Severe penalties for social media
Adopted on Thursday by Australian Parliament the Act assumes that technological giants must take “reasonable steps” to prevent underage users access to social networking sites. They face penalties for breaking this provision fine in the amount of nearly 50 million Australian dollars ($32 million).
Snapchat, TikTok and others
The bill passed in Canberra today is the toughest response yet to the problem at hand access by minors to content that is not adapted to their cognitive abilities, or peer cyberbullying. Other countries stopped at the stage of issuing warnings to the owners of social media platforms, but did not hold these companies responsible for any violations of the introduced restrictions. The new rules are expected to cover Snapchat, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and Xbut this list may expand.
Australia is leading the way
Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanesetold lawmakers that “every serious government” struggles with the influence of social media on young peopleand the leaders of other countries he spoke to praised the initiative Australia on this matter. “We know that social media they can be a weapon for bullies, a platform for peer pressurean engine of anxiety, a tool for fraudsters. And worst of all, a tool for online predators” – he told parliament on Monday, according to a CNN article.
Too young for Snapchat and TikTok
Referring to age restrictionAlbanese stated that youthwho are over 16 years old, are better equipped to distinguish false information from true information. They also have more tools to deal with situations when their security will be threatened in any way.
Australia has set a disputed border
The bill was supported by a majority of members of Australia’s main opposition party, the Liberal Party, and its senator Maria Kovacic described it as a “watershed moment for our country”. Just before Thursday’s vote, she also added that parliamentarians had “drawn the line” big technologywhich “can no longer remain unchecked in Australia”.
The government’s hasty actions were met with fierce opposition from smaller and independent parties. Opposition she argued that the applications for Senate investigative committee on the bill were open for just 24 hours before Monday’s three-hour hearing. The inquiry report was published on Tuesday, and the bill passed the lower house on Wednesday before going to the Australian Senate on Thursday.
In its report, the committee stated that over 100 proposals for the bill had been submitted and that the bill itself “was not given sufficient time to conduct a thorough investigation and prepare a report.” However, the Commission recommended adoption of the act with certain changesamong others banning the use of government documents such as passports to verify users’ age.
Big Techs have expressed their opinion
There were also protests against the new regulations technology companies. In their letters, they referred to opponents’ arguments regarding risk invasion of privacy and dangers for children circumventing the ban. They also submitted their own suggestions on how to protect children from inappropriate content.
Snap, whose messaging app Snapchat is popular with children, said “device-level age verification” is “the best option available.” Representatives belonging to Elon Musk’s X platformpointed out that their website is not very popular among minors. Additionally, they expressed concerns about the impact of the act on freedom of speech.
Meta informed Australian lawmakers that it is systematically investing in tools to make its platforms Facebook and Instagramsafer. And he appealed to the Australian government to wait until the introduction of guarantee solutions user age restrictionwhich is scheduled to appear next year.
Plus the company Zuckerberg’s madness stated that the exclusion from restrictions regarding the age of users belonging to the concern Alphabet platforms YouTube and online games offered by other providers will not guarantee the achievement of the intended purpose. The company noted that they offer similar content to other social media covered by statutory prohibition.
Australians are in favor
A poll conducted by YouGov this month showed that as many as 77 percent He supports Australians ban on access to social media for people under 16 years of age. At the same time, they expect that parents and children will not be punished for breaking the ban. However, the weight the need to demonstratethat all reasonable steps have been taken to prevent the use of the application minors, will fall on the platforms themselves.
