Social media ban lacks teeth, former executive warns
Tech giants won’t turn a blind eye to penalties imposed under Australia’s social media ban but will start sweating if other nations follow suit, a former Facebook executive has said.
Children under 16 will be kicked off Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Kick and Reddit when Australia’s biggest worldwide ban comes into effect on December 10.
The onus is on social media companies, not parents, to take “reasonable steps” to prevent teens from having accounts.
Stephen Scheeler, chief executive of AI startup Omniscient, who ran Facebook’s Australian office from 2013 to 2017, said fines of up to $50 million for systemic breaches were insufficient to encourage compliance.
He said this amount was equivalent to parking fines for billion-dollar companies.
“It takes Meta about an hour and 52 minutes to generate $50 million in revenue,” Mr Scheeler told AAP.
“Some of these platforms are being absorbed in Europe for billions of euros.
“They won’t even move an eye… that’s peanuts according to the scheme.”
The biggest concern for platforms is whether the ban will spread globally, which would create compliance complexity and impact revenue, Mr. Scheeler said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was praised by his European counterparts when he introduced the ban in New York in September; The Danish government last week announced an agreement that will restrict social media access for those under 15.
“If Australia is the only country doing this, it won’t make any difference,” Mr Scheeler said.
“If you’re blocking people between the ages of 13 and 16 from being on a platform, my guess is that probably 15 percent of the users will be in that category… so they’re losing that amount of logged in users.
“If this happened worldwide, that would represent a significant hit to revenue.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells said implementing the reforms would take time for children and parents to adjust.
He said seven in 10 children have been harmed online.
“We’ve got a huge rift with these laws and I’m certainly not suggesting we’re going to be perfect,” Ms Wells said after meeting students at a Canberra school on Monday.
“It’s going to look a little uneven down the road, big reforms always are.”
More than 200,000 Australians have visited the country’s official e-safety website since an education campaign launched three weeks ago, receiving nearly 100,000 page views a week compared to less than 10,000 previously.
Mr Albanese said the social media ban, which followed lobbying by media giant News Corp, reflected a “grassroots movement from the bottom up”.
“This has come from parents who have experienced particularly tragic circumstances, who have lost their young son or daughter, and who are channeling this trauma and pain to ensure it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” he told Nova radio.
Mr Albanese said one of the problems that led to the ban was that young people did not have the capacity to distinguish between what was real and what was not before the age of 16.
“It’s just about giving them their childhood back. It’s that simple and we want people to be protected,” he said.
But opposition communications spokeswoman Melissa McIntosh claimed the ban was “set up to fail” and said details such as whether platforms could force users to verify their age using a digital ID were unclear.
“The details are really important and the minister needs to focus on those first and foremost,” he said.
Discord, Twitch and popular gaming site Roblox will not be affected by the ban, but Ms Wells said more platforms could be added.
“If we find that people are flocking (to Roblox) and further harm is being created, Roblox will certainly be in the purview of the eSafety commissioner,” Ms Wells said.
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