Donald Trump’s billionaire tech bros have set their sites on hurting Aussie kids again | David Penberthy
Forget his betrayal of Ukraine, weakness against Putin and trade war on America’s best friends, this one will hit Aussie mums and dads at home, writes David Penberthy.
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Forget for a moment about the sell-out of Ukraine and the insipidness of Washington before Vladimir Putin’s outrageous demands.
Forget too about the looming trade war between Washington and its allies, none more loyal than Australia, as the US declares undeserved economic war on its very best friends.
There is another potential casualty of Donald Trump’s new brand of turbocharged imperialism, whereby Washington now thinks it has the right to affect and even reverse domestic policies embraced by sovereign nations.
At risk is a law passed in Australia last year with huge support from ordinary mums and dads who are sick of seeing the damaging and even deadly effects of unfettered social media use on their children.
In November last year Australia became the first nation in the world to pass laws banning children under the age of 16 from having social media accounts.
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all deemed off limits to kids who are now denied the childhood we enjoyed in the golden analog era.
Running around playing sport, rather than running home from school to spend hours online.
Having face-to-face conversations on play dates, rather than sitting in silence with their heads down, all transfixed on their iPads or phones.
The kids of today live in an age where bullying no longer has a beginning and an end.
Back in my day if you were bullied at school you were at least safe when you got home. Bullying stopped when the school bell rang. It stopped during class time.
Now, the bullies follow you digitally, with kids suffering the added torment of having their abuse and humiliation celebrated in the form of trophy videos shared and liked online by other unthinking children.
Girls used to put on a new dress for the school social and hope to get a few nice remarks about how lovely they looked.
Now their appearance has become a competition, their insecurity and anxiety fuelled by a shortfall of likes or via derisory comments posted online.
In my day, pornography was almost impossible to access. Pornography was also mild. You felt like you’d won lotto if you could get your hands on something as sedate as a Playboy magazine.
Now it is impossible to avoid, and vastly more graphic, with boys who haven’t yet reached puberty accessing images which give them a completely warped introduction to the nature of female desire.
And then there’s the manner in which social media apps have been criminalised for the purpose of sextortion, with so many young men losing money and even their lives as they are preyed upon by offshore crime syndicates luring them into sending nude selfies.
Whatever the upside is from social media, the downside is immense and its impact on the young has been well documented.
It was for this reason Australia made the decision it did through our national Parliament last year, honouring an idea first championed by SA Premier Peter Malinauskas and his NSW counterpart Chris Minns, its legal framework devised by former High Court chief justice Robert French.
This was a great example of politicians acting in accordance with mainstream sentiment.
It put a stop to something over which parents feel powerless, difficult as it is to monitor every aspect of your child’s life online in an age when digital devices are ubiquitous.
None of this matters in the minds of Donald Trump’s biggest political backers on his march back to the White House – the so-called “Tech Bros” led by Twitter owner and spending-slasher Elon Musk and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, who owns both Facebook and Instagram.
What the bros bring to the table is a devil-may-care adherence to First Amendment rights with an unquenchable thirst for making a whole stack of money.
It’s an approach whereby a teenager in Australia can end his life after being tormented by extortionists, the response being, well, shit happens, let’s not go trammelling our freedoms due to a few mishaps along the way.
What sort of freedom is this though? For these blokes it’s ultimately only the freedom to make money.
Musk is worth $415bn and Zuckerberg $310bn.
Both cloak any attempt to curtail their lucrative operations as an assault on the rights of free speech. It might be a bunch of self-interested baloney but it’s received a more than sympathetic ear in returned President Trump, who is wise to the vast financial contribution made by big tech to the US economy, and prepared to let it conduct itself without restraint, especially with the added ego-stroking benefits of such fawning support for his demented administration.
That’s where Australia enters the picture, as we are the only country in the world so far that has legislated restraint.
The danger for the tech bros is that other countries whose parents are also sick of social media are looking at our laws and considering similar.
Paul Kelly masterfully documented the politics of all this in The Australian this week, explaining how Trump’s presidential memorandum of February 21 seeks by “imposing tariffs and taking such other responsive actions” to retaliate against a foreign government that “through its tax or regulatory structure” imposes “a fine, penalty, tax or other burden” that harms American companies.
Kelly explained how the age-limit ban, as well as the push by the Commonwealth to make social media companies pay for thieving news content, will both be caught under that directive.
“Have no doubt, when the Trump-Big Tech coalition threatens Australia, this will transcend a policy dispute; it will penetrate to principles that define our social and democratic values,” Kelly wrote.
It will be interesting to see how both sides of politics respond to this threat, especially as to their credit both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton delivered bipartisan support to the reforms.
It’s one thing for Trump to turn his own country into a policy freak show, quite another to demand that we do the same so that his tech-head mates can keep lining their already well-stuffed pockets.
Originally published as Donald Trump’s billionaire tech bros have set their sites on hurting Aussie kids again | David Penberthy
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