Social media sites call for Australia to delay its ban on children younger than 16

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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An advocate for major social media platforms told an Australian Senate committee on Monday that laws banning children under 16 from sites should be delayed until at least next year rather than being rushed through Parliament. this week.

Sunita Bose, managing director of Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for Australia’s digital industry including X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, was answering questions at a day-long Senate committee hearing on the world-first legislation introduced in Parliament this week the past.

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Boss said Parliament should wait until a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies is completed in June.

“Parliament is being asked to pass the bill this week without knowing how it will work,” Bose said.

The legislation would impose fines of up to A$50 million ($33 million) on platforms for systemic failures in preventing young children from maintaining accounts.

It appears likely to be passed by Parliament by Thursday with support from the major parties.

It will come into effect a year after the bill becomes law, giving platforms time to come up with technological solutions that will also protect users’ privacy.

Booz received heated questions from several senators and objections to the accuracy of her answers.

Opposition Senator Ross Cadell questioned how his 10-year-old stepson managed to maintain accounts on Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube from the age of eight, despite the platforms setting a nominal age limit of 13.

“This is an area where the industry needs to improve,” Bose responded.

She said the proposed social media ban risks isolating some children and pushing them into “darker, less safe spaces online” than mainstream platforms.

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Boz said her concern about the proposed law was that “this could jeopardize the safety of young people,” prompting a hostile response from opposition Senator Sarah Henderson.

“That is an outrageous statement. You are trying to protect the big tech giants,” Henderson said.

Nonpartisan Senator Jackie Lambie asked why platforms don’t use their algorithms to prevent harmful material from being directed to children. The algorithms have been accused of keeping technology-addicted children connected to the platforms and flooding users with harmful material that encourages suicide and eating disorders.

“Your platforms have the potential to do this. The only thing stopping them is themselves and their greed,” Lambie said.

Bose said algorithms already exist to protect young people online with functions that include filtering nudity.

“We need to see continued investment in algorithms and ensure they do a better job of tackling harmful content,” Bose said.

In response to a question by opposition Senator Dave Sharma, Bose said she did not know how much advertising revenue the platforms she represented earned from Australian children.

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She said she was not aware of research by Harvard’s T. H. Chan School of Public Health that found X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat generated $11 billion from advertising from US users under 18 in 2022.

Sarah Vandenbroucke, a communications officer, told the committee that an evaluation of age assurance technologies that will be reported in June will evaluate not only their accuracy, but also their security and privacy settings.

Department Deputy Secretary James Chisholm said officials consulted widely before proposing the minimum age.

“We think it’s a good idea and it can be done,” Chisholm told the committee.

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