Tech giants face fines of up to $50 million for breaches of Australia’s online safety laws under legislation introduced to give rise to a world-first social media ban for under-16s.
Communications minister Michelle Rowland introduced the controversial Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill to Parliament on Thursday morning, having settled on 16 as the minimum age requirement earlier this month.
Elon Musk’s X, TikTok, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and Reddit are among the social media platforms that will be designated “at a minimum”, Ms Rowland said, requiring them to “take reasonable steps” to prevent access for age-restricted users.
Other platforms could find themselves designated “age-restricted social media platforms” – a new term under the Online Safety Act that casts a “wide net” to capture social media as services that enable “online interactions between two or more users”.
But the bill “allows for flexibility to reduce the scope or further target the definition through legislative rules”, allowing the government to “be responsive to changes and evolutions in the dynamic social media ecosystem”, Ms Rowland said.
Messenger services like Facebook Messenger Kids and Whatsapp, online games and “services that significantly function to support the health of users”, including YouTube, will, however, be carved out in the first instance through a rule making power.
“A key principle of the approach to applying an age limit of 16 to social media was the recognition that our laws should be set to protect young people, not isolate them,” Ms Rowland said.
“We are not saying that risks don’t exist on messenger apps or online gaming. While users can still be exposed to harmful content by other users, they do not face the same algorithmic curation of content and psychological manipulation to encourage near-endless engagement.”
Companies that fall under the definition would be required to “introduce systems and settings to ensure that underage users cannot create and hold a social media account”, despite the government having no clarity on the way forward.
Testing of age verification technologies, such as biometric age estimation, email verification processes, and device or operating-level interventions, began as recently as last week, with the government not expecting the results of the trial until mid-next year.
Mr Rowland said a “systemic failure to take action to limit circumventions” by under-16s could give rise to a breach, with “significant penalties” on the table.
The fines will also extend to breaches of “industry codes and industry standards”, bringing maximum penalties available to the eSafety Commissioner into line with other regulators, both in Australia and oversees.
“This addresses the currently low penalties in the Online Safety Act and reflects the systemic nature of the harms that could arise from breaches of the codes and standards,” Ms Rowland said.
Penalties of up to $782,500 for each day of non-compliance can currently be levied against a company for breaches of the Online Safety Act, which has just emerged from an almost year-long statutory review. The government is yet to release the findings.
The bill, which would come into effect 12 months after passage, has the broad support of the Coalition, with Peter Dutton reportedly writing to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to express his support earlier this month.
A short, sharp inquiry set up immediately after the bill was introduced will be expected to report by November 26. The community has even less time to provide a submission, with the window of opportunity closing in just one day.
But the Greens and independent senators like David Pocock are less convinced by the ban and are concerned with the government and the Coalition’s plan to push the bill through Parliament before the end of next week.
“I’m very concerned that this approach is not going to work unless we have a much broader ecosystem approach to how we are dealing with social media,” Pocock told ABC News Breakfast on Thursday.
Greens senators also raised concerns in a report earlier this week, describing the ban as a “knee-jerk reaction to a complex problem”, repeating comments from Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI) that children could be pushed to “even less regulated platforms”.
Ms Rowland on Thursday said the ban is the “right thing to do for the right reasons at the right time”, given the “wide acknowledgement that something must be done in the immediate term to help prevent young teens and children from being exposed”.
“We know establishing a minimum age for young people having social media accounts is not the only approach that needs to be taken, and we know that this measure will not be met with universal acceptance, but this is one step among many that a government should take in the protection and not the isolation of young people.”
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