This year has been a shocker for my family on Facebook. We have been attacked by a local lynch mob driven by nothing but jealousy.
You’d therefore think I’d sympathise with regulation. But Albo’s and Dutton’s social media ban is a damaging distraction that won’t work unless it is unacceptably draconian.
In my family’s case, it would do nothing to protect my children anyway. They were attacked by adults.
Peter Dutton will use a private Coalition meeting to calm MPs fearful that Labor’s teen social media ban is a Trojan Horse for government control of the internet, ahead of a sitting week in which the major parties plan to ram the legislation through parliament.
On Friday Coalition MPs were called to a Monday morning gathering in Canberra, party sources said, where Dutton and communications spokesman David Coleman planned to field questions about Labor’s proposed law to ban children under 16 from platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.
LNP MP Garth Hamilton said Labor had rushed the legislation and sent mixed signals about details such as which platforms would be included. The Wiggles successfully lobbied to allow YouTube to remain while Snapchat will be banned, though both apps now also have a TikTok-style feed of clips.
…On Sunday, Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young called advocates for the ban well-intentioned, but said the bill was rushed compared to the government’s halting approach to gambling reform.
So, we are getting carve-outs to protect the Wiggles empire, not kids.
When fake left Greens start baulking at censorship, you know a bill is a piece of crap.
The research unpinning the legislation is a joke.
The analysis includes sweeping claims that are at the very least contested. For example: “introducing a minimum age for access to social media is likely to have a positive impact on all young people under the minimum age, but particularly for girls and transgender youth”.
The document goes on to evaluate three policies: the status quo, banning children younger than 14 and then allowing them online with parental consent, or banning them until 16. This frames the discussion as a dichotomy: ban or no ban. (These limits are no fault of the author, as you don’t really get room to vamp in parliamentary impact policy analysis). But in the real world, we might ask: ban? No ban? No ban with a statutory duty of care? Or with just parental consent? The options are endless and the surface is barely scratched here.
When it comes to the proof supporting the idea of banning children under 16, the report becomes particularly thin. It mentions children’s fears of “FOMO” and parents feeling “unsupported to make evidence-based choices about when their children should be on social media”. (Perhaps policymakers’ anxiety over evidence-based decision-making should be included too?)
As usual, the entire thing is political, rushed through by Albo as the great distraction from crashing living standards and by Dutton to prevent it from becoming a great distraction from crashing living standards.
The public is incensed.
The snap inquiry into Labor’s bill to ban under-16s from social media has generated a huge interest from the public, receiving about 15,000 submissions in just over a day, Crikey understands.
The first and only hearing in the inquiry kicked off at 9am on Monday and was due to finish at midday. When the hearing was halfway done, at 11am, just 28 submissions had been uploaded on the committee website.
We can at least draw comfort from the death of Albo’s misinformation bill.
Laws that would have forced social media companies to police misinformation and outright lies on their platforms have been formally abandoned by the federal government.
The misinformation bill was flatly rejected by the Coalition, Greens and several senators on the crossbench, leaving it no pathway to be passed.
Social media needs regulation. But blaming the children for the evils of the parents is no solution.
Do it the other way around.
