#235: Why Australia's Social Media Ban Could Be Dangerous

Massive thank you & welcome to 12 new wise apes joining the community since our last post!

In this email:

• Australia’s social media ban

• The specifics and technology

• What are the potential risks?

Social media ban for children

Dean Lewins/AP

Australia’s Parliament passed a law banning children under 16 from using social media.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the policy on November 7th

  • Social media companies (including Meta, X, etc.) will face up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) if they do not implement “reasonable steps” to keep children off their platforms

  • There will not be fines for users in violation

• The process seemed noticeably swift, with the bill being introduced and passed within a week

• However, it is supported by 77% of Australians, so public perception is positive

How will it work?

The specifics have not been laid out, but enforcing a policy like this can obviously have loopholes. I’m sure you’ve seen pop-ups in certain sites asking you to provide your birthdate. Any child could bypass this kind of restriction by giving a fake one. Then, how can social media platforms verify users’ age? Some options are:

• User-provided age verification: This would mean one would have to upload documents (i.e. driver’s license, passport, etc.) to verify their age

• Age Estimation: This would be achieved through facial scanning to identify a person’s age through facial features. But obviously, this is not always accurate

Potential pitfalls

If children are blocked because they can’t verify they’re over 16, then adults have to ipso facto verify that they are over 16. This means data will be collected nationwide once this law is put into effect. Of course, I’m sure the government and social media companies will work diligently to protect privacy. But there are definitely potential dangers.

Let’s say, for example, they go the route of facial recognition. Well, if that information is leaked, one’s face could be linked to personal information and be abused.

@tech360.tvMeta’s Ray-Ban glasses hacked for real-time facial recognition experiment, deceiving strangers. #raybanmeta #rayban #facialrecognition #ai #fyp

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Take the case of an investigation by Harvard students on Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. They were able to use facial recognition to find personal information about random people on the street.

Of course, the takeaway here is not that the Australian government has malicious intentions. But I do think there is possible risk about how the policy is enforced. The law will start in 12 months, so we’ll have to wait and see how things turn out.

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