Speaker 1: Before we start today. This episode discusses violent pornography from
Speaker 1: the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, July two. Labour's rogue senator Fatima Payman says
Speaker 1: she feels like an exile after being dumped from caucus.
Speaker 1: The Prime Minister says he punished Payment for ruining the
Speaker 1: government's big promotion of its July one tax cuts by
Speaker 1: going on TV at the weekend to explain why she
Speaker 1: voted with the Greens in support of Palestine. House prices
Speaker 1: will rise seven percent this year, according to Australia's biggest bank.
Speaker 1: It's all because demand is outstripping supply and prices could
Speaker 1: go up another five percent in twenty twenty five. That's
Speaker 1: live at the Australian dot com dot au right now.
Speaker 1: Australian kids are being exposed to pornography on popular social
Speaker 1: media science like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok before they term thirteen,
Speaker 1: and Australia's e Safety Commissioner is putting the heat on
Speaker 1: tech giants to come up with measures to protect children.
Speaker 1: If they fail, Julie Imman Grant says she'll impose mandatory
Speaker 1: codes of conduct today, Can Australia really force tech giants
Speaker 1: to do anything? Ah scrolling?
Speaker 2: I always pack way too damn much, but you never
Speaker 2: know what you're gonna need.
Speaker 1: Travel pets.
Speaker 2: Are you supposed to be in?
Speaker 1: The poor duke? Your mommy say?
Speaker 3: You can.
Speaker 1: Strangely mesmerizing makeup tutorials, get ready with me for dinner
Speaker 1: with the girls. If you keep swiping for long enough,
Speaker 1: you might wind up somewhere depressing, like the so called
Speaker 1: mani sphere, where creepy dudes like Andrew Tate spew hate
Speaker 1: about women.
Speaker 3: So they call me a misogynists. I'm anti woman, I'm problem.
Speaker 3: The best way you can improve the lives of women
Speaker 3: is make men better, men better at being men, what
Speaker 3: a man is.
Speaker 1: And then, especially if you are young, it can get
Speaker 1: even darker. Nudity, revenge, porn, violence, abuse. More than half
Speaker 1: of children and adolescents have been exposed to pawn on
Speaker 1: social media, according to new research release today by Australia's
Speaker 1: E Safety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. It says most kids
Speaker 1: first encounter adult content around age thirteen, and for men
Speaker 1: much younger, and when they haven't gone looking for it,
Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent. Jeff, you
Speaker 1: spoke to Julie inman Grant and she's really stick about
Speaker 1: the fact that young people may and often will seek
Speaker 1: out pornography as they get older. But this is different.
Speaker 1: Why is it different?
Speaker 2: Ten years ago when Facebook emerged, that was really the
Speaker 2: primary sort of social media platform. There were porn websites
Speaker 2: and things like that. But now we've just had this proliferation,
Speaker 2: this explosion in growth in a range of social media platforms,
Speaker 2: encrypted messaging apps, even in and around gaming, where a
Speaker 2: lot of young Australian children are being exposed to pornographic
Speaker 2: material quite often inadvertently. They're not necessarily seeking it out,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot of pop ups people are sending
Speaker 2: unsolicited dick pics and and other explicit material, and it's
Speaker 2: really seeped its way into the schoolyards and into homes.
Speaker 2: So it is just becoming so much more difficult for
Speaker 2: families and parents to know what their kids are seeing online.
Speaker 1: We all remember the mortification of that talk with our parents,
Speaker 1: awkward conversations about sex as adolescents. Slapped us in the face,
Speaker 1: or maybe we worked it out for ourselves with the
Speaker 1: help of some self appointed experts in the playground. But
Speaker 1: now those opportunities for parents to have conversations about sex,
Speaker 1: about healthy relationships, respect intimacy are being subverted by social
Speaker 1: media and according to the new research, kids are aware
Speaker 1: of how it can affect their ideas of sex, relationships
Speaker 1: and gender, but they feel like they're losing control of
Speaker 1: their own online experience.
Speaker 2: It's that repeat exposure and it's often peer pressure, particularly
Speaker 2: when young Australians move into high school.
Speaker 3: And get to their teenage years.
Speaker 2: And one of the issues raised by julianvan Grant is
Speaker 2: the fact that they're seeing this violent, extreme pornography without
Speaker 2: any guidance, context, or any appropriate maturity levels, because they
Speaker 2: might think that a video showing a man aggressively choking
Speaker 2: a woman during sex on a porn side is what
Speaker 2: consent sex and healthy relationship should look like. And I
Speaker 2: think that's why Peter Dutton and Anthony Albernezi are both
Speaker 2: on a bit of a unity ticket here to try
Speaker 2: and put every single layer of protection in place, because
Speaker 2: we know that this unfettered access to pornography at such
Speaker 2: a young age, when kids are still developing, can have
Speaker 2: really perverse outcomes, whether that is just awful bullying at
Speaker 2: the very least, to self harm, suicide, and eating disorders.
Speaker 1: Now the safety Commissioner has the tech platforms in her sites,
Speaker 1: Julie Mngrant has given tech giants like Google, Meta, Snapchat,
Speaker 1: and TikTok six months to come up with voluntary codes
Speaker 1: to protect kids from porn along with other potentially harmful
Speaker 1: content like suicide, serious illness, self harm, and disordered eating.
Speaker 1: She wants barriers like age verification and tools that allow
Speaker 1: users or their parents to filter or blur out unwanted
Speaker 1: sexual content.
Speaker 2: And I guess this goes to one point that I
Speaker 2: hadn't really thought about, but when a parent buys their
Speaker 2: child an iPad or an iPhone, quite often there is
Speaker 2: an opt in element around parental controls and safety measures.
Speaker 2: And one of the simple things that's being raised here
Speaker 2: is sibly, these big tech providers can make that an
Speaker 2: opt out default setting. And if you do that, I
Speaker 2: think most adults will know that they've got to get
Speaker 2: in and change that if they wish to change that
Speaker 2: if there are no children using it, Because the trends
Speaker 2: show that when it is an opt in arrangement that
Speaker 2: many people forget about it, don't do it, or don't
Speaker 2: do it properly.
Speaker 1: If they don't front up. Inman, Grant says she'll set
Speaker 1: rules for the tech platforms with mandatory standards. Duly Imman.
Speaker 1: Grant has issued notices to these organizations giving them six
Speaker 1: months to come up with their own enforceable codes, and
Speaker 1: she's saying that if they don't do that, she'll take action.
Speaker 1: But Jeff, this feels like the second issue on which
Speaker 1: this government is saying to tech giants, if you don't
Speaker 1: clean up your act, We've going to wave a big
Speaker 1: stick at you. The other being the social media giants
Speaker 1: refusal in some instances to pay for the news content
Speaker 1: that they use. So why not just go straight to
Speaker 1: the big stick.
Speaker 3: Look, they may well end up there.
Speaker 2: So Julian and Grant has the Online Safety Act and
Speaker 2: under phase one that was looking at child sex abuse material,
Speaker 2: terrorists and extremist materials, and this is part of phase two.
Speaker 2: We saw in phase one there had been some participation
Speaker 2: by some of these tech firms, most of them based overseas,
Speaker 2: most of them in the US very cashed, are very
Speaker 2: lowered up outfits.
Speaker 3: And what we saw just in recent weeks.
Speaker 2: Was the lack of involvement in terms of a voluntary code.
Speaker 2: Julian and Grant had to regulate mandatory codes under law,
Speaker 2: Australian law, and they've given three months for these platforms
Speaker 2: and tech companies to come forward with their plans around
Speaker 2: protecting kids from pornography and a hard December deadline. Now
Speaker 2: the argument and a lot of people will say that, well,
Speaker 2: clearly Australia can't do much in this space, but we're
Speaker 2: seeing other Western countries going down this same path as
Speaker 2: we are, and I think it's always important to get
Speaker 2: action to ensure that all of the other countries such
Speaker 2: as the US and the UK and the European Union.
Speaker 3: They all go in a pack to try and force action.
Speaker 2: And I think it's demanded when we talk about protecting kids,
Speaker 2: whether it's from child sex material, but in this case
Speaker 2: pornography and some of those perverse outcomes of that, I
Speaker 2: think that they have to try and do something.
Speaker 1: Coming up the tech companies explanations for why they haven't
Speaker 1: cleaned up before now and can the government actually scare
Speaker 1: them into action. Don't forget to check us out at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot Com dot you and consider subscribing. It's
Speaker 1: where all the actions happening twenty four to seven. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after this break. So why is Julie Inman
Speaker 1: Grant asking the social media sites to act instead of
Speaker 1: forcing them to Well, she says the tech companies themselves
Speaker 1: have to create the solutions, like reliable age verification tools
Speaker 1: that kids just can't trick. For example, do you think, though,
Speaker 1: Jeff as a seasoned observer of the way big companies
Speaker 1: behave in their relationships with government, are they actually going
Speaker 1: to comply with this?
Speaker 2: And this is the difficulty for this one because Julian
Speaker 2: Mgrant describes it as a stack, but there is so
Speaker 2: many different layers of that stack where you will get breaches.
Speaker 2: Maybe one company does the right thing, but then using
Speaker 2: that platform or that technology or device, there will be
Speaker 2: other areas where that stack is fractured. And I guess
Speaker 2: I don't think that they're saying that they'll get a
Speaker 2: full proof, one hundred percent iron clad protection for kids,
Speaker 2: but they're trying to put as many different layers as possible.
Speaker 2: To go to your question about these big, cashed up,
Speaker 2: well resourced companies, the history shows that they do everything
Speaker 2: they can to get out of adding extra laser complexity
Speaker 2: or costs for themselves.
Speaker 1: The codes won't just apply to websites and social media
Speaker 1: search engines, hosting services, Internet service providers, instant messaging programs
Speaker 1: sms chat, multiplayer gaming, online dating services, and hardware manufacturers
Speaker 1: will also be on the hook. So we're starting to
Speaker 1: see changes. We just need to see consistency across the industry.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 2: There's any company in particular that I think is doing nothing.
Speaker 1: I think collectively they.
Speaker 2: All need to do more. She is very concerned that
Speaker 2: if unfettered access to online pornography by children is not
Speaker 2: urgently reversed or controlled in a way, that Australia is
Speaker 2: facing a harmful sexual socialization of an entire generation.
Speaker 3: And she reflected on the.
Speaker 2: Fact that this current age is not like the days
Speaker 2: of the pentase that your dad did in his sock draw.
Speaker 2: It's now available without any real impediments, and it's just
Speaker 2: becoming easier for kids to get around blocks, and it's
Speaker 2: becoming a really, really difficult issue for parents to police.
Speaker 1: Jeff Chambers is The Australian's chief political correspondent. Thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us on the front and don't forget. You can
Speaker 1: read all the coverage of Labour's unfolding crisis in the
Speaker 1: Senate right now at the Australian dot com. Dou