Aussie Gov’t: Age Verification Went From ‘Privacy Nightmare’ To Mandatory In A Year

Over the last few years, it’s felt like the age verification debate has gotten progressively stupider. People keep insisting that it must be necessary, and when others point out that there are serious privacy and security concerns that will likely make things worse, not better, we’re told that we have to do it anyway.

Let’s head down under for just one example. Almost exactly a year ago, the Australian government released a report on age verification, noting that the technology was simply a privacy and security nightmare. At the time, the government felt that mandating such a technology was too dangerous:

“It is clear from the roadmap at present, each type of age verification or age assurance technology comes with its own privacy, security, effectiveness or implementation issues,” the government’s response to the roadmap said.

The technology must work effectively without circumvention, must be able to be applied to pornography hosted outside Australia, and not introduce the risk to personal information for adults who choose to access legal pornography, the government stated.

“The roadmap makes clear that a decision to mandate age assurance is not yet ready to be taken.”

That’s why we were a bit surprised earlier this year when the government announced a plan to run a pilot program for age verification. However, as we pointed out at the time, just hours after the announcement of that pilot program, it was revealed that a mandated verification database used for bars and clubs in Australia was breached, revealing sensitive data on over 1 million people.

You would think that might make the government pause and think more deeply about this. But apparently that’s not the way they work down under. The government is now exploring plans to officially age-gate social media.

The federal government could soon have the power to ban children from social media platforms, promising legislation to impose an age limit before the next election.

But the government will not reveal any age limit for social media until a trial of age-verification technology is complete.

The article is full of extremely silly quotes:

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said social media was taking children away from real-life experiences with friends and family.

“Parents are worried sick about this,” he said.

“We know they’re working without a map. No generation has faced this challenge before.

“The safety and mental and physical health of our young people is paramount. 

“Parents want their kids off their phones and on the footy field. So do I.”

This is ridiculous on all sorts of levels. Many families stay in touch via social media, so taking kids away from it may actually cut off their ability to connect with “friends and families.”

Yes, there are cases where some kids cannot put down phones and where obvious issues must be dealt with, as we’ve discussed before. But the idea that this is a universal, across-the-board problem is nonsense.

Hell, a recent study found that more people appeared to be going into the great outdoors because of seeing it glorified on social media. Some are worried that people are too focused on the great outdoors because it’s being overly glorified on social media.

Again, there’s a lot of nuance in the research that suggests this is not a simple issue of “if we cut kids off of social media, they’ll spend more time outside.” Some kids use social media to build up their social life which can lead to more outdoor activity, while some don’t. It’s not nearly as simple as saying that they’ll magically go outdoors and play sports if they don’t have social media.

Then you combine that with the fact that the Australian government knows that age verification is inherently unsafe, and this whole plan seems especially dangerous.

But, of course, politicians love to play into the latest moral panic.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said getting kids off social media required urgent leadership.

“The evidence shows early access to addictive social media is causing our kids harm,” he said.

“This is no different to cigarettes or alcohol. When a product or service hurts children, governments must act.”

Except, it’s extremely different than cigarettes and alcohol, both of which are actually consumed by the body and insert literal toxins into the bloodstream. Social media is speech. Speech can influence, but you can’t call it inherently a toxin or inherently good or bad.

The statement that “addictive social media is causing our kids harm” is literally false. The evidence is way more nuanced, and there remain no studies showing an actual causal relationship here. As we’ve discussed at length (backed up by multiple studies), if anything the relationship may go the other way, with kids who are already dealing with mental health problems resorting to spending more time on social media because of failures by the government to provide resources to help.

In other words, this rush to ban social media for kids is, in effect, an attempt by government officials to cover up their own failures.

The government could be doing all sorts of things to actually help kids. It could invest in better digital literacy, training kids how to use the technology more appropriately. It could provide better mental health resources for people of all ages. It could provide more space and opportunities for kids to freely spend time outdoors. These are all good uses of the government’s powers that tackle the issues they claim matter here.

Surveilling kids and collecting private data on them which everyone knows will eventually leak, and then banning them from spaces that many, many kids have said make their lives and mental health better, seems unlikely to help.

Of course, it’s only at the very end of the article linked above that the reporters include a few quotes from academics pointing out that age verification could create privacy and security problems, and that such laws could backfire. But the article never even mentions that the claims made by politicians are also full of shit.