Speaker 1: Kilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Video sharing
Speaker 2: website YouTube began twenty years ago with a nineteen second
Speaker 2: video of one of its founders at the San Diego Zoo. Now,
Speaker 2: hundreds of hours of content are uploaded to the platform
Speaker 2: every single minute. There has been a huge shift globally
Speaker 2: to rain in the social media giants. The UK has
Speaker 2: introduced to age verification requirements, with Australia to follow suit
Speaker 2: by the end of the year. Other countries like India, Germany, Spain,
Speaker 2: Italy and Norway are also investigating exactly how to better
Speaker 2: protect kids online. So should algorithms like youtubes be regulated
Speaker 2: and how would we even do it?
Speaker 3: Today?
Speaker 2: On the Front Page, Victoria University of Wellington Associate Professor
Speaker 2: doctor Peter Thompson is with us to discuss what New
Speaker 2: Zealand should do and whether we're already fighting a losing
Speaker 2: battle against harmful online contents. First off, Peter, let's start
Speaker 2: with a relatively easy one. I suppose can you explain
Speaker 2: what an algorithm is?
Speaker 4: Okay? Well, an algorithm is a computer program applied to
Speaker 4: the servers of online content in this context, and so
Speaker 4: it basically determines the priority in which you will actually
Speaker 4: come across and discover content on the platform you're using.
Speaker 4: So on social media, they access our data. They look
Speaker 4: at what we've liked where, what we've looked for, what
Speaker 4: we've searched for, what we've engaged with, and that informs
Speaker 4: the algorithm what kinds of content we're likely to want
Speaker 4: in the future, and so it prioritized is things that
Speaker 4: the algorithm tells the system is the sort of content
Speaker 4: that we're going to spend our time with, because that's
Speaker 4: how they make their money.
Speaker 2: How good do you think the algorithm is, like does
Speaker 2: it really know what we want? Or does it know
Speaker 2: what it wants us to want? If that makes sense.
Speaker 4: They're getting more sophisticated, that's for sure, certainly with AI,
Speaker 4: but they don't really know who we are. I mean,
Speaker 4: all they have is a data set based on our
Speaker 4: online behavior that they can access. And that's why data
Speaker 4: is so incredibly important because of course not only informs
Speaker 4: the sort of content that we find on online platforms,
Speaker 4: it also informs advertising and the way that advertisers might
Speaker 4: pitch their particular products to us.
Speaker 2: So you know.
Speaker 4: Is it very effective, well, to some degree, yes. I
Speaker 4: think most of us have had an experience where, for example,
Speaker 4: we've gone online search for something and the next thing
Speaker 4: we know, we're on social media and the thing that
Speaker 4: we were just looking for is being advertised to us,
Speaker 4: and there's a little bit disconcerting. On the other hand,
Speaker 4: Facebook is still convinced I have a dog, which I don't.
Speaker 4: It keeps advertising and maybe I'll watch dog videos, but
Speaker 4: it clearly doesn't really know who I am, what I want,
Speaker 4: So it still hits a mess to a large degree.
Speaker 2: When we talk about YouTube, for example, there have been
Speaker 2: some controversies about how it can take kids down.
Speaker 5: These types of rabbit holes.
Speaker 2: Hey, I read some comments from parents talking about it
Speaker 2: in The Guardian. One said he actively fights against the algorithm.
Speaker 2: He watches one video of a gel blaster, for instance,
Speaker 2: then gets fed about one hundred videos of Americans firing guns.
Speaker 2: Is there a fear that this kind of thing is
Speaker 2: happening to our kids.
Speaker 4: I think there's a legitimate concern there. There have been
Speaker 4: a number of studies that have shown the tendency of algorithms,
Speaker 4: and particularly YouTube algorithms, to take people further and further
Speaker 4: down what we might call an extremist pathway. There was
Speaker 4: a study by the University of minister As in Brazil.
Speaker 4: It was a big international study. They looked at hundreds
Speaker 4: of thousands of accounts and they found clear evidence of
Speaker 4: a shift of viewser accessing you know, what they might
Speaker 4: call the relatively light but right wing leaning kinds of content,
Speaker 4: So maybe Fox News and the Daily Mail. Before very
Speaker 4: long you're in the info wars with Alex Jones and
Speaker 4: then going into some even more near dangerous and toxic content.
Speaker 4: Now it doesn't happen all the time, but the tendency
Speaker 4: is there, and that's been measured. There was another study
Speaker 4: by Bellingcat that found similar things. They looked at a
Speaker 4: number of self identified alt right users and the way
Speaker 4: that they'd become red pilled, that they'd woken up to
Speaker 4: their right wing reality, and a number of them explicitly
Speaker 4: cited YouTube as a key motivator for their journey to
Speaker 4: the far right. Now, of course, if you're on the
Speaker 4: far right, you might think this is all well and good,
Speaker 4: but if you know it possibly works in the other
Speaker 4: direction if you're looking for extreme left or extreme religious
Speaker 4: types of content. But the key thing is that the
Speaker 4: algorithm is there. You know, its proprietary, it's owned by YouTube,
Speaker 4: it's there for YouTube's use, and it's there to keep
Speaker 4: our eyeballs on the screen because that's how they make
Speaker 4: their money. They want us online because that's how we
Speaker 4: get exposed to advertising and marketing opportunities. So the algorithm
Speaker 4: from a commercial point of view, isn't political. It's economic,
Speaker 4: and so it's there to try and keep our eyeballs
Speaker 4: focused on whatever we seem to be wanting to see
Speaker 4: more of. And does that have dangers? I would say
Speaker 4: in some cases yes.
Speaker 1: Remember the algorithm is a black box. No one knows
Speaker 1: what it's doing. All YouTube can do is change the
Speaker 1: feedback it's getting, change the signs that say this is
Speaker 1: good or this is bad. If YouTube wants a human
Speaker 1: to watch and categorize every video being uploaded as safe
Speaker 1: or unsafe in real time, they would need about one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand employees working shifts around the clock. Plus that
Speaker 1: would expose them to legal issues in most of the
Speaker 1: countries where YouTube has an office. If you let an
Speaker 1: algorithm do the filtering and then manually step in when
Speaker 1: you get a complaint, you illegally flying but if you
Speaker 1: approve everything with a human in the loop, you are
Speaker 1: a publisher and you're opening yourself up to some very
Speaker 1: expensive lawsuits.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about this now, hey, because worldwide there
Speaker 2: have been moves to limit Internet access to under sixteen
Speaker 2: year olds, things like social media in Australia, for example,
Speaker 2: is YouTube a social media side It's not exactly what
Speaker 2: one thinks first straight off the bat.
Speaker 4: It's a very curious environment because the key thing with
Speaker 4: social media is that they're primarily platforms user generated content.
Speaker 4: So third parties provide the content on these platforms, and
Speaker 4: that's very different from say a linear television broadcaster, where
Speaker 4: you know somebody makes the programs or licenses the programs,
Speaker 4: aggregates them and puts them out as a channel where
Speaker 4: there's always editorial oversight, or indeed from a subscription video
Speaker 4: on demand channel, where you know the library of content
Speaker 4: or the atalogue of content has been brought in and
Speaker 4: provided on the server and they know exactly what's there.
Speaker 4: With online social media platforms, you don't know what that
Speaker 4: content is. Now. YouTube's curious because it's not the sort
Speaker 4: of social media site where people just go to share
Speaker 4: the family photographs. You know, or exchange political views. You know.
Speaker 4: It's very very video oriented and it always has been
Speaker 4: so music videos are a big driver of content. Increasingly
Speaker 4: television channels are setting up online, so it's a bit
Speaker 4: of a one stop shop. You can find all kinds
Speaker 4: of content there. YouTube doesn't have complete oversight, you know,
Speaker 4: over the material that's been put out there. I mean, regrettably,
Speaker 4: it was quite a significant host of the christ Church
Speaker 4: terrorist video. Now even months after there were versions of
Speaker 4: that popping up on YouTube. Now it's algorithms do, generally speaking,
Speaker 4: pick that up and get rid of it. And there's
Speaker 4: other forms of content that get policed. But there's so
Speaker 4: so many people putting video material up on YouTube, it's
Speaker 4: impossible to police everything. And therefore there is this potential,
Speaker 4: you know, for children to access content that isn't appropriate
Speaker 4: for them. Now, are there ways to police that, well,
Speaker 4: I think there are, But does it require a total ban?
Speaker 4: I think that would be perhaps a step too far
Speaker 4: because there's also very useful educational content on YouTube, and
Speaker 4: some of that material, you know, if children really wanted
Speaker 4: to discover it, well, they're pretty smart and tech savvy,
Speaker 4: you know, they can probably find ways around it.
Speaker 2: What about YouTube kids. So I've got friends with children.
Speaker 2: They watch a lot of kind of sensory videos on
Speaker 2: YouTube kids. But those accounts, I understand is for kids
Speaker 2: aged up to thirteen, right, and that's in accordance with
Speaker 2: the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. But doesn't that skew
Speaker 2: towards a much younger audience that should we be looking at,
Speaker 2: say a YouTube teen's or something.
Speaker 4: I think that would be a great idea. Now, does
Speaker 4: it mean that you're you know, your fourteen year old
Speaker 4: reaccessing sixteen year old content? Well, very likely, But I
Speaker 4: think I think labeling is an underrated exercise in media
Speaker 4: regulation because we know from studies by the BSA and
Speaker 4: the Classification Office that people really do you those labels.
Speaker 4: So if something is labeled R eighteen, well, okay, we
Speaker 4: know that maybe sixteen, maybe even fourteen year olds will
Speaker 4: probably try and access it. But if you have a
Speaker 4: sense of responsibility, and most people do, you're not going
Speaker 4: to let a ten year old or a five year
Speaker 4: old access that kind of content. So if you have
Speaker 4: built in systems, you know, where where someone can only
Speaker 4: access the adult content if they have an account that
Speaker 4: signals they're an adult, well that will cut out a
Speaker 4: very very large range of potentially harmful exposures. It's not perfect.
Speaker 4: If you're a terrorist and you're trying to live stream
Speaker 4: your active terrorism, you're very unlikely to give our dance
Speaker 4: notice that you've got an R eighteen video coming up,
Speaker 4: or even an objectionable video coming up. So of course
Speaker 4: it's not perfect. But would we all rest a little
Speaker 4: more peacefully knowing that our children are more likely to
Speaker 4: be playing in a safe soundbox, you know, with those protections.
Speaker 4: I think yes, and it's doable.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I quite liked this comment from Australia's Federal Communications minister.
Speaker 2: Her name's Aniica Wells, and she described protecting children from
Speaker 2: internet harm as like trying to teach her kids how
Speaker 2: to swim in the open ocean with rips and sharks
Speaker 2: compared to a local pool. And she said, we can't
Speaker 2: control the ocean, but we can police the sharks. But Peter,
Speaker 2: can we police the sharks?
Speaker 4: Well? I think we can. I don't think we've tried
Speaker 4: hard enough to be perfectly honest. But if we take
Speaker 4: the christ Church call, for example, and give ct the
Speaker 4: Global Internet Forum for Encountering Terrorism, I mean they've put
Speaker 4: in some incredibly sophisticated software, you know, for picking up
Speaker 4: or on problematic content. It can't stop someone posting, you know,
Speaker 4: terrible material like the terrorist video in the first place,
Speaker 4: but it picks it up incredibly quickly now and through hashtagging,
Speaker 4: she's kind of a digital fingerprint on the way that
Speaker 4: content is represented on the screen. There's be a pixel,
Speaker 4: a series of data points that identify the problematic video,
Speaker 4: and that goes out to all kinds of social media
Speaker 4: and online operators and they all have the same code,
Speaker 4: and they very very rapidly now have protocols for getting
Speaker 4: rid of that content. So you know, there are things
Speaker 4: we can do, and I think there's other other options there.
Speaker 4: We could look at you closer identification of who's using
Speaker 4: these accounts. We could look at age verification. So there's
Speaker 4: a number of mechanisms that could be put in place.
Speaker 4: And I have to say that none of this is
Speaker 4: an affront of free speech, as some people on the
Speaker 4: far right seem to imagine. And I do have to
Speaker 4: question the motives of people that say that, such as
Speaker 4: the threat to freedom of speech, we can't regulate any
Speaker 4: media in any way. I think that's absolutely irresponsible, because
Speaker 4: there are many ways that we can regulate the media
Speaker 4: to protect the younger people in particular and to protect
Speaker 4: the wider community. And it doesn't mean that we don't
Speaker 4: get access to content. It just means that we're unable
Speaker 4: to make more airful and better informed decisions.
Speaker 5: That's it constantly telling us that they're really worried about
Speaker 5: the impact that social media is having on their children,
Speaker 5: and they say they're really struggling to manage access to
Speaker 5: social media.
Speaker 3: This bill is about protecting children from online harm, including bullying, addiction,
Speaker 3: and exposure to inappropriate content. By restricting social media access
Speaker 3: for under sixteen year olds, it puts the onus on
Speaker 3: social media companies to verify that someone is over the
Speaker 3: age of sixteen before they access social media platforms.
Speaker 5: This is about protecting our children. It's about making sure
Speaker 5: that social media companies playing their role in keeping all
Speaker 5: of our kids safe.
Speaker 2: Journalists, for example, we do stuff under the Broadcast Standards Authority.
Speaker 2: We've also got ethics and things like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: a so called journalist on YouTube just spouting off conspiracy theories,
Speaker 2: what do they have any regulations or anything at the
Speaker 2: moment or.
Speaker 4: Short answer is no, Whether they're whether or not they
Speaker 4: would counter as journalists, I think is the question. Now again,
Speaker 4: this is where I would have some sympathy for the
Speaker 4: argument for free speech. I mean, people are allowed to
Speaker 4: be mistaken. I think there's a case for looking very
Speaker 4: closely at platforms or channels that simply perpetuate disinformation and
Speaker 4: really they're they're just a troll farm pumping out malinformed
Speaker 4: material to a wide population. I think I think there's
Speaker 4: a very strong case for regulating those sources. But does
Speaker 4: that mean that we should all be looking over our
Speaker 4: shoulder because big brothers going to censor us? I don't
Speaker 4: think that would be the case. And so one way
Speaker 4: to deal with that would be to flag content. You know,
Speaker 4: if if a source is proven to be unreliable but
Speaker 4: it's providing something that looks like news, you put a
Speaker 4: label on saying, look, you know, experts consider this to
Speaker 4: be an unreliable news website.
Speaker 2: Facebook did for a minute, yeah that to Facebook did
Speaker 2: do that, and where that people were putting.
Speaker 4: Vaccine skeptic material up on the platform, and they said, oh, look,
Speaker 4: you know that this information is disputed, it's not seen
Speaker 4: as reliable. Here's a link to some reliable information. Now,
Speaker 4: that's not censorship. That's enabling the user to make more
Speaker 4: sensible choices about the sorts of content that they engage with.
Speaker 4: So again, that's not censorship. It's not saying you can't
Speaker 4: have access to this information. It's not saying that you
Speaker 4: can't have an opinion that differs from the mainstream. But
Speaker 4: it is saying that we can enable the audience to
Speaker 4: make more informed and more judicious decisions. And I think
Speaker 4: that's where they go back to the algorithms. I think
Speaker 4: that's where maybe we need to regulate the algorithms as well,
Speaker 4: to make sure that when we're looking for news and
Speaker 4: information that we find the reliable sources at the top
Speaker 4: of our search or the top of our news feed,
Speaker 4: that those sources are going to be the reliable sources
Speaker 4: and not not ones that are of more dubious provenance. Right.
Speaker 2: So, lastly, Peter, what should the New Zealand government do
Speaker 2: if they were to do something tomorrow. It kind of
Speaker 2: seems like at the moment they're sitting back and just
Speaker 2: kind of checking out what the rest of the world
Speaker 2: does and see what's working.
Speaker 4: I think that's often the default position. There's a there's
Speaker 4: a value in aligning whatever regulatory framework we you know,
Speaker 4: we adopt here with the regulatory frameworks overseas, and i'd
Speaker 4: be looking at Europe and the UK perhaps there. I mean,
Speaker 4: Australia has got gone quite a long way towards blocking
Speaker 4: social media for for for younger people. I don't think
Speaker 4: you can ban it outright. I think that's going to
Speaker 4: be quite difficult. But there are steps, as I say
Speaker 4: to to looking at ways of flagging content or introducing
Speaker 4: age verify and restricting the sorts of content available to
Speaker 4: people in those age categories. Now they're not perfect, but
Speaker 4: I think they would go a long way to protecting
Speaker 4: younger people, and I think we should be looking at
Speaker 4: those measures. I happen to think that the government made
Speaker 4: a very poor decision to abandon the Safer Online Services
Speaker 4: and Media Platforms proposals. They weren't fully formulated as a bill,
Speaker 4: but there were some very sensible ideas there, none of
Speaker 4: which included advancing censorship on free speech. They were all
Speaker 4: about trying to make the public more able to control
Speaker 4: the sorts of content that they're exposed to. So as
Speaker 4: a first step, I go back to that and have
Speaker 4: a look at what those proposals were because I thought
Speaker 4: there were some very sensible ideas there.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Peter, very welcome. That's it for
Speaker 2: this episode of the Front Page. You can read more
Speaker 2: about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzerld dot
Speaker 2: co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Jane
Speaker 2: Ye and Richard Martin, who is also our editor. I'm
Speaker 2: Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for
Speaker 2: another look behind the headlines.