Teen social media ban tech trial privacy concerns were ignored

Australia’s privacy watchdog has repeatedly warned that the government’s $6.5 million social media ban technology trial aimed at teenagers overstates how the technology used protects people’s privacy, given it has not been tested or evaluated under Australian privacy law.

Those behind the hearing ignored most of these warnings and continued to insert bombastic language into the final report, including terms such as “privacy protection” and “privacy by design.”

As scrutiny mounts on how social media bans on young people work in practice, these concerns, which an independent regulator has failed to raise, cast doubt on the findings of the controversial case the federal government is using to justify advancing its social media minimum age policy.