The Australian House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill that would ban children younger than 16 from social media, leaving it to the Australian Senate to finalize the world-first law.
The major parties backed the bill that would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to A$50 million (US$33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children from holding accounts.
The legislation passed 102 to 13.
Photo: AFP
If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced.
Australian Representative Dan Tehan told Parliament that the government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections.
Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents, including passports or driver’s licenses.
The platforms also could not demand digital identification through a government system.
“Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament.
Australian Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland said that the Senate was to debate the bill later yesterday.
The major parties’ support all but guarantees the legislation will pass in the Senate, where no party holds a majority of seats.
Lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during debate on Tuesday and yesterday.
Criticisms include that the legislation had been rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, would not work, would create privacy risks for users of all ages and would take away parents’ authority to decide what is best for their children.
Critics also argue that the ban would isolate children, deprive them of positive aspects of social media, drive children to the “dark Web,” make children too young for social media reluctant to report harms they encountered and take away incentives for platforms to make online spaces safer.
Australian Representative Zoe Daniel said that the legislation would “make zero difference to the harms that are inherent to social media.”
“The true object of this legislation is not to make social media safe by design, but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it,” Daniel told Parliament.
“There is a reason why the government parades this legislation as world-leading, that’s because no other country wants to do it,” he added.
The platforms had asked for the vote on legislation to be delayed until at least June next year, when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies made its report on how the ban could been enforced.
Melbourne resident Wayne Holdsworth, whose 17-year-old son Mac took his own life last year after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, described the bill as “absolutely essential for the safety of our children.”
“It’s not the only thing that we need to do to protect them because education is the key, but to provide some immediate support for our children and parents to be able to manage this, it’s a great step,” the 65-year-old online safety campaigner told reporters on Tuesday.
“And in my opinion, it’s the greatest time in our country’s history,” he added, referring to the pending legal reform.
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