As expected, Australia’s communications minister Michelle Rowland has now introduced a world-first law into Parliament today that would ban children under 16 from social media, saying online safety was one of parents’ toughest challenges. She said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram were among the platforms that would face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts.
The bill has wide political support. After it becomes law, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restriction. But this bill is being rushed through with embarrassing haste, and the LNP appear to be supporting it in the main.
This created quite a stir among the cross benches In the Senate. You have just a 24 hour window to make a submission with the Senate trying to examine the bill in just 5 days.
So, this is another watershed moment in democratic freedom in Australia and the Uniparty appears to be running their own agenda, not ordinary Australians.
True these are steps which need to be taken to rein in the power of social medial platforms, and to ensure children have enough capability to navigate the digital age we are all part of. But a simplistic age related verification approach, which is impossible to implement well, and can we circumvented is not the best approach. Ramming this through now is more about political advantage than doing what’s right for Australia. The age Control Sledgehammer won’t Crack the Online Safety Nut, but it does lay another brick in the wall of digital control.
