Social media age limit to attract ‘fierce lobbying’ from big tech
Australia must brace for a lobbying charm offensive and potential legal challenges as it seeks to impose age limits on social media platforms.
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Australia must brace for a lobbying charm offensive and potential legal challenges as it seeks to impose age limits on social media platforms, with similar moves in the US stymied by tech giants.
Both Labor and the Coalition back raising the minimum age for platforms like Instagram and TikTok and requiring tech companies to properly enforce requirements, which is expected to trigger fierce backlash based on overseas examples.
In the US, internet trade association NetChoice, of which Meta, X, Snap Inc and TikTok are members, has sued states requiring social media companies spend money and time enforcing age limits.
The court challenges have successfully stymied four social media age verification laws in three different states.
Judges have temporarily stopped the enforcement of laws in Arkansas, Ohio and Utah, where governments have also come under intense lobbying pressure from social media companies.
Coalition communications spokesman David Coleman said the opposition’s pledge to raise the minimum age of social media to 16 had already sparked backlash from the tech platforms.
“Since Peter Dutton announced the Coalition’s social media policy back in June, we’ve seen fierce lobbying from the tech platforms,” he said.
“Some of them say there shouldn’t be any rules, others say there should be rules as long as they don’t apply to them.
“Meta even said social media doesn’t harm children.”
Mr Coleman said despite social media companies suing state governments in the US that had taken a “strong stand on verification,” the opposition would not be backing down.
“The tech giants can be in no doubt — if elected the Coalition will implement age limits, and the age will be 16,” he said.
New laws originally introduced in Utah would have required tech platforms to verify the ages of their users, and also “enable maximum default privacy settings” on children’s accounts, as well as disable features “that lead to excessive use” like endless scrolling and push notifications.
The state’s governor later signed off on an amended version due to come into effect on October 1, but last week a federal judge granted an injunction requested by NetChoice on the basis the requirements breach the US’ First Amendment regarding free speech.
Following Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comments that Australia would not give in to big tech “bullies” over the age verification issue, Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek on Monday said it was clear companies like X Corp did not care about the “harms” they caused.
“(X Corp chief executive) Elon Musk … is a greedy billionaire who wants even more money flowing into his pockets, and he doesn’t care how that happens and he doesn’t care about the harm that he’s doing,” she said.
“We’re making some very reasonable proposals to protect our kids.
“We know that early exposure to social media is harming them — since 2010, we’ve seen a doubling of the rate of young people going to hospital for mental health concerns.”
Ms Plibersek said big tech companies thought they were “above the law”,
“We know that it’s the right thing to do to protect our kids,” she said.
“We’re going to legislate as a government to do it.”
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