A Social Media Rumble Down Under

Just yesterday, new regulatory obligations came down on “social media platforms” that operate in Australia. Prompted by concern that young users – kids under 16 – are especially exposed to harm on those platforms -- and unpersuaded that platform operators were doing enough to protect them -- last year, the Australian Parliament amended its Online Safety Act to essentially ban creating underage accounts. The new rules took effect on 10 December, Australian time.

As an island nation with chutzpa, it shouldn’t be surprising to see the Australians pushing into this space. What perhaps is surprising is the seeming acceptance by platform operators of the new rules of the road. Though the conversations were half a world away, my sense is that the modest level of rumbling about the regulations flows from their tailored approach.

The key harms under the regulatory lens take place in the free, come-and-go online meeting spaces, where strangers can reach out to any user or where users can lurk on the activity of strangers. The first group of regulated platforms is Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch, and Kick. So, the rules reach perhaps hundreds of thousands of accounts, but they’re not universal. Other services are not considered such widely interactive “platforms,” like one-to-one or one-to-few messaging apps and health and education services.

Also, Parliament gave the regulatory agencies leeway to rely on platforms’ “reasonable steps” to ban underage users, not expecting absolute success. And from what I understand, during the last year, as regulations were being developed, some platform operators even touted their ability to triangulate a user’s age from their online clicks. Then, two years from now, the regulators will have to report back to Parliament on how it’s all playing out.

Many folks here in the States also will be watching closely. The Ausies’ conscious decision to roll forward with a framework that acknowledges the imperfect -- but still tells firms to take reasonably appropriate measures to protect kids -- shakes the paradigm a bit. In the U.S., we can tend to think in stark right-and-wrong, good-and-evil terms. No doubt, there are lessons we can learn from beyond our borders and especially from those with aligned values wrestling with the same borderless challenges.