Speaker 1: Kiota.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Australia's social
Speaker 2: media ban comes into effect this week when all under
Speaker 2: sixteens there will be restricted from major platforms. We're talking TikTok, snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, kick, Twitch,
Speaker 2: threads and x and more. The EU passed a similar
Speaker 2: resolution this month, and the UK has introduced age restrictions
Speaker 2: on certain content. But can you really outlaw part of
Speaker 2: the world Wide Web for a generation that has grown
Speaker 2: up online? And more importantly should we? Today on the
Speaker 2: front Page, University of Canterbury's senior Law professor, Doctor Cassandra
Speaker 2: Mudgway is with us to take us through what this
Speaker 2: means and whether New Zealand should follow suit. First off,
Speaker 2: Cassandra tell me about Australia's social media ban, how will
Speaker 2: it work? And I suppose the big question is will
Speaker 2: it work?
Speaker 1: So the law in Australia now requires platforms to take
Speaker 1: reasonable steps to ensure that their users are over the
Speaker 1: age of sixteen years. That's important. So it's not an
Speaker 1: absolute guarantee that under sixteens won't be using platforms. It's
Speaker 1: reasonable steps only, but that law will apply to social
Speaker 1: media services and platforms that host user content, so think Facebook, Instagram,
Speaker 1: x TikTok, Snapchat, and Reddit, and the streaming service Twitch
Speaker 1: is also included in that law. The law does not
Speaker 1: apply at least not for the moment, to messaging services,
Speaker 1: so think Facebook, messager and WhatsApp or some gaming services
Speaker 1: with those communications capabilities like roadblocks. If you have a child,
Speaker 1: you probably have heard of that before. So platforms are
Speaker 1: required to have at least one way or more than
Speaker 1: one way to check their user's age. So the most obvious,
Speaker 1: the most accurate way of doing that is age verification,
Speaker 1: which is uploading government ideas, but the law in Australia
Speaker 1: requires services to have at least one other way. So
Speaker 1: the one that's most talked about that you're going to
Speaker 1: hear a lot about is the facial age estimation tool.
Speaker 1: So that's when they take a photo of your face
Speaker 1: and an AI tool guess is how old you are.
Speaker 1: So the accuracy of those tools are questioned and critiqued,
Speaker 1: so not as accurate, but the most common measure for
Speaker 1: existing users, if you're online right now, will likely be passive,
Speaker 1: so platform will just guess your age based on how
Speaker 1: long you've been on the app and what content you
Speaker 1: engage with. The Other part of the law, of course,
Speaker 1: is we've got the Safety Commissioner that's Australia's online safety regulator,
Speaker 1: so they're going to be in charge of compliance there
Speaker 1: and they can find platforms millions of dollars so very large,
Speaker 1: significant monetary fines for non compliance if they don't take
Speaker 1: any steps.
Speaker 2: For example, so the ban stops under sixteens from making
Speaker 2: their own account, but it still lets them scroll through
Speaker 2: the likes of tech took and YouTube shorts and Instagram
Speaker 2: stories and things like that without making an account. Does
Speaker 2: this protect them from seeing harmful content?
Speaker 1: If they can still access seeing this content then no.
Speaker 1: I mean, because they've made that differentiation between the platforms
Speaker 1: ver seeing messages. It means that children won't be exposed
Speaker 1: to recommender systems, so systems that respond to their engagement
Speaker 1: and feeds, and so they won't be funneled down feedback
Speaker 1: works or pipe lines that we hear about in relation
Speaker 1: to harmful content, so more extreme content, soogynistic content or
Speaker 1: content that has like eating disorder type messaging, So it
Speaker 1: will protect them from that sort of stuff, but it
Speaker 1: won't protect them from other kinds of harm that is
Speaker 1: more typical through messaging services in particular, so cyberbullying, deep fakes,
Speaker 1: image based sexual abuse, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So when we think of teenagers, these guys aren't your
Speaker 2: typical teenagers. So like I, for example, got social media
Speaker 2: when I was late high school, early UNI. Right, these
Speaker 2: kids of digital natives, they've grown up on social media,
Speaker 2: they've grown up on the Internet, and presumably they know
Speaker 2: how to get around these safeguards. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: skepticism out there about this not actually working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're the wide widespread concern there. So teenagers could,
Speaker 1: for a example, use their appearance accounts, they could borrow IDs,
Speaker 1: they could use age spoofing tools. You can register on
Speaker 1: platforms that don't comply, they're not under the ban and
Speaker 1: the Australian government has been pretty upfront about this. They're
Speaker 1: aware of this, which is why the duty on platforms
Speaker 1: is to take reasonable steps. It can't guarantee that some
Speaker 1: under sixteens aren't using those platforms. So I think that
Speaker 1: we should expect a mix of non compliance, workaround behavior
Speaker 1: and platforms chasing those edge cases where we've got teams
Speaker 1: sort of circumventing, and the other realistic outcome we are
Speaker 1: likely to see is migration of youth to other smaller,
Speaker 1: more fringe platforms or apps which won't come under the
Speaker 1: band but are also probably less moderators, sort of riskier
Speaker 1: apps where we can't protect them or it's more difficult
Speaker 1: to protect them, so essentially it might push young people
Speaker 1: towards those less safe spaces. We actually saw this in
Speaker 1: the UK, although a very extreme example involving adult users,
Speaker 1: but the UK has similar age verification requirements for any
Speaker 1: websites that host pornographic content, and once that came in
Speaker 1: porn Hard, one of the big pornography websites, they lost
Speaker 1: a massive amount of traffic within a day. But then
Speaker 1: all of these more fringe, riskier pornography websites had a
Speaker 1: huge increase in traffic. So we can see it happening
Speaker 1: in real time.
Speaker 3: It's just the act of banning. Like I'm going to
Speaker 3: put Snapchat in the spotlight for this segment because that's
Speaker 3: mainly a messaging app. There is a scrolling feature on Snapchat,
Speaker 3: but it's very minuscule in like what people use it for,
Speaker 3: and it's the way we could move to WhatsApp, and
Speaker 3: we could move to waste messages, which many people still
Speaker 3: already do. But the reason why this band of Snapchat
Speaker 3: it's the way we've kind of grown up with communication.
Speaker 3: It's that sort of informal, casual way of a quick
Speaker 3: visual update with a photo or posting a story on
Speaker 3: your Snapchat. It's just the way that my generation of
Speaker 3: like adapt.
Speaker 2: If you're adapted to find new ways around social media,
Speaker 2: you could adapt to what'sapp right.
Speaker 3: There's definitely ways to adapt. But if there's not a
Speaker 3: problem right now, why change it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen that Australian teens are already flocking to platforms.
Speaker 2: And forgive me if I misinterpret this is because this
Speaker 2: my producer has written this down. She has teenage children,
Speaker 2: so she's obviously gone on the hunt for these they're
Speaker 2: called cover Star, Lemonade and Yop. I mean, these kids
Speaker 2: are going to go and there's the opportunity for other
Speaker 2: businesses like like away from Matter and away from the
Speaker 2: big leader Google, et cetera, to really start up these
Speaker 2: fringe kind of that.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Because there's going to be less safeguards. You're not going
Speaker 2: to see the CEO of Laminate at a at a
Speaker 2: governmental hearing in Washington, but you're going to see Mark
Speaker 2: Zuckerberg sit there and have to answer questions and stuff.
Speaker 1: Hey, yeah, absolutely, And that is the big concern that
Speaker 1: we have. We've got that chase into different parts of
Speaker 1: the Internet in a way that current regulations cannot reach
Speaker 1: because the regulations that Australia does have, and they have
Speaker 1: wider regulations around online safety often target large platforms or
Speaker 1: services that have millions of users, and they're less likely
Speaker 1: to target smaller and smaller apps because of those competing
Speaker 1: concerns around capitalism and the market and making sure that
Speaker 1: smaller sort of companies have room to grow, and they
Speaker 1: might not have the re sources in place. They just
Speaker 1: might not have the resources in place to ensure the
Speaker 1: moderation that you would need to keep young people safe
Speaker 1: a particular vulnerable group.
Speaker 2: In terms of how this has worked in the UK,
Speaker 2: obviously you've got the age verification there for certain websites.
Speaker 2: They haven't gone the full hog though with the social media,
Speaker 2: and then I think the EU has also said that
Speaker 2: it will also ban social media for under sixteens. Do
Speaker 2: you reckon what's in Australia and New Zealand, politicians are
Speaker 2: looking overseas and thinking, let's see who does it right,
Speaker 2: because obviously the days of the checking the im eighteen
Speaker 2: box are over. And you know I used to always
Speaker 2: and this is putting myself out there. I'm born in
Speaker 2: the nineties. I would always go nineteen eighty eight, so
Speaker 2: I'm a few years older. So those days are obviously gone.
Speaker 2: Do you reckon? We're just sitting back and seeing what
Speaker 2: actually works overseas and has there been anything in the
Speaker 2: UK that perhaps hasn't worked.
Speaker 1: So that's interesting because there's a lot going on all
Speaker 1: at once. So I think Australia was the first country
Speaker 1: to announce that they wanted to age gate social media
Speaker 1: at least lift that age gate up to sixteen, and
Speaker 1: other countries have looked at that, and our following suit
Speaker 1: in New Zealand we have a member's bill from a
Speaker 1: National MP pulled out of the ballot box that might
Speaker 1: be coming in front of Parliament before the election, which
Speaker 1: seeks to do the same thing following Australia's example. So
Speaker 1: Australia has really kicked off a kind of movement here.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about the EU is that they have
Speaker 1: voted for a minimum age sixteen sort of standard in
Speaker 1: a resolution, but they are still working out other things.
Speaker 1: So member states are still debating whether they allow for
Speaker 1: consent of parents, so parental consent around their thirteen to
Speaker 1: fifteen year olds using social media, so it's likely to
Speaker 1: look a little bit different. Thing about those countries as well.
Speaker 1: The big difference with the UK and the EU even
Speaker 1: and compared to Australia is that those regions have adopted
Speaker 1: sophisticated digital safety regulations. Both have taken a safety by
Speaker 1: design approach, creating sort of legal duties of care on
Speaker 1: those companies to undergo, for example, risk assessments across their
Speaker 1: services regarding online harm and actively working to mitigate those risks.
Speaker 1: So there's more architecture there that the ban or a
Speaker 1: ban would go on top of. It's not just a
Speaker 1: standalone ban. And even in Australia that is the same.
Speaker 1: Australia has an E Safety Commissioner for example, so that's
Speaker 1: the regulator that has enforcement powers. So if you have
Speaker 1: a deep fate that happens online, you want it removed.
Speaker 1: E safety can require those those companies to remove it.
Speaker 1: And if we compare that to US Zealand, we don't
Speaker 1: have these these structures in place, we don't have a
Speaker 1: regulator like that, so there's no standalone band happening in
Speaker 1: those other countries. So yes, we are sitting back and watching,
Speaker 1: but we are, by the looks of things, might be
Speaker 1: heading towards adopting a band without having adopted all of
Speaker 1: these other measures.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe we should, you know, learn how to walk
Speaker 2: before we run.
Speaker 1: Well, that's essentially exactly what I have been arguing for
Speaker 1: out of my research. It's very clear we should be
Speaker 1: building safer digital environments and thinking about, you know, what
Speaker 1: does a safer digital environment look like an art or
Speaker 1: in our context, and how do we use law and
Speaker 1: regulation to make that a reality before thinking about age bands,
Speaker 1: Because if you have a standalone age band without any
Speaker 1: of these other things, that risk that real risk that
Speaker 1: our kids will just end up in sort of these
Speaker 1: riskier spaces. It's even worse because we don't have that
Speaker 1: architecture in place to enforce wider safety standards.
Speaker 4: There is a very much undiscussed privilege with the idea
Speaker 4: of banning social media because for when you've got a
Speaker 4: country like ours with us mental health specifically system that's
Speaker 4: so broken, and even our education system not that great,
Speaker 4: and you take away free access and free tools, that's
Speaker 4: very detrimental.
Speaker 2: So it seems to me that putting these bands and
Speaker 2: the legal frameworks in place, that's a pretty time consuming,
Speaker 2: it's expensive, and it's a pretty serious measure. So why
Speaker 2: are we doing all of that? I mean, it must
Speaker 2: be harder to just regulate the big social media giants
Speaker 2: if we're going down the legal route.
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's one year, So I mean you're
Speaker 1: going to have to put funding aside for regulation, especially
Speaker 1: if you set up a regulator, You're going to have
Speaker 1: to set up like committees around what you're going to
Speaker 1: regulate and how, and then you've got compliance and all
Speaker 1: of these things. And I think it's money worth spending.
Speaker 1: And I mean the other side of that, of course,
Speaker 1: is and something that we should be watching Australia for
Speaker 1: first before we jump into the mix, is what other
Speaker 1: companies going to do. We have seen for example x
Speaker 1: formerly Twitter has been rather litigious in both Australia and
Speaker 1: the UK, and you know, taking the governments too caught
Speaker 1: or taking the regulators too caught against certain regulations, and
Speaker 1: so I would expect that to take place as well,
Speaker 1: So I think it's a waiting game in relation to those.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is concerning though, the rabbit holes that the
Speaker 2: these apps do take you down. I was just telling
Speaker 2: my colleagues the other day actually that I liked a
Speaker 2: couple of healthy eating videos on tick. This was TikTok,
Speaker 2: and a couple of days later and a few scrolls later,
Speaker 2: I was getting I don't know what the term is
Speaker 2: for it, but very clearly anorexia content. A lot of
Speaker 2: body checking, a lot of you know, showing off someone's
Speaker 2: physique from the side them looking very dangerously skinny, and
Speaker 2: them being in a hospital room. And the comments on
Speaker 2: those videos were actually really alarming. They was They said
Speaker 2: things like body goals and I You're so lucky and
Speaker 2: the things like that, and I kind of sat there.
Speaker 2: I took screenshots of it because I was so shocked
Speaker 2: that that just popped up on my feed after liking
Speaker 2: a couple of healthy eating videos. And you just sit
Speaker 2: there and think, what are these kids ate those commenters?
Speaker 2: How old are they and what are these kids getting
Speaker 2: served up? If they do like a few of these videos?
Speaker 2: What kind of routes do you go down? I mean
Speaker 2: it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and you get the sense of especially as
Speaker 1: a parent, you would get a sense of your hopelessness,
Speaker 1: like how do you control that? And the reality is
Speaker 1: is that we don't have in place, for example, transparency
Speaker 1: requirements on these companies to be like, well, how are
Speaker 1: your algorithms working? Are they safe for children? But also
Speaker 1: other vulnerable groups like women and rainbow communities and maldi
Speaker 1: And we don't actually understand how harmful content spreads because
Speaker 1: we're not allowed behind that curtain, and so requiring companies
Speaker 1: to actually reveal that would be a step in that
Speaker 1: direction rather than shielding. You know, if you put in
Speaker 1: a band, you shield like a group of people from that,
Speaker 1: but everyone else is engaging in it, and those ideas
Speaker 1: spread regardless. And so there must be something else that
Speaker 1: we can do to look behind the curtain and then
Speaker 1: see those how the algorithm works, why is it pushing
Speaker 1: this kind of content? And what kind of moderation can
Speaker 1: we put in place to make sure that we're protected
Speaker 1: from these kinds of harmful material.
Speaker 2: You do wonder as well, if there was a legal
Speaker 2: requirement for us to look behind the curtain and for
Speaker 2: these companies to be transparent about how their algorithms work,
Speaker 2: whether the sheer fear from their side of us actually
Speaker 2: discovering how they work changes things. Could changing the law?
Speaker 2: Could that even be a possibility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I mean we can regulate whatever services operate
Speaker 1: in New Zealand, so it is within our framework to
Speaker 1: do that. And when you've got legal risks in place
Speaker 1: and scrutiny, it changes companies' sort of prior priorities, right,
Speaker 1: and especially if you attach to that non compliance penalties
Speaker 1: that are significant enough that's going to bring them into
Speaker 1: like oh okay, well now I have to talk about this.
Speaker 1: And regulation can seem like a scary thing. We think
Speaker 1: regulation will stop innovation, maybe stop competition in a market,
Speaker 1: But what it can do is actually provide a lot
Speaker 1: of certainty for your users who want to engage in
Speaker 1: safer spaces. If it is safer in meta apps, people
Speaker 1: are going to go back to Facebook if it is safer.
Speaker 1: So there are incentives for companies to do that. But
Speaker 1: those incentives need to be in place, and they clearly
Speaker 1: need to be legal incentives because we've had twenty years
Speaker 1: of nothing and this is where we are. We're at
Speaker 1: a space where yeah, you scroll on those those apps
Speaker 1: and you come across harmful content really quickly, and we
Speaker 1: don't want that as a society. I think we've decided that,
Speaker 1: and so this is one way we can do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and perhaps I mean I saw the other
Speaker 2: day actually as well, I didn't know that the brand
Speaker 2: Lush isn't on social media and it's chosen to do that.
Speaker 2: So that if they have an ethics coordinator and they've
Speaker 2: chosen not to be on social media, what if more
Speaker 2: companies did that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there is definitely one way you can
Speaker 1: hold companies to accounts just by not giving them your engagement.
Speaker 1: And it is the attention economy. The more engagement they have,
Speaker 1: the more money they generate. And if moreover, if you
Speaker 1: choose not to advertise through the apps, that is also
Speaker 1: quite powerful because that's obviously where they get their money from.
Speaker 1: Connected to that, of course, is political sort of connection
Speaker 1: with social media. So you know, government around the world.
Speaker 1: If the governments around the world decide actually we're not
Speaker 1: going to use meta anymore, that would also be a
Speaker 1: huge change. And of course that's difficult because a lot
Speaker 1: of our information around politics, I mean, that is the
Speaker 1: issue around around culture society. Politics all comes through those
Speaker 1: social media apps, and I feel like even if you
Speaker 1: have companies saying no, I don't want to engage with you,
Speaker 1: there's still that foothold. So I think it comes back
Speaker 1: to political will around what you want your people to
Speaker 1: engage with.
Speaker 2: And it also comes full circle as well, saying well,
Speaker 2: why aren't kids outside playing with each other until the
Speaker 2: street lights come on? Kind of thing. But it's like,
Speaker 2: we do have to move on as a society from
Speaker 2: that thinking because these kids, they've grown up in the
Speaker 2: digital aid, They've grown up with a smartphone in their
Speaker 2: hand and the tablet and things like that. You can't
Speaker 2: just you know, what's been given can't be taken away
Speaker 2: as easily. So we probably have to move on from
Speaker 2: the grazed knees and the I don't know, catching tab
Speaker 2: and things I don't know what we did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, like it or not. Our social
Speaker 1: and cultural life happens online. It happens offline too, but
Speaker 1: it happens online for our young people, and in terms
Speaker 1: of their rights, they have a right to participate in public,
Speaker 1: cultural and social life, and that happens online, and it
Speaker 1: is particularly important for certain groups of young people so
Speaker 1: Rainbow Youth, for example, their sense of connection and community
Speaker 1: might be only online, it might not be found locally.
Speaker 1: So these are important threads in their life that I
Speaker 1: think that we do need to accept and work with.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Cassandra.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at nzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Jane Ye and Rich Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 2: in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.