The government has outsourced the social media age problem to the platforms
Welcome to a Tuesday update written for Unmade’s paying members. Everyone else will hit a paywall further down.
Today: We now know the rules on social media age gates. All of the onus will be on the platforms to figure it out.
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A catalyst for the future
Launching the call for session proposals for the next edition of, Mumbrella360 curator Cat McGinn writes:
In 2012, I helped curate an event that was named Event of the Year at the Australian Event Awards. That year, Mumbrella360 was the beating heart of a media and marketing industry just beginning to grapple with digital disruption and platform shifts.
Then, technology brought us together. We screened Twitterstreams live and built a gamified mobile app to encourage people to connect online.
When I returned to curating events in late 2022, everything had changed.
The government makes age limits the platforms’ problem
From a political perspective, the smartest thing about how the government has set up the rules on the social media age limitations is this: implementing them is going to be entirely a problem for the platforms.
However, that will also make enforcing the rules down the track much more challenging, as the grey areas are going to occupy a lot of space. Some kids will be able to circumvent the rules, while the chances are that some a little older than 16 will get caught up.
The eSafety Commissioner’s guidance makes clear that the key phrase “reasonable steps” is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting.