Australia’s social media ban and why it's not cut and dry
Australia’s proposed social media ban is deeply concerning and authoritarian. It's disturbing to see how much of the general public supports this measure.
Prominent organizations, including Amnesty International, the Australian Human Rights Commission, and Electronic Frontiers Australia, have voiced significant concerns about this legislation:
Amnesty International's Explanation of the Social Media Ban
Australian Human Rights Commission on the Proposed Social Media Ban for Under-16s
EFA's Critique of the Social Media Age Ban
Australia has a troubling history with internet legislation. Noteworthy examples include the Australian Internet Firewall under Stephen Conroy and Malcolm Turnbull's infamous statement, "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia," regarding encryption backdoors.
While I recognize the issues with social media, "don't feed the trolls," along with maintaining online anonymity and implementing parental controls ( no phones with unfettered internet access ), should work. This law indiscriminately punishes all Australians for the missteps of a few, potentially leading to increased identity theft through phone and email scams and causing older family who are not tech literate to lose connections with their families due to the complexities of government-issued tokens.
Adults will be the ones who are going to be most impacted by this legislation.
The scope of this law is extensive. The Online Safety website suggests that this is merely the beginning, with plans to cover the entire web, including games, adult content, and more. The consequences are profound: the erosion of true anonymity and increased risk to government whistle-blowers and journalistic sources.
Requiring individuals to provide their identity to a third party to access the internet, which many have used freely for decades, is alarming. It threatens to sanitize search results and revoke access to purchased games if users refuse additional identity verification measures. There are no grandfathered exceptions, highlighting the law's intent to de-anonymize the internet.
Although Australia lacks a constitutionally protected right to free speech, this law poses significant risks to whistleblowers and marginalized youth in remote communities. Instead of banning access and creating allure through prohibition, we should address the root causes of why younger people are drawn to such content.
Once entrenched in law, any opposition will be met with accusations of perversion or indifference to child safety, compounded by the spread of misinformation. We must critically assess and address these laws to protect our freedoms and privacy.
There wouldn't be speculation if they defined how they intend the law to work. Instead of a "don't worry about it we will work it out", give people something to say that's not so bad and I can live with it
Additional links are:
Social media ban: Porn age checks in play, gambling's status unclear, exec in charge says centralised age authentication 'possible', not ideal
and
Social media ban: How Australia will implement age-assessment technology PAYWALLED text to follow
Since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would pursue a world-leading social media ban for under-16s, one question has dogged his government: how will it work?
Tony Allen, who leads the company that will trial technologies for the Australian government, says there are three key options to assess users’ age that his company will be probing as it comes up with a toolkit for social media platforms.
Testing begins in the first half of next year on a sample group of about 1100 Australians, and a cultural adviser will ensure the specific needs of Australia’s Indigenous and immigrant communities are considered.
But no single tool would prevail, Allen said in an interview with this masthead. Nor will the government force social media companies to adopt any specific option, although Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has ruled out requiring people to upload proof of identity directly to social media platforms.
Rather, Allen’s company, the United Kingdom-based Age Check Certification Scheme, will give the government an assessment of how different tools will work in an Australian context. Social media platforms can then draw on that evidence to determine how they respond when the ban comes into play in 2026.
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“If you’re trying to prove someone is a senior citizen to get a bus pass, or whether someone’s old enough to buy alcohol, different options will be better,” Allen said.
It’s the same with social media companies, which have different risks and audiences.
“If you think about LinkedIn and Discord, as two social media sites, their profile, risk and what they do are entirely different. So their solutions will be different,” he said.
The first tool Allen and his team will test is age verification.
“Put simply, [this] is where you find somebody’s date of birth and calculate how old they are,” he said.
It can be done by supplying a digital ID, driver’s licence, passport, bank records, school records or health records.
To test how well it works, Allen’s team will use more than 4000 legitimate, fake and altered identity documents from various regions.
They will gauge whether software can sort valid documents from those that are fraudulent or have been tampered with, and deal with worn, damaged or poorly scanned documents. They will also do security testing to ensure users can’t circumvent the system with deep fake images.
The second option in the toolkit is age estimation: tools that analyse biological or behavioural features that change with age.
“Our faces get older, our voices get deeper, our hands change the way they operate,” Allen said. Analysing these features – detecting wrinkles, for example – can indicate how old someone is.
Age estimation tools will be tested on Australians of different ages, ethnicities and genders to reflect the population. The company will trial static and real-time photos and use different angles and facial expressions. Voice, hand geometry and typing speed analysis will also be explored.
The third option is age inference: assuming someone’s age based on other information, such as their purchase history, browser behaviour or online activity.
“[It could look at] whether you have a mortgage, whether you have a .gov email address – from that you can infer someone is an adult rather than a child,” Allen said.
The trial will use avatar accounts that mimic personas and stimulate different behaviours – for example, by browsing child, teenage or adult-friendly content – to see how reliable the tools are.
There would be privacy concerns with all the options, Allen said, and “that’s a key part of our testing”.
Tech platforms will have to navigate other issues, such as whether the tools can be circumvented by VPNs that mask an internet user’s address.
Allen said VPNs were not difficult to spot because their addresses were often being accessed by thousands of people at a time, compared to a home address with a handful of users.
“A tech provider can look at that and say, ‘we need to do extra steps if a person is coming through a VPN’,” he said.
“The onus comes back to the providers.”
But it won’t be his job to tell the tech giants what to do.
“There won’t be one option that’s brilliant and everything else is rubbish. There’s risk that’s created in whatever scenario, and you need to find the right tools to address that risk,” Allen said.
The legislation passed last week allows a 12-month implementation period before companies must take action. Allen’s company will report to the government at the end of June, and the Senate by the end of September.
”We’ll give our assessed toolkit to the government, and it’s up to the government to decide what they do with it,” he said.
An Australia based tech company can spot VPN users like this but I would have thought the real use of VPNs is going to be individuals in Australia making it look like they’re not in Australia when logging into social media sites which also aren’t based in Australia and therefore bypassing the age check entirely.
There is a follow on question of tourists visiting and not being able to upload photos of their trip. Social media will be flagged on local AU IP addresses even though they are of age, not citizens and not bound by these laws (or have a au gov id).
Social media has to stop it or be at risk of a 50 million dollar fine. This law is not well thought out.
This Media Watch segment that to helps explain why there has been a large campaign from traditional media to push this into the limelight.
Media Watch is a fantastic program of true journalists calling out dodgy practices in tv, online and print, even targeting their own network.
TL:DR META refused to pay for links to traditional news websites that users sent to each other. Then NEWSCORP ( FOX / Murdoch ) started this campaign.
I really just can't believe a change.org submission actually had a real world impact.
An Australian friend of mine explained to me a (hypothesized-but-plausible) further level of intent and meaning behind this:
If young people do not get to consume news via the internet anymore, the only thing left is physical newspapers.
Who controls those? … Murdoch.
So in banning social media, they effectively increase these publications and outlets’ political power/“propaganda potential” unless some more new physical, independent newspapers start cropping up. In the words of my friend, there’s currently “one” not controlled by Murdoch. Which I mean, I knew the situation was bad, just not aware it was that bad.
I was mostly in favor of the ban until that conversation.
Now, I see myself agreeing more with an idea like in this part. Or well, it’s a difficult thing, since I know without legislation the situation will legitimately most likely never change – after all, why would young people voluntarily leave a platform they’re addicted to? – but maybe a ban involving something like a per-day time limit, or exempting even more platforms with news-potential (perhaps just individual accounts and postings?!)…
Check out this Mediawatch segment (about 7 min) to explain it more. Paul Barry is tried and true journalist.