID data from users who get misclassified as underage due to "glitches" and suddenly locked out from their Gmail accounts or Android phones. Nope, no sirree, that will never happen at all, Google wouldn't do such an unethical and evil thing!

Its going to be interesting to see how I can degoogle my phone

I've already stopped using search nearly a decade ago, I only still had a storage subscription (and with that, YouTube premium) which I just now stopped.

The only service I'm still interested in is YouTube because of the content, the rest can die in a fire, I'm going full self hosting

YouTube has revance, right?

What's the best non Google OS for a phone? I have a OnePlus 12

Need to work on replacing YouTube

Laughable!

I have the same Google account for >18 years, but they still don't get it.

But it already asked me to confirm a guess about me years ago... I confirmed the guess, that is my info, whatever it said.

I mean, with the number of hair-replacement and teeth-implant adverts I've been seeing lately, I feel like they figured it out a long time ago.

Yeah Google, wait, wait, I'm leaving already, I've already stopped my storage subscription, but gimme a second pleaase, stop pushing me away that hard!

Good luck with that

Okay Google, if you can guess my age accurately to within a decade based on my youtube viewing history and whatever other data you can get, I will give you a cookie.