Speaker 1: Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh,
Speaker 1: now it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily ODS. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 2: the second of September.
Speaker 1: I'm Harry Sekulic, I'm Emma Gillespie.
Speaker 2: In fewer than one hundred days, under sixteens in Australia
Speaker 2: will be banned from social media. Kids and teens won't
Speaker 2: be able to make a YouTube, TikTok or Facebook account.
Speaker 2: But a big question remains unanswered, how will it work.
Speaker 2: Age verification trials have been taking place over the past year,
Speaker 2: and the government has now released its findings. In today's
Speaker 2: deep Dive, we'll take you through some of the findings
Speaker 2: and look at what will happen next.
Speaker 1: But before we get stuck into it, here's a quick
Speaker 1: word from our sponsor, Harry. This social media band story
Speaker 1: has been following us. We've been following it. It's felt
Speaker 1: like a really long time in the making, from the
Speaker 1: first time we ever heard about a potential social media
Speaker 1: ban to the legislation passing. The ban itself is not
Speaker 1: yet in place, but you've got a really interesting update
Speaker 1: for us today on the age verification stuff that's been
Speaker 1: kind of at the center of the questions around whether
Speaker 1: or not this is going to work. But before we
Speaker 1: talk about that, let's just rewind. Can you give us
Speaker 1: a quick timeline on the big developments of late.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this social media ban is one of those stories
Speaker 2: where in the world of journalism you say that the
Speaker 2: lead always updates, so the new headline comes through every
Speaker 2: so often. You get a new top line with every
Speaker 2: development in this story. And I guess, going back to
Speaker 2: the very beginning's very origins, there was this really big
Speaker 2: campaign to ban social media for under sixteen's, which was
Speaker 2: mostly led by concerned parents who said that their kids
Speaker 2: were being ex to some violent and sexually explicit content,
Speaker 2: that social media was being used for bullying, that there
Speaker 2: were just some harms online that they wanted to see
Speaker 2: more protections against. And in November last year, the government
Speaker 2: responded to some of these calls and banned social media
Speaker 2: for under sixteen's, And initially there was an exemption for YouTube.
Speaker 2: That exemption's now been overturned and that's subject to a
Speaker 2: legal challenge, which we could go into very separately in
Speaker 2: its own podcast. And the ban itself is scheduled to
Speaker 2: take place on the tenth of December later this year.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that YouTube exemption that was reversed. We actually
Speaker 1: did chat about that on the podcast. When that happened.
Speaker 1: I think it was the end of June or the
Speaker 1: start of July off the top of my head, but
Speaker 1: will poppling to that in the show notes if you
Speaker 1: want to get up to speed on all of that
Speaker 1: debarcle and what unfolded there. But for now, Harry, we
Speaker 1: know this ban is coming into effect regardless of how
Speaker 1: the social media platforms feel about it. But there has
Speaker 1: been a lot of confusion about the practicalities of this band.
Speaker 1: It feels like there's been a collective understanding or agreement
Speaker 1: that social media is bad for kids' mental health and
Speaker 1: we need to do more to protect kids online. But
Speaker 1: how's it going to work? Who will be responsible for
Speaker 1: enforcing this?
Speaker 2: When I first heard that there was going to be
Speaker 2: a band for under sixteens, I was thinking that kids
Speaker 2: were going to be slugged with a fine potentially for
Speaker 2: creating an account when they're not meant to. But obviously
Speaker 2: that's not how this is going to work, and the
Speaker 2: government was pretty clear from the outset that it would
Speaker 2: be on the social media companies. They would bear the
Speaker 2: responsibility to enforce the ban. But on a practical level,
Speaker 2: there is probably a few aspects to how the band
Speaker 2: will work. So there'll be the deterrent effect. So parents
Speaker 2: will be able to say to their kids, it's actually
Speaker 2: illegal for you to have a social media account, and
Speaker 2: that might have an effect of kids just not downloading
Speaker 2: the app or whatever it might be. They just might
Speaker 2: be dissuaded to do so. But obviously it goes beyond that,
Speaker 2: and as I said, the owners will fall on the
Speaker 2: social media companies the platforms themselves to enforce a ban,
Speaker 2: or they would risk getting a fine, which is to
Speaker 2: the tune of about fifty million dollars. So, for example,
Speaker 2: if it was found that Meta was not taking enough
Speaker 2: reasonable steps so that's the language in the legislation, reasonable
Speaker 2: steps to prevent under sixteens from making an account on
Speaker 2: their platform, they could be slugged with a fifty million
Speaker 2: dollar fine. So the responsibility lies with them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the responsibilities on the platforms, not children or parents.
Speaker 1: If we've got social media companies then regulating and enforcing this,
Speaker 1: how will they and I know this is a million
Speaker 1: dollar question, how will they verify the age of their users?
Speaker 2: Well, Australia is a first country in the world to
Speaker 2: have an age specific ban for social media. So this
Speaker 2: is kind of a novel space. This is very much
Speaker 2: new territory. And I think it's helpful to think of
Speaker 2: a nightclub. When you go to a club, you need
Speaker 2: to show proof that you are at least eighteen years old,
Speaker 2: and I think that there are some steps being taken
Speaker 2: to bring in a digital version of that for sixteen
Speaker 2: year olds on social media.
Speaker 1: Well, Harry, it's interesting you say that, because it's one
Speaker 1: thing to be at a licensed venue in person and
Speaker 1: be able to physically present your ID, to have a
Speaker 1: bouncer or security person kind of check your ID, look
Speaker 1: you up and down, decide yep, that's you. You are
Speaker 1: free to pass. But in the digital world, in the
Speaker 1: online environment, it's just a whole different story.
Speaker 2: And that's where we get into this space of talking
Speaker 2: about age assurance technology, which is basically verifying that you
Speaker 2: are at least sixteen years old and able to use
Speaker 2: social media. And so since the government announced its ban,
Speaker 2: it said that it was going to trial so of
Speaker 2: this technology, that it was going to get an independent
Speaker 2: review into some of the tech that's available out there.
Speaker 2: And what we have this week is the findings from
Speaker 2: that review into existing technologies that are available. Was conducted
Speaker 2: by British firm. It was independent of the government, and
Speaker 2: it looked at forty eight different companies and the way
Speaker 2: in which they detect age assurance and how they use
Speaker 2: this technology.
Speaker 1: Okay, so a pretty big pool I suppose of companies
Speaker 1: doing the age verification staff or building this tech. But
Speaker 1: I am really curious to know what this report found.
Speaker 1: What were the types of tech that they looked into,
Speaker 1: how did they work? Did they work?
Speaker 2: So there were broadly three different categories of age assurance tech.
Speaker 2: So the first is called verification, and this is directly
Speaker 2: proving how old you are through official identity documents. So
Speaker 2: think of birth certificates, passports, those things that we already
Speaker 2: use day to day in our lives.
Speaker 1: Thinking of if you are applying for a new rental
Speaker 1: and you need one hundred thousand points of IDs, that's right,
Speaker 1: You've got to find every little document that proves who
Speaker 1: you really are to get past the first hurdle on
Speaker 1: your application.
Speaker 2: And there are some platforms that already require you to
Speaker 2: pose next to your passport photo and that way they
Speaker 2: can determine whether your fatal fitches match up to the
Speaker 2: passport itself. Okay, but also in Australia, the minimum age
Speaker 2: to get a learner's license to drive is sixteen, so
Speaker 2: that's also one way of verifying whether you are of
Speaker 2: the social media ban age if you've cleared that threshold.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of under sixteen year olds wouldn't have
Speaker 1: on hand a lot of formal identification. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if school library cards are going to pass the test.
Speaker 2: Well, that actually taps into some of the other areas
Speaker 2: where you can actually go through age assurance. If you've
Speaker 2: only got a school card, then some of this tech
Speaker 2: might actually think that you are of school age, maybe
Speaker 2: thirteen or fourteen years old as well, So that's one
Speaker 2: way of rooting it out. The second main age dessurance
Speaker 2: tech is called estimation, and that's where we're getting into
Speaker 2: using things like face ID to prove that you're at
Speaker 2: least sixteen years old. So this is scanning technology that
Speaker 2: determines whether, based on your biometric analysis, whether you are
Speaker 2: at least sixteen. And the final area is called inference
Speaker 2: and this is a little bit more tricky. This is
Speaker 2: technology that uses your metadata or looks at your online
Speaker 2: digital footprint to get a sense of how old you are.
Speaker 2: This is basically taking a big overall look at how
Speaker 2: you've been conducting yourself online and whether you fall within
Speaker 2: a likely age range. So it might just be your
Speaker 2: email domain, if you have like a work email address,
Speaker 2: that would assume that you are a little bit older.
Speaker 2: If you're on the electoral roll, you have to be
Speaker 2: at least eighteen to vote, so they will cross reference
Speaker 2: your details against that. Yeah, and there's also questions of
Speaker 2: whether they can get data from school enrollments to determine
Speaker 2: whether someone's in your ten or elevens, you know over sixteen.
Speaker 1: So official channels because in my head, I'm thinking, if
Speaker 1: you've got someone whose browser history contains like a lot
Speaker 1: of homewares and couch options versus someone whose browser history
Speaker 1: is streaming a lot of scivity toilet, we're probably able
Speaker 1: to make a detection on their age from that.
Speaker 2: It would be a really humbling experience with me being
Speaker 2: in my late twenties was confused for being thirteen years
Speaker 2: old on my browser You history.
Speaker 1: That inference side is really interesting, But you mentioned estimation,
Speaker 1: and I know that this is something that had come
Speaker 1: up during the trial about you know, what is the
Speaker 1: difference between a fifteen year old's face and a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old's face. Are these kind of different categories all
Speaker 1: about working together with each other to form a more
Speaker 1: thorough picture of age verification or will platforms kind of
Speaker 1: pick and choose one.
Speaker 2: Each Well, it's all part of what is being thrashed
Speaker 2: out at the moment, and this goes to what the
Speaker 2: legislation requires, which is the reasonable step. So they might
Speaker 2: go to these third party platforms which verify or estimate
Speaker 2: someone's age as a way of blocking anyone who's under
Speaker 2: sixteen from making an account. But also some of these
Speaker 2: platforms already use this type of verification. Meta already uses it,
Speaker 2: so if they're harnessing it to stop people under sixteen
Speaker 2: from getting into that platforms, that might be considered a
Speaker 2: reasonable step. It depends what the E Safety Commissioner determines
Speaker 2: before the December deadline.
Speaker 1: So, Harry, there's a big recurring question here around privacy
Speaker 1: whenever we think about the social media platforms. Privacy is
Speaker 1: obviously something that matters to users, but it's especially delicate
Speaker 1: here because we're talking about under eighteen year olds and children.
Speaker 1: Did the report say anything about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looked into some of the pretty genuine concerns
Speaker 2: about privacy breaches that could occur, especially when we're thinking
Speaker 2: about the inference technology. So that's using the online footprint
Speaker 2: to sort of build an estimation of someone's age. And
Speaker 2: the report actually warned that some continuous behavioral monitoring online
Speaker 2: could lead to overstepping an ethical mark. So it said
Speaker 2: that there needed to be some ground rules and regulation
Speaker 2: to make sure that if the inference technology was to
Speaker 2: be used, that it is safe and that it doesn't
Speaker 2: lead to this ongoing effect.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The other main issue that was brought up in the
Speaker 2: report was accuracy. So what if the technology accidentally starts
Speaker 2: locking people out who are over sixteen and actually able
Speaker 2: to use social media under the law.
Speaker 1: Or similarly approves people who are under sixteen because it
Speaker 1: might think they look eighteen.
Speaker 2: So the trials found that some of the tech could
Speaker 2: mismatch someone's age and what it called a buffer zone,
Speaker 2: and that's about two to three years. So that means
Speaker 2: that someone who's seventeen might be confused for a fourteen
Speaker 2: year old or vice versa.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this report is acknowledging some of the shortcomings
Speaker 1: of this tech, and it's saying that there is a
Speaker 1: bit of a buffer zone. That feels kind of difficult
Speaker 1: because if it's a buffer zone of two to three years,
Speaker 1: you know, the experts are telling us that that's a
Speaker 1: critical age, those two to three years between you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen to eighteen. So I'm sure there'll be people watching
Speaker 1: that one closely.
Speaker 2: And the language and the report says that based on
Speaker 2: its trials, the way in which the estimations have occurred
Speaker 2: are within what they call the acceptable range. Okay, so
Speaker 2: that means that there aren't enough inaccurate estimations of someone's
Speaker 2: age to cause too much alarm based on the report's findings,
Speaker 2: but it is still you know, once you roll this
Speaker 2: out on mass to every teenager and child in Australia,
Speaker 2: like that does become a bit more of a pressing
Speaker 2: issue lasting I just note on accuracy. There was this
Speaker 2: really interesting note in the report as well about some
Speaker 2: issues with non Caucasian user is, including that First Nations
Speaker 2: peoples are underrepresented when training this data, so there could
Speaker 2: actually be an inbuilt bias to the system, which is
Speaker 2: something that we've heard about with face ID scanning technology
Speaker 2: before as well, and so the report said that there
Speaker 2: was a bit of awareness among the age assurance companies
Speaker 2: as well that this is a shortcoming and that this
Speaker 2: is something that they need to look further into as well.
Speaker 1: Fascinating so having more diversity across the trials to understand
Speaker 1: the data better on a more diverse range of users.
Speaker 1: We are talking, though, Harry, about a generation that's grown
Speaker 1: up online, right, We're also talking about teenagers. When you
Speaker 1: consider those two things together, you can't help but wonder
Speaker 1: is this generation that will find its way around age
Speaker 1: verification technology. Did the research consider that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the standout thing to me was the use
Speaker 2: of virtual private networks which are also known as VPNs
Speaker 2: to dodge the rules. And the reason it sort of
Speaker 2: picked up my interest is because recently in the UK
Speaker 2: there was a ban on pornography websites for under eighteen's
Speaker 2: and so they rolled out this age deshurance technology and
Speaker 2: all of a sudden there was just an uptick in
Speaker 2: the number of people downloading VPNs.
Speaker 1: And so there's a learning there for Australia exactly.
Speaker 2: So the report basically recommended to get around the issue
Speaker 2: of VPNs, which basically makes you appear as though you're
Speaker 2: in another country where the rules don't apply, and that's
Speaker 2: where you change what's known as your IP address. But
Speaker 2: there's geolocation technology that can detect an inconsistency. So if
Speaker 2: your IP address and your regional patterns are not lined up,
Speaker 2: then this type of technology could pick up on that, okay,
Speaker 2: And it's already been used in some context as well,
Speaker 2: so it.
Speaker 1: Is possible to identify if someone changes their VPN in
Speaker 1: Australia but has an Australian IP address. I think that
Speaker 1: that's really interesting and will probably be some relief for
Speaker 1: policymakers and parents alike to know that that exists, because
Speaker 1: if a workaround exists, we can expect teenagers to find it.
Speaker 2: That's right. Overall, the government says that it's quite reassured
Speaker 2: by the findings that it's workable, it's scalable, and there
Speaker 2: is going to be a bit of a trial and
Speaker 2: error when rolling out the technology, but it's acknowledged there's
Speaker 2: not really a one size fits all approach that is
Speaker 2: appropriate when considering getting kids off social media. But the
Speaker 2: report does give a bit of a rundown of what
Speaker 2: we can expect from the tenth of December. You might
Speaker 2: need to show your passport, you might need to scan
Speaker 2: your face to see if this technology picks up that
Speaker 2: you're over sixteen, or there might be an app that
Speaker 2: scans your search history, your online footprint to see how
Speaker 2: old it thinks you are. And the fact that they're
Speaker 2: still not fully sure how the technology is going to
Speaker 2: work has been picked up this week by the opposition.
Speaker 2: So the Shadow Communications Minister, Melissa Macintosh said that the
Speaker 2: report has come ten seconds to midnight, adding that the
Speaker 2: report is not the final step by any means. The
Speaker 2: Safety Commissioner now needs to have a look at the
Speaker 2: findings and then advise the social media companies on what
Speaker 2: will form the best practice for them, and all the
Speaker 2: while the bean is just under one hundred days away.
Speaker 2: So TikTok punintended.
Speaker 1: Sure was Thank you so much, Harry. It's so interesting
Speaker 1: because I think, you know, we hear about this ban
Speaker 1: and it might feel far away for some of us,
Speaker 1: you know, for those of us who are shockingly over sixteen.
Speaker 1: That's my secret. I'll never tell. But you know, anyone
Speaker 1: who has a log in across these platforms is hypothetically
Speaker 1: going to be affected. Right, we will, I imagine on the
Speaker 1: tenth of December, all have to verify in some way
Speaker 1: at our place on these apps.
Speaker 2: Unless we've been on there for as long as I have,
Speaker 2: then I hope they just know that I'm well and truly.
Speaker 1: Is not maths sing. This guy's over sixteen. Harry, thank
Speaker 1: you as always for that breakdown. We really appreciate your guidance.
Speaker 2: Thanks Sam, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And thank you for listening to today's episode. We'll be
Speaker 1: back a little later on with your evening news headlines,
Speaker 1: but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 2: My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Adunda
Speaker 2: Bungelung Calcuttin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 2: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 2: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 2: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.