Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM.
Speaker 1: Australia's plan to ban teenagers from social media has been
Speaker 1: called world leading well.
Speaker 2: While first in Australia, where Parliament there has given a
Speaker 2: green light to a bill banning social media for users
Speaker 2: under the age of sixteen and it's introduced.
Speaker 3: The new legislation could see tech companies like TikTok, Facebook
Speaker 3: and Instagram find up to fifty million Australian dollars that's
Speaker 3: almost thirty one million euros if they fail to comply.
Speaker 1: But as we get closer to its introduction, questions are
Speaker 1: being raised about what it actually means to verify age
Speaker 1: on social media and the implications for online privacy for
Speaker 1: all Internet users today. Digital rights advocates Samanta Floriani on
Speaker 1: the risks of the ban amid a global regulatory arms Raceday,
Speaker 1: November thirty. This episode was originally published in July, so
Speaker 1: Samantha will get into the details of the social media
Speaker 1: ban in a moment. But first, it seems like YouTube
Speaker 1: will now be included in this ban. Originally it was
Speaker 1: not going to be, So what's changed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, initially.
Speaker 5: YouTube was excluded from the teen social media ban, which
Speaker 5: made a lot of the other social media giants really upset.
Speaker 5: They were really angry about this. But in June, the
Speaker 5: e Safety Commissioner made a speech to the National Press
Speaker 5: Club where she revealed that she had advised the Minister
Speaker 5: for Communications, Annika Wells, that the government should not exempt
Speaker 5: YouTube from the ban.
Speaker 6: YouTube was the only one exempted. Our recommendation was that
Speaker 6: no specific platform be exempted because, as I said, their
Speaker 6: relative risks and homes can change at any moment.
Speaker 5: And this was off the back of research that her
Speaker 5: office had conducted which revealed that YouTube was one of
Speaker 5: the most used platforms by children under sixteen years of age.
Speaker 6: YouTube was the most frequently cited platform in our research,
Speaker 6: with almost four and ten children reporting exposure retiremful content.
Speaker 5: There, and the research also included some findings about a
Speaker 5: younger cohort of users so ages ten to twelve, who
Speaker 5: were more likely to be exposed to harmful content on YouTube.
Speaker 6: This also comes as The New York Times reported earlier
Speaker 6: this month that YouTube surreptitiously ruled back its content moderation
Speaker 6: processes to keep more harmful content on its platform.
Speaker 5: So it seems that essentially the backflip has come off
Speaker 5: the back of advice from the E Safety Commissioner based
Speaker 5: on this research.
Speaker 4: Okay, and so what do we.
Speaker 1: Know that meant about how YouTube and its ownA Google,
Speaker 1: how they're likely to respond.
Speaker 5: Well, we could already see that they've been quite aggressive
Speaker 5: in their response.
Speaker 4: YouTube is galvanizing Ossie creators.
Speaker 5: Though, to respond, you're worried about them?
Speaker 7: YouTube did send the Wiggles to try and persuade me
Speaker 7: to their positions, did they?
Speaker 4: They did? They sent Big.
Speaker 5: Wiggle, and Google, which owns YouTube, threatened legal action in
Speaker 5: a letter to the Communications Minister.
Speaker 8: Look you worried about legal action.
Speaker 7: I mean, we have had threats come in, but look,
Speaker 7: you know, I've got sharp elbows. This is too important
Speaker 7: for us not to have a crack.
Speaker 5: So it'll be interesting to see if they make good
Speaker 5: on that threats. They've been arguing pretty strongly that YouTube
Speaker 5: is not a social media platform. Basically, what they're saying
Speaker 5: is that it lacks some of the features designed to
Speaker 5: facilitate social connections in the same way that many other
Speaker 5: social media platforms. Do you know whether or not you
Speaker 5: agree with that. That's sort of the stats that they've
Speaker 5: been really trying to push. They've also been pushing this
Speaker 5: idea that you know, YouTube is home to a lot
Speaker 5: of educational content. You know, it's regularly used in Australian
Speaker 5: classrooms and so on. So it will be interesting to
Speaker 5: see whether there's fall out off the back.
Speaker 1: Of this, and so the Australian government, they're really relying
Speaker 1: on this argument that YouTube contains all of the same
Speaker 1: harms to young people, like algorithms, AutoPlay, both sorts of things,
Speaker 1: and that's why it should be included. What does the
Speaker 1: evidence say about the harm or otherwise of YouTube on
Speaker 1: young people?
Speaker 5: You know, in general, there is a lot of conflicting
Speaker 5: research and evidence on all social media fronts. You can
Speaker 5: find research that suggests that social media is overwhelmingly beneficial.
Speaker 5: You can find research that suggests it's, you know, absolutely terrible.
Speaker 5: I think in reality, it's always going to be more
Speaker 5: complicated than that. There are plenty of positives that come
Speaker 5: with something like YouTube. You know, plenty of teachers use
Speaker 5: it in classrooms, plenty of parents use it with their children.
Speaker 4: So I think where we get into.
Speaker 5: Trouble as if we start to try to categorize these
Speaker 5: things as.
Speaker 4: All good or all bad.
Speaker 5: But you know, as the research shows from the e
Speaker 5: Safety Commissioner, there there are harms that are occurring on YouTube,
Speaker 5: and you know, I think it is reasonable to demand
Speaker 5: social media giants to be taking more proactive steps to
Speaker 5: ensure that their products are you know, safer experiences for
Speaker 5: children and young people, but people of all ages as well.
Speaker 5: To be honest, there is I guess an outstanding question
Speaker 5: as to whether age verification is the best option for that,
Speaker 5: but this is the one that we're currently entertaining.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's talk about the nuts and bolts of
Speaker 1: the social media band. How would it or does it
Speaker 1: actually work in practice?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, from just the social media platforms that are
Speaker 5: captured by Part four A of the Online Safety Act
Speaker 5: will have to take reasonable steps to prevent people under
Speaker 5: the age of sixteen from having accounts on their platforms.
Speaker 4: So most social media platforms.
Speaker 5: Already have a minimum age requirement of thirteen, but the
Speaker 5: way that they enforce this is really sort of lackluster
Speaker 5: and quite ineffective. You know, it's usually just asking people
Speaker 5: to put in their date of birth. Obviously this is
Speaker 5: not working. So from December they'll be expected to do
Speaker 5: much more to verify that their users are actually over
Speaker 5: the age of sixteen.
Speaker 7: Come ten December. It means that if your kid has
Speaker 7: a YouTube log in or another social media platform log in,
Speaker 7: the platform needs to deactivate it, and the platform needs
Speaker 7: to take reasonable steps to make sure that kids don't
Speaker 7: activate new logins and where they find their way around this.
Speaker 7: Because we know that kids will God bless them, the
Speaker 7: platforms take reasonable steps to mitigate that from happening.
Speaker 5: Into Unfortunately, we still don't know exactly what this will
Speaker 5: look like in practice for everyday users of social media,
Speaker 5: and that's because there are a range of options that
Speaker 5: platforms could take to do this. On Wednesday, Communications Minister
Speaker 5: Anaka Wells did make assurances that platforms will not be
Speaker 5: required to collect identity documents like a passport or a
Speaker 5: driver's license.
Speaker 7: In order to do this, platforms have to provide an
Speaker 7: alternative to providing your own personal identification documents to satisfy
Speaker 7: themselves of aid.
Speaker 5: For instance, they might get people to put in their
Speaker 5: credit card details, or they might use biometric face scanning
Speaker 5: to guess the age of the person based on their face,
Speaker 5: and she suggested that some platforms might be able to
Speaker 5: infer people's age based on the data that they already
Speaker 5: have about them.
Speaker 7: These platforms know with deadly accuracy who we are, what
Speaker 7: we do, and when we do it. And they know
Speaker 7: that you've had a Facebook account since two thousand nine,
Speaker 7: so they know that you're over sixteen. There's lots of
Speaker 7: ways that this.
Speaker 5: Can be done, but something that's important to understand I
Speaker 5: think about this is that this will change the way
Speaker 5: that everyone.
Speaker 4: Uses social media, you know, not just people under the
Speaker 4: age of sixteen.
Speaker 5: Everyone including adults, will need to verify their age in
Speaker 5: whatever way they end up doing this, not just children.
Speaker 1: After the break, how the Internet is changing for everyone?
Speaker 1: This maad that if everyone who uses the Internet is
Speaker 1: going to end up having to provide some sort of identification,
Speaker 1: even if we don't know exactly what that is yet,
Speaker 1: how will that change the way that we all use
Speaker 1: the Internet?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, again, it will depend on how it's implemented,
Speaker 5: But there are some immediate concerns that come to mind,
Speaker 5: one of which is privacy and data protection or digital security.
Speaker 5: So if we are wired to provide additional data to
Speaker 5: these tech giants or to third party age assurance platforms,
Speaker 5: that does mean handing over, you know, more information to
Speaker 5: companies that already have a huge amount of information about us.
Speaker 5: I think people are more aware than ever of the
Speaker 5: risks that come with providing things like identity documents or
Speaker 5: other sensitive and personal information off the back of you know,
Speaker 5: all of these large scale data breaches.
Speaker 4: I think people are rightfully so quite scared about what
Speaker 4: that means.
Speaker 5: There are also concerns about the potential to be able
Speaker 5: to essentially link your behavior on social media or other
Speaker 5: you know, online services and websites to your identity.
Speaker 4: Again, we don't know, because we don't know.
Speaker 5: The specifics of how it will be implemented, whether this
Speaker 5: is likely to happen or not, but there are I
Speaker 5: think genuine fears and reasonable fear is about the potential
Speaker 5: for this to essentially contribute to a global trend towards
Speaker 5: policing online content and being able to monitor the way
Speaker 5: that people are accessing various forms of information online. And
Speaker 5: something else that I think is important to note is
Speaker 5: that it's not just going to be happening on social media.
Speaker 5: Search engines in December will also be expected to verify
Speaker 5: the age of their logged in users. And what is
Speaker 5: the rationale for that this is kind of happening in
Speaker 5: tandem to the teen social media Then basically there's a
Speaker 5: set of new industry codes that are also coming into
Speaker 5: effect in December that would mean that search engines will
Speaker 5: also have to verify users age Their E Safety Commissioner
Speaker 5: has basically said that there needs to be a layered
Speaker 5: approach and that they need want to come at it
Speaker 5: from all different directions, and that the idea being that
Speaker 5: search engines are sort of one entry point into potentially
Speaker 5: harmful material.
Speaker 1: And the UK has just started age verification for pornography
Speaker 1: I believe what can we learn from how that's going.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the UK within the last week has brought
Speaker 5: in new stringent regulations that mean that any website offering
Speaker 5: adult content to UK users needs to take reasonable steps
Speaker 5: to verify the age of anyone visiting that website from
Speaker 5: the UK. So very similar kind of approach to what
Speaker 5: we're doing here in Australia. So off the back of this,
Speaker 5: there's been more than four hundred thousand UK citizens have
Speaker 5: signed a parliamentary petition demanding that the Act be repealed,
Speaker 5: which I think suggests that quite a few people were
Speaker 5: perhaps taken by surprise about what it meant in reality,
Speaker 5: and a really upset about it. In addition to that,
Speaker 5: a popular VPN product, so a VPN basically enables people
Speaker 5: to bypass this age verification process by masking their location,
Speaker 5: so they can essentially pretend to be logging in from
Speaker 5: somewhere that isn't the UK. So a popular VPN product
Speaker 5: said that they've seen more than an eighteen thousand percent
Speaker 5: increase in daily signups from UK based users since Friday.
Speaker 5: So that's a massive uptick in people using VPNs to
Speaker 5: get around these restrictions. So again, that suggests that a
Speaker 5: lot of people are actively trying to get around it,
Speaker 5: and that it's quite easy to get around using a VPN,
Speaker 5: which raises questions about the sort of efficacy of the
Speaker 5: whole thing as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's something that comes up a lot, right,
Speaker 1: whether or not you can actually bend teenagers from using
Speaker 1: these platforms exactly.
Speaker 5: The other thing that has been interesting to note off
Speaker 5: the back of the UK ban is that there's been
Speaker 5: lots of reporting about how there have been websites and
Speaker 5: smaller online forums, many of which are completely innocuous, you know,
Speaker 5: not harmful of children, and they've opted to just geo
Speaker 5: block their services to the UK entirely simply because they
Speaker 5: don't have the resources to support third party age for
Speaker 5: aification and they can't risk the potential finds. So you know,
Speaker 5: we might see a similar thing here where rather than
Speaker 5: having to deal with age for eification or risk finds
Speaker 5: that we might see you know, websites and forums just
Speaker 5: completely pull out of Australia.
Speaker 1: And it's fair to say the rest of the world
Speaker 1: is watching this pretty closely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I think this is.
Speaker 5: Part of a global push to age gate more and
Speaker 5: more of the Internet. There's been a lot of emphasis
Speaker 5: on online safety of late. I think it's fair to
Speaker 5: say that there's kind of a bit of a regulatory
Speaker 5: arms race happening between you know here and the UK
Speaker 5: in particular. I think it's entirely reasonable to demand digital platforms,
Speaker 5: social media platforms, all of these tech giants to be
Speaker 5: doing much more when it comes to, you know, ensuring
Speaker 5: the safety of their users. So what's striking to me
Speaker 5: here is that there are you know, these are really
Speaker 5: big decisions that do change the way that everyone will
Speaker 5: use the Internet, not just on social media, and you know,
Speaker 5: to me, this warrants much more robust public conversation and
Speaker 5: parliamentary debate.
Speaker 8: Well Smitha, thank you so much for your type, no worries,
Speaker 8: thank you so much for having me, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow, I'm bringing you the story of a man who's
Speaker 1: blown the whistle on the monumental waste and alleged corruption
Speaker 1: happening at the Department of Home Affairs. This man took
Speaker 1: a job overseeing massive contracts offshore processing and he saw
Speaker 1: millions of dollars being wasted on deals no longer fit
Speaker 1: for purpose. But when he blew the whistle, no one listened.
Speaker 5: Because I was a newcom up, because I'd come from
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Speaker 4: I just naturally walked around and asked.
Speaker 8: These questions, you know, because they were so fucking op
Speaker 8: years and people would literally stare at you like you
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Speaker 1: Tomorrow, the culture of secrecy and the silence that goes
Speaker 1: all the way to the top of Australia's offshore detention system.