Trevor Long is a technology guru from e FtM dot com. Morning Trevor, thank you for making yourself available at this hour of the morning.
Pleasure.
Actually, my associate, mister Sindon says that you're normally awake at this hour of the morning. Can that be true? Yeah?
No, I'd like to get up at freish just forget a start on the day. You get more done at this hour of the morning than you do any other time of day.
I see. Okay, Now, I know we've talked about this before, but there have been some developments. We have a law passed that says people under sixteen cannot excess social media. First of all, to your understanding, are we only talking social media sites or the internet?
Generally we're only talking social media.
But this is where it gets hilarious.
So we have a law past It comes into effect at the end of this year, but it does not yet specify because it's a separate process to specify what is social media. So the government has not yet decided what is social media. So is YouTube part of social media? TikTok, Instagram,
et cetera. So that's the first big you know, unknown because the big question really from me is YouTube has was originally excluded in statements by the government, but during the election campaign the Prime Minister was questioned on this and he said it would be reviewed and there's been no conversation since then.
And the issue here is not the YouTube that we all watch.
Because we go on a website and we look at YouTube and these you know, widescreen format videos, whether they're funny or silly or education or whatever, and people watch it on their TV. That's the YouTube we think of. The thirteen and fourteen year olds aren't watching that YouTube. They're on what's called YouTube th thoughts, which is essentially TikTok. It is what it is, what YouTube created to fight against the rise of TikTok? Why are we allowing that
under these rules? And that's the first question we need answered.
Is it included or not?
And the second question is how on earth do we decide who's sixteen and who's not Because these kids don't have IDs. My kids don't have IDs. I have a thirteen year old and a fourteen year old. They don't have an ID. How are these How is TikTok? And that's the best example, because people love to hate it. How is TikTok meant to work out who's fourteen and who's fifteen and who's sixteen. So the government or a government body. The Age Assurance Trial released some information on
Friday suggesting that they had done some testing. They had received submissions from the age assurance industry, and of course the age assurance industry has said, no, dramas, we can tell you who's fifteen and who's sixteen and who's eighteen. But Mike, the devil is in the details. These companies can do that with an error rate of about.
A year and a half.
Well that makes me laugh, Trevor, because can you imagine how outraged a seventeen year old will be if she's told that she can't look at something that she wants to on social media because the device thinks she's only fifteen.
Says no. Here's the example I'll give you.
When my kids turned thirteen, they were allowed to have social media because that was the age that social media was allowed by the social media companies. My kids literally on their birthday requested social media. Okay, So on their thirteenth birthday they got accounts.
And I'll tell you right now, it's actually really hard to.
Do because the American time zone is a day later, and therefore, according to America, they're not thirteen yet. But anyway, that's a whole other issue on their sixteenth birthday. Post these regulations coming in, how is it possible that any technology, any technology is going to tell the difference between a child that is fifteen years and ten months old and
a child that has just turned sixteen? Physically impossible. The only way to do that is for a parent to verify their idea and confirm that the child can have an account, and that, by law, is not required to be the way we prove people's age, because identity documents are not required under this legislation. So fast the whole thing I'm telling you.
Okay, So the tests they ran in the recent past, my understanding were, as you say, I mean, they couldn't tell the difference between an eighteen year old and fifteen year old whatever. But when it comes to providing some kind of bona fide, I mean, how do you establish that the bona fide is bona fide?
Well, we do have pretty good systems for verifying government IDs. I actually did it this morning. I was setting up a payment terminal for some testing and that required me to prove my ID for my company and all this stuff. Basically I put in my driver's license and it went
away and verified it. There are good systems for verifying a government ID that is safe and secure, but because of the concerns of the wider public around sharing government identity documents, the legislation had to require that there were options other than So, yes, it's completely allowed to use government IDs, but it should not be the only way. It must be possible to verify using a method other than ID. And there's no way of proving that my
fourteen year old is fourteen or fifteen. And if you've ever been to a kid's sporting match and you've looked at the kids on the court, going these are all under fifteens. That girl looks seventeen, this girl looks twelve. As a parent, I can't tell the age of my child's friends.
Well, that's certainly the case. So what happens though, I mean, my youngest son is twenty one, so it's not an issue for me that all. But supposing I had a fourteen year old who's saying dad, dad, and I say, ah, yeah, okay, here's my license, and then I pretend that my fourteen year old is actually sixteen year old. How's anybody going to prove that's incorrect. They're not.
And here's the great news, it is not under the legislation. Again, a parent cannot be prosecuted fined for having their kids on social media, so the parent cannot be held responsible. The parent essentially can allow it. It's up to the social media companies to not allow it. And there's some caveats there because it's actually not about them accessing these services, about having accounts on the services, which is a whole
other discussion. But yeah, basically, there's no requirement for parents to get in trouble if their kids are on social media. And what I think will happen is just like, right now, if my seventeen year old at the time is now eighteen, to of the math, if my seventeen year old wanted to have a couple of beers at a party, then the nineteen year old or the eighteen year old will go and get the beers and supply them to everyone.
H what trust me? Old?
You know, seventeen eighteen year old Brian with his driver's license is going to sign up to accounts for kids and give them the logins and passwords.
So what's what's going to happen. They're going to still be on social media.
So the best the government can really offer is the opportunity for you to say to your fifteen year old it's against the law for you to go on social media. They can flout the law themselves if they want to. As you say, your fifteen year old's got to mate who pretends to be or maybe you fifteen year old's got to mate who's seventeen who will swear for him or her that they're of age. So there's so many
ways to get around it. Really, the best, as I say, that the government can offer is I'll tell your child it's against the law. Is that really going to make a difference in the family situation.
It's not going to make any difference.
The worst thing that ever happened in this whole debate was the Prime Minister when he said we're going to do this, He said we're going to take the responsibility away from parents and put it on the social media companies, so that if old Jimmy creates an account and gives it to little Johnny, then the social media company can say, well we had an ID against that account. We did our thing. The parents are none the wiser and don't need to parent, apparently, according to the Prime Minister, because
they have been resolved of all responsibility to parents. It's purely upon the social media companies and they're the ones that get fined if a child is discovered to have an account. And it's going to be you know, news dot com and the Telegraph and all these people that paraded for this legislation. They will go the complete opposite way in eighteen months from now and talk about all of the kids that are on there because of these loopholes.
But they're not willing to talk about the loopholes today before the legislation comes in. It's hilarious to me and I sit by. Here's the other question. I've got a thirteen and fourteen year old. Are they excluded from social media as of December or because they've already got accounts, can they continue to use it? Good poetically, don't know what to tell my kids. I literally don't.
Know that wonderful phrase is had grandfathered in. That's very interesting, Trevor, appreciate your time and comments. Thanks for coming on program. Okay, mate, Trevor Long, technology guru from EFTM dot com