Tama Leaver: Curtin University Internet Studies Professor says enforcement of Australia under 16 social media ban is up in the air

Questions over how Australia's ban on under 16's using social media will be enforced.

Social media sites will be slapped with fines, if they fail to take reasonable steps to follow the law — which kicks in at the end of the year.

But a Professor of Internet Studies says there is no instruction on how to check for age.

Curtin University's Tama Leaver told Heather du Plessis-Allan the easiest way would be for companies to request some kind of government-issued identification.

“We’ve added an amendment so that platforms aren’t allowed to ask for that because there were privacy concerns, so the exact technicality of how they’re going to do age verification is very much up in the air.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now over to Australia. It's finally law. Under sixteen year
olds are going to be banned from social media. This
is in Australia only. Obviously. The Federal Parliament passed the
bill into legislation last night and companies failing to comply
will potentially be fined up to fifty million dollars if
they have a year. This is the social media companies
to figure out how to implement this now. Tama lev
is a professor of Internet studies at Curtin University in Perth. Tama, Hello, Hello,

(00:25):
how are we actually going to verify ages?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
That's a really good question. One of the challenges with
this particular bill is that it says that platforms are
responsible for doing that. It doesn't tell platforms how they
are supposed to do that. We've got an age assurance
trial sometime in the middle of next year. But the
thing that you would imagine probably was the easiest way
to do that, which is asking for some sort of
government issued identification. We've added an amendment so that platforms

(00:52):
aren't allowed to ask for that because there were privacy concerns.
So we know that platforms are going to bear the
brunt of trying to do this, and that may be
a good thing, but the exact technicality of how they're
going to do age verification or age assurance is very
much up in the air.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
What is the relevance of this age assurance trial?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
So the age assurance trial, which was originally going to
happen first, was to test out all of those tools
that claim to be able to figure out your age
without you entering it yourself, so maybe facial recognition or
other biometrics, or looking at the history of how you
use a platform, or something else to sort of an
educated guess if you like, about your age. We know

(01:31):
that those tools have been fairly immature, that they've been
fairly high error rates, and that they've worked much better
on whitefaces than any other sort of face, so that
there are some real issues there that we've known about.
It would have been lovely to do that trial first
and figure out if those tools have improved or not,
But as it is, we've got a year to try
and get these things right.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Do you think that the social media do you think
this is going to work? Will they be able to
figure this out in a year?

Speaker 2 (01:58):
I honestly, I'm not quite sure. I think there will
be something put in place. I think there will be
a real effort. I mean, there are significant penalties forgetting
this wrong, but I also think there might be a
legal challenge from the platform saying you've asked us to
do something nobody's ever been able to do. Well, it's
not really our fault that we can't. So that there
are lots of questions still in the air, and a

(02:18):
year is a long time to figure this out. There's
also a federal election in the middle of that year,
so it'll depend on who's driving the ship as well.
When it gets to the point of actually having to
implement it.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
TAMA. Why doesn't the government provide the age assurance itself,
because I mean, there must be a way to issue
a token or something. It already has the details of
these kids, or can have the details of these kids
and can be trusted to keep it safe, because everybody's
government keeps our details safe, right with our driver's license
for our passport. And then just assure the social media
companies yes, TAMA is over eighteen or sixteen or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yes, So I mean I think Australia has a long
history of trying to bring in some sort of systematic
to national identity via scheme, and every time people have
absolutely freaked out and not wanted to do it, the
current government and then did. The last few governments have
had a pretty bad track record with looking after personal information.
They've been hacked through all sorts of different departments. So
I don't think that trust relationship, if you like, exists

(03:16):
with most citizens. So it's a tricky one. It's technically
quite hard to do any other way. But if people
don't want to share government issued ID, and of course
most kids under sixteen don't have government issued ID in
many respects, so there's a lot of additional hurdles there.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, I mean, wouldn't you though, if you I it
was put to you, wouldn't you trust the government with
your details rather than Facebook?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Oh look, that's a really good question. I'm pretty sure
that Facebook can see I've had an account for fourteen years,
so if they think I'm under sixteen, that's going to
be a bit of a worry.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, But I mean I was wondering why you were
so so in two minds about it? But did you
trust Zuckerberg to have your driver's license on file?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't trust Zuckerberg to have anything of mine on
a file. But I do think that other ways of
doing it are harder, and I really don't think that
Australians are very used to being cynical about the relationship
they have with their government, so I think trusting them
to do it is never going to be something because
of course we're not verifying kids' identities. We are verifying

(04:22):
everyone's identities. Adults have to prove they're not kids. It's
not just convincing seventeen year olds to do this, it
is convincing fifty five year olds.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Listen, tamer thanks for running us through to really appreciate it,
Tama Leaver, Professor of Internet Studies at Curtain University, and
personally to see how this plays out. If they do it,
and they do it well, then we'll have to do
it too.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
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