Speaker 1: Trevor Long is a technology guru from e FtM dot com.
Speaker 1: Morning Trevor, thank you for making yourself available at this
Speaker 1: hour of the morning.
Speaker 2: Pleasure.
Speaker 1: Actually, my associate, mister Sindon says that you're normally awake
Speaker 1: at this hour of the morning. Can that be true? Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, I'd like to get up at freish just forget
Speaker 3: a start on the day. You get more done at
Speaker 3: this hour of the morning than you do any other
Speaker 3: time of day.
Speaker 1: I see. Okay, Now, I know we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but there have been some developments. We have a law
Speaker 1: passed that says people under sixteen cannot excess social media.
Speaker 1: First of all, to your understanding, are we only talking
Speaker 1: social media sites or the internet?
Speaker 3: Generally we're only talking social media.
Speaker 2: But this is where it gets hilarious.
Speaker 3: So we have a law past It comes into effect
Speaker 3: at the end of this year, but it does not
Speaker 3: yet specify because it's a separate process to specify what
Speaker 3: is social media. So the government has not yet decided
Speaker 3: what is social media. So is YouTube part of social media? TikTok, Instagram,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So that's the first big you know, unknown
Speaker 3: because the big question really from me is YouTube has
Speaker 3: was originally excluded in statements by the government, but during
Speaker 3: the election campaign the Prime Minister was questioned on this
Speaker 3: and he said it would be reviewed and there's been
Speaker 3: no conversation since then.
Speaker 2: And the issue here is not the YouTube that we
Speaker 2: all watch.
Speaker 3: Because we go on a website and we look at
Speaker 3: YouTube and these you know, widescreen format videos, whether they're
Speaker 3: funny or silly or education or whatever, and people watch
Speaker 3: it on their TV. That's the YouTube we think of.
Speaker 3: The thirteen and fourteen year olds aren't watching that YouTube.
Speaker 3: They're on what's called YouTube th thoughts, which is essentially TikTok.
Speaker 3: It is what it is, what YouTube created to fight
Speaker 3: against the rise of TikTok? Why are we allowing that
Speaker 3: under these rules? And that's the first question we need answered.
Speaker 2: Is it included or not?
Speaker 3: And the second question is how on earth do we
Speaker 3: decide who's sixteen and who's not Because these kids don't
Speaker 3: have IDs. My kids don't have IDs. I have a
Speaker 3: thirteen year old and a fourteen year old. They don't
Speaker 3: have an ID. How are these How is TikTok? And
Speaker 3: that's the best example, because people love to hate it.
Speaker 3: How is TikTok meant to work out who's fourteen and
Speaker 3: who's fifteen and who's sixteen. So the government or a
Speaker 3: government body. The Age Assurance Trial released some information on
Speaker 3: Friday suggesting that they had done some testing. They had
Speaker 3: received submissions from the age assurance industry, and of course
Speaker 3: the age assurance industry has said, no, dramas, we can
Speaker 3: tell you who's fifteen and who's sixteen and who's eighteen.
Speaker 3: But Mike, the devil is in the details. These companies
Speaker 3: can do that with an error rate of about.
Speaker 2: A year and a half.
Speaker 1: Well that makes me laugh, Trevor, because can you imagine
Speaker 1: how outraged a seventeen year old will be if she's
Speaker 1: told that she can't look at something that she wants
Speaker 1: to on social media because the device thinks she's only fifteen.
Speaker 2: Says no. Here's the example I'll give you.
Speaker 3: When my kids turned thirteen, they were allowed to have
Speaker 3: social media because that was the age that social media
Speaker 3: was allowed by the social media companies. My kids literally
Speaker 3: on their birthday requested social media. Okay, So on their
Speaker 3: thirteenth birthday they got accounts.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you right now, it's actually really hard to.
Speaker 3: Do because the American time zone is a day later,
Speaker 3: and therefore, according to America, they're not thirteen yet. But anyway,
Speaker 3: that's a whole other issue on their sixteenth birthday. Post
Speaker 3: these regulations coming in, how is it possible that any technology,
Speaker 3: any technology is going to tell the difference between a
Speaker 3: child that is fifteen years and ten months old and
Speaker 3: a child that has just turned sixteen? Physically impossible. The
Speaker 3: only way to do that is for a parent to
Speaker 3: verify their idea and confirm that the child can have
Speaker 3: an account, and that, by law, is not required to
Speaker 3: be the way we prove people's age, because identity documents
Speaker 3: are not required under this legislation. So fast the whole
Speaker 3: thing I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the tests they ran in the recent past,
Speaker 1: my understanding were, as you say, I mean, they couldn't
Speaker 1: tell the difference between an eighteen year old and fifteen
Speaker 1: year old whatever. But when it comes to providing some
Speaker 1: kind of bona fide, I mean, how do you establish
Speaker 1: that the bona fide is bona fide?
Speaker 3: Well, we do have pretty good systems for verifying government IDs.
Speaker 3: I actually did it this morning. I was setting up
Speaker 3: a payment terminal for some testing and that required me
Speaker 3: to prove my ID for my company and all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Basically I put in my driver's license and it went
Speaker 3: away and verified it. There are good systems for verifying
Speaker 3: a government ID that is safe and secure, but because
Speaker 3: of the concerns of the wider public around sharing government
Speaker 3: identity documents, the legislation had to require that there were
Speaker 3: options other than So, yes, it's completely allowed to use
Speaker 3: government IDs, but it should not be the only way.
Speaker 3: It must be possible to verify using a method other
Speaker 3: than ID. And there's no way of proving that my
Speaker 3: fourteen year old is fourteen or fifteen. And if you've
Speaker 3: ever been to a kid's sporting match and you've looked
Speaker 3: at the kids on the court, going these are all
Speaker 3: under fifteens. That girl looks seventeen, this girl looks twelve.
Speaker 3: As a parent, I can't tell the age of my
Speaker 3: child's friends.
Speaker 1: Well, that's certainly the case. So what happens though, I mean,
Speaker 1: my youngest son is twenty one, so it's not an
Speaker 1: issue for me that all. But supposing I had a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old who's saying dad, dad, and I say, ah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: here's my license, and then I pretend that my fourteen
Speaker 1: year old is actually sixteen year old. How's anybody going
Speaker 1: to prove that's incorrect. They're not.
Speaker 3: And here's the great news, it is not under the legislation. Again,
Speaker 3: a parent cannot be prosecuted fined for having their kids
Speaker 3: on social media, so the parent cannot be held responsible.
Speaker 3: The parent essentially can allow it. It's up to the
Speaker 3: social media companies to not allow it. And there's some
Speaker 3: caveats there because it's actually not about them accessing these services,
Speaker 3: about having accounts on the services, which is a whole
Speaker 3: other discussion. But yeah, basically, there's no requirement for parents
Speaker 3: to get in trouble if their kids are on social media.
Speaker 3: And what I think will happen is just like, right now,
Speaker 3: if my seventeen year old at the time is now eighteen,
Speaker 3: to of the math, if my seventeen year old wanted
Speaker 3: to have a couple of beers at a party, then
Speaker 3: the nineteen year old or the eighteen year old will
Speaker 3: go and get the beers and supply them to everyone.
Speaker 2: H what trust me? Old?
Speaker 3: You know, seventeen eighteen year old Brian with his driver's
Speaker 3: license is going to sign up to accounts for kids
Speaker 3: and give them the logins and passwords.
Speaker 2: So what's what's going to happen. They're going to still
Speaker 2: be on social media.
Speaker 1: So the best the government can really offer is the
Speaker 1: opportunity for you to say to your fifteen year old
Speaker 1: it's against the law for you to go on social media.
Speaker 1: They can flout the law themselves if they want to.
Speaker 1: As you say, your fifteen year old's got to mate
Speaker 1: who pretends to be or maybe you fifteen year old's
Speaker 1: got to mate who's seventeen who will swear for him
Speaker 1: or her that they're of age. So there's so many
Speaker 1: ways to get around it. Really, the best, as I say,
Speaker 1: that the government can offer is I'll tell your child
Speaker 1: it's against the law. Is that really going to make
Speaker 1: a difference in the family situation.
Speaker 2: It's not going to make any difference.
Speaker 3: The worst thing that ever happened in this whole debate
Speaker 3: was the Prime Minister when he said we're going to
Speaker 3: do this, He said we're going to take the responsibility
Speaker 3: away from parents and put it on the social media companies,
Speaker 3: so that if old Jimmy creates an account and gives
Speaker 3: it to little Johnny, then the social media company can say,
Speaker 3: well we had an ID against that account. We did
Speaker 3: our thing. The parents are none the wiser and don't
Speaker 3: need to parent, apparently, according to the Prime Minister, because
Speaker 3: they have been resolved of all responsibility to parents. It's
Speaker 3: purely upon the social media companies and they're the ones
Speaker 3: that get fined if a child is discovered to have
Speaker 3: an account. And it's going to be you know, news
Speaker 3: dot com and the Telegraph and all these people that
Speaker 3: paraded for this legislation. They will go the complete opposite
Speaker 3: way in eighteen months from now and talk about all
Speaker 3: of the kids that are on there because of these loopholes.
Speaker 3: But they're not willing to talk about the loopholes today
Speaker 3: before the legislation comes in. It's hilarious to me and
Speaker 3: I sit by. Here's the other question. I've got a
Speaker 3: thirteen and fourteen year old. Are they excluded from social
Speaker 3: media as of December or because they've already got accounts,
Speaker 3: can they continue to use it? Good poetically, don't know
Speaker 3: what to tell my kids. I literally don't.
Speaker 1: Know that wonderful phrase is had grandfathered in. That's very interesting, Trevor,
Speaker 1: appreciate your time and comments. Thanks for coming on program. Okay, mate,
Speaker 1: Trevor Long, technology guru from EFTM dot com