Hi, I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. Australia's plan to ban teenagers from social media has been called world leading.
Well well first in Australia, where Parliament there has given a green light to a bill banning social media for users under the age of sixteen.
And we introduced.
The new legislation could see tech companies like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram find up to fifty million Australian dollars that's almost thirty one million euros if they fail to comply.
But as we get closer to its introduction, questions are being raised about what it actually means to verify age on social media and the implications for online privacy for all Internet users.
Today.
Digital rights Advocatesmanta Floriani on the risks of the ban amid a global regulatory arms race. It's Thursday, July thirty one, So Samantha will get into the details of the social media ban in a moment. But first it seems like YouTube will now be included in this ban. Originally it was not going to be.
So what's changed. Yeah, So, initially YouTube was excluded from the teen social media ban, which made a lot of the other social media giants really upset. They were really angry about this. But in June, the e Safety Commissioner made a speech to the National Press Club where she revealed that she had advised the Minister for Communications, Annika Wells, that the government should not exempt YouTube from the ban.
YouTube was the only one exempted. Our recommendation was that no specific platform be exempted because, as I said, their relative risks and homes can change at any moment.
And this was off the back of research that her office had conducted which revealed that YouTube was one of the most used platforms by children under sixteen years of age.
YouTube was the most frequently cited platform in our research, with almost four and ten children reporting exposure retiremful content.
There, and the research also included some findings about a younger cohort of users so ages ten to twelve, who were more likely to be exposed to harmful content on YouTube.
This also comes as The New York Times reported earlier this month that YouTube surreptitiously ruled back its content moderation processes to keep more harmful content on its platform.
So it seems that essentially the backflip has come off. The back of advice from the E Safety Commissioner based on this research. Okay, and so what.
Do we know that's meant about how YouTube and zona Google, how they're likely to respond.
Well, we could already see that have been quite aggressive in their response to the potential to be included.
YouTube is galvanizing Aussie creators. Though, to respond, you're worried about them?
YouTube did send the Wiggles to try and persuade me to their positions, did they?
They did?
They sent Big Wiggle, and Google, which owns YouTube, threatened legal action in a letter to the Communications Minister if it was to be included. Look you worried about legal action?
I mean, we have had threats come in, but look, you know I've got sharp elbows. This is too important for us not to have a crack.
So it'll be interesting to see if they make good on that threat. They've been arguing pretty strongly that YouTube is not a social media platform. Basically, what they're saying is that it lacks some of the features designed to facilitate social connections in the same way that many other social media platforms. Do you know whether or not you agree with that, that's sort of the stants that they've
been really trying to push. They've also been pushing this idea that you know, YouTube is home to a lot of educational content. You know, it's regularly used in Australian classrooms and so on. I imagine that they will be very frustrated with the news from Wednesday, So it will be interesting to see whether there's fall out off the back of this.
And so the Australian government, they're really relying on this argument that YouTube contains all of the same harms to young people, like algorithms, AutoPlay, both sorts of things, and that's why it should be included. What does the evidence say about the harm or otherwise of YouTube on young people?
You know, in general, there is a lot of conflicting research and evidence on all social media fronts. You can find research that suggests that social media is overwhelmingly beneficial. You can find research that suggests it's you know, absolutely terrible. I think in reality it's always going to be more complicated than that. There are plenty of positives that come with something like YouTube. You know, plenty of teachers use it in classrooms, plenty of parents use it with their children.
So I think where we get into trouble as if we start to try to categorize these things as all good or all bad. But you know, as the research shows from the e Safety Commissioner, there there are harms that are occurring on YouTube, and you know, I think it is reasonable to demand social media giants to be taking more proactive steps to ensure that their products are you know, safer experiences for children and young people, but
people of all ages as well. To be honest, there is I guess an outstanding question as to whether age verification is the best option for that, but this is the one that we're currently entertaining. Okay, well, let's talk.
About the nuts and of the social media then how would it or does it actually work in practice?
Yeah, So from December, the social media platforms that are captured by Part four A of the Online Safety Act will have to take reasonable steps to prevent people under the age of sixteen from having accounts on their platforms. So most social media platforms already have a minimum age requirement of thirteen, but the way that they enforce this
is really sort of lackluster and quite ineffective. You know, it's usually just asking people to put in their date of birth, Obviously this is not working, so from December they'll be expected to do much more to verify that their users are actually over the age of sixteen.
Come ten December, it means that if your kid has a YouTube log in or another social media platform log in, the platform needs to deactivate it, and the platform needs to take reasonable steps to make sure that kids don't activate new logins and where they find their way around this. Because we know that kids will, God bless them, the platforms take reasonable steps to mitigate that from happening in.
The Unfortunately, we still don't know exactly what this will look like in practice for everyday users of social media, and that's because there are a range of options that platforms could take to do this. On Wednesday, Communications Minister Anaka Wells did make assurances that platforms will not be required to collect identity documents like a passport or a driver's license.
In order to do this, platforms have to provide an alternative to providing your own personal identification documents to satisfy themselves of aid.
For instance, they might get people to put in their credit card details, or they might use biometric face scanning to guess the age of the person. Based on their face, and she suggested that some platforms you might be able to infer people's age based on the data that they already have about them.
These platforms with deadly accuracy who we are, what we do, and when we do it. And they know that you've had a Facebook account since two thousand and nine, so they know that you're over sixteen. There's lots of ways that this can be done.
But something that's important to understand I think about this is that this will change the way that everyone uses social media, you know, not just people under the age of sixteen. Everyone including adults, will need to verify their age in whatever way they end up doing this, not just children.
After the break how the Internet is changing for everyone? This maad that if everyone who uses the Internet is going to end up having to provide some sort of identification, even if we don't know exactly what that is yet, how will that change the way that we all use the Internet?
Yeah, so, again, it will depend on how it's implemented, But there are some immediate concerns that come to mind, one of which is privacy and data protection or digital security. So if we are required to provide additional data to these tech giants or to third party age assurance platforms. That does mean handing over you know, more information to companies that already have a huge amount of information about us.
I think people are more aware than ever of the risks that come with providing things like identity documents or other sensitive and personal information off the back of you know, all of these large scale data breaches. I think people are rightfully so quite scared about what that means. There are also concerns about the potential to be able to essentially link your behavior on social media or other you know,
online services and websites to your identity. Again, we don't know, because we don't know the specifics of how it will be implemented, whether this is likely to happen or not, but there are I think genuine fears and reasonable fears about the potential for this to essentially contribute to a global trend towards policing online content and being able to monitor the way that people are accessing various forms of
information online. And something else that I think is important to note is that it's not just going to be happening on social media. Search engines in December will also be expected to verify the age of their logged in users and what is the.
Rationale for that.
This is kind of happening in tandem to the teen social media there. Basically there's a set of new industry codes that are also coming into effect in December that would mean that search engines will also have to verify users age Their E Safety Commissioner has basically said that there needs to be a layered approach and that they need want to come at it from all different directions, and that the idea being that search engines are sort of one entry point into potentially harmful material.
And the UK has just started age verification for pornography I believe what can we learn from how that's going.
Yeah, so the UK within the last week has brought in new stringent regulations that mean that any website offering adult content to UK users needs to take reasonable steps to verify the age of anyone visiting that website from the UK. So a very similar kind of approach to
what we're doing here in Australia. So off the back of this, there's been more than four hundred thousand UK citizens have signed a parliamentary petition demanding that the Act be repealed, which I think suggests that quite a few people were perhaps taken by surprise about what it meant
in reality and a really upset about it. In addition to that, a popular vs VPN product, so a VPN basically enables people to bypass this he verification process by masking their location, so they can essentially pretend to be logging in from somewhere that isn't the UK. So a popular VPN product said that they've seen more than an eighteen thousand percent increase in daily signups from UK based users since Friday. So that's a massive uptick in people
using VPNs to get around these restrictions. So again, that suggests that a lot of people are actively trying to get around it, and that it's quite easy to get around using a VPN, which raises questions about the sort of efficacy of the whole thing as well.
Yeah, I mean that's something that comes up a lot, right, whether or not you can actually then deenages from using these platforms exactly.
The other thing that has been interesting to note off the back of the UK ban is that there's been lots of reporting about how there have been websites and smaller online forums, many of which are completely innocuous, you know, not harfled of children, and they've opted to just geo block their services to the UK entirely simply because they don't have the resources to support third party age for
reification and they can't risk the potential finds. So you know, we might see a similar thing here where rather than having to deal with age for eification or risk finds that we might see you know, websites and forums just completely pull out of Australia.
And it's fair to say the rest of the world is watching this pretty closely.
Yeah, well, I think this is part of a global push to age gate more and more of the Internet. There's been a lot of emphasis on online safety of late. I think it's fair to say that there's kind of a bit of a regulatory arms race happening between you know here and the UK in particular. I think it's entirely reasonable to demand digital platforms, social media platforms, all of these tech giants to be doing much more when it comes to, you know, ensuring the safety of their users.
So what's striking to me here is that there are you know, these are really big decisions that do change the way that everyone will use the Internet, not just on social media, and you know to me this warrants much more robust public conversation and parliamentary debate.
Well Smantha, thank you so much for your type, no worries.
Thank you so much for having me.
Also in the news today, there have been tsunamis in Russia, Japan, and the United States following a powerful earthquake off Russia's east coast. The magnitude eight point eight earthquakes struck near the far eastern Kumchuck Copeninsula yesterday at a shallow depth of under twenty kilometers, and Prime Minister Anthony Abnezi is facing growing pressure from his backbench to recognize a Palestinian state after the United Kingdom joined France and more than
one hundred and forty nations in signaling support. Former Cabinet Minister at Husick says Australia's cautious stance is untenable while children in Gaza face starvation, and is urging the PM to reconsider before the UN meets in September. Prime Minister Albanesi maintains any recognition must advance peace, insisting the timing must help not hinder a two state solution. I'm Ruby Jones.
Thanks for listening.