A Holding social media platforms responsible

A precedent regulation was just passed at the Australian Parliament and signed into law by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Henceforth, all Australian nationals 16 years and below are no longer allowed access and use of Facebook, Tiktok, X, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit and other globally used social media platforms. A trial of enforcement methods will start in January, with the ban to take effect in a year.

Heavy fines and penalties await violators of this Australian regulation for owners and operators of social media platforms wherever they maybe located, in and outside Australia. Tech giants behind these global social media platforms face fines of A$49.5 million (or around US$33 million) for non-compliance. The law forces tech giants for example like Meta Platform (META.O) to stop minors from logging in their popular social media platforms Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.

This landmark law in Australia seeks to protect, if not prevent, the unseen but sinister effects of these online platforms to the social psyche and mental health of minors.  Like any other country, governments must save children from harm as the next generation of the future. Moreover, they expect this new law will promote public welfare and national interest of Australia people in general.

Prime Minister Albanese called upon popular social media platforms to fully cooperate with its implementation. “We’re making sure that mums and dads can have that different conversation today and in future days,” PM Albanese stressed. “Platforms now have a social responsibility to ensure the safety of our kids is a priority for them,” the Australian PM declared on Friday.

Child rights groups in Australia reportedly opposed the social media ban for youngsters while parent groups supported it. According to opinion polls, 80 percent of Australian public were in favor of this new law. According to Reuters news dispatch, countries like France and certain states in the US have passed similar laws to restrict social media access for minors without a parent’s permission. But the Australian social media ban for minors is absolute. A full ban for children under 14 years old in Florida is being challenged before US federal court on the grounds of breach of constitutional rights to free speech and expression.

Albanese insisted though passing the bill before the age verification trial has been completed was the correct approach. “We’ve got your back is our message to Australian parents,” Albanese assured them. “We don’t argue that its implementation will be perfect, just like the alcohol ban for under 18s doesn’t mean that someone under 18 never has access, but we know that it’s the right thing to do.”

The social media ban, Reuters reported over the weekend, could strain Australia’s relationship with key ally the United States (US), where X owner Elon Musk, a central figure in the administration of American president-elect Donald Trump, posted his comment earlier this month that such law seemed to be a “backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians.”

It also builds on an existing mood of antagonism between Australia and mostly US-domiciled tech giants, the Reuters noted. Australia was the first country to make social media platforms pay media outlets royalties for sharing their content and now plans to threaten them with fines for failing to stamp out scams.

If I’m not mistaken this plan is the same proposed legislation seeking full restitution to Australian nationals of any amount scammed from them while using the platforms of global tech giants. I was in Sydney in August this year when this issue was being hotly debated at the Australian Parliament. At that time, the Australian mainstream media was already reeling from the obvious unintended consequence of requiring social media platforms to pay them royalties for sharing news, videos and other contents.

In Sydney, these matters were among the topics taken up at the Information Integrity Forum 2024 co-sponsored by both the US Embassy & Consulates in Australia and the University of Technology-Sydney Centre for Media Transition. I was one of four editors from the Philippines selected to participate on the roundtable discussions in the “challenges to regulating for stronger information integrity,” especially with the advent of generative artificial intelligence.

We took up what these “challenges” were and reviewed the intra-regional newsrooms mechanisms to secure information technology from a global best practices perspective. Aside from the Philippines, four editors each also from India, Indonesia and Malaysia, with our Australian and US media counterparts to encompass broader media ecosystem, joined during the two-day forum.

Four months after that forum in Sydney, the Albanese government is now reportedly ready to introduce legislation to its federal Parliament to establish its long-awaited “scams prevention framework.” In this initiative, tech giants, banks, and telecommunications companies (telcos) could face fines of up to $50 million for failing to prevent scams and may be forced to compensate victims. “The Albanese government is providing the strongest defenses against scammers in the world,” Canberra announced last week in a press release.

Just last week, I raised this Australian Parliament initiative with Department of Information and Communications  Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan Uy who nonchalantly ignored it. With the incidence of text scams, phishing and, lately, “spoofing” rising with the onset of the Christmas season, this Australian model can perhaps be a more effective deterrent than mere public alerts that the DICT requires from our telcos.

Giant telco, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co.-Smart Communications Inc., reported having blocked nearly two billion “malicious” text messages from January to October this year. And PLDT-Smart blacklisted another one million mobile numbers tied to scams and other fraudulent activities during the same period.

Without abridging our constitutional rights, we need a strong law to end the online scam hub menace.

We could only wish our own lawmakers in Congress could similarly hold social media platforms responsible. Sadly, the leaders and members of our 19th Congress are more preoccupied in never-ending telenovela of “inquiry in aid of legislation,” with no relevant laws passed at all.