The Chaser Report - The Great Firewall of Australia | John Delmenico

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Dom Knight is joined by Chaser editor John Delmenico to unpack everything we know about the Federal Government's under 16's social media ban. Unfortunately, "everything we know" gets exhausted pretty quickly, as it turns out there's a lot more being left to chance. BUY A COPY OF THE CHASER ANNUAL HERE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. We have a new episode for you. Yes, it's not a replay. I'm as surprised as you are. Dom here, along with editor of The Chaser, John Delmenico, whose work features extensively in the current Chaser annual,

just released with a lovely picture of Peter Dutton on the cover. Hello, John. Hey, how's it going? Yeah, really good. Welcome back. So I saw a headline today in the financial review. I'm not used to quoting the financial review on the podcast. I certainly don't read it.

And I couldn't read the article because I don't, my budget doesn't extend to subscribing. But I love the headline because it said no one knows how social media ban will work. And I figured if anyone knows how much no one knows, it's going to be you, John. Yeah, I've spent the entire day trying as hard as they came to find out what is going on with this bill until I realize that not even. even the government knows what's going on with this bill. All right, let's try and make as much sense of it as we can after this. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important.

Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.C. So as we know, the government wants to research. strict social media to those below the age of 16. And we know that Peter Dutton's opposition is more than happy to go along with this, or so it seems. I guess maybe there's some changes.

They'll find some way to go harder, presumably, as they generally do. But, yeah, the nationales have already flipped their stance. Okay, all right. So I've got a lot to learn about this. I actually spoke to an expert on this for about 10 minutes today who's been banking various representations to the government. And the first point that he made is that there isn't any clarity about what social media and what isn't. So let's start there exactly what will kids be able to do and not do if this goes ahead. Well, this is my this is one part that I've been looking at a lot today because as people might recall last week, the government made two announcements. Snapchat would not be banned and YouTube will be banned. Since then,

they have backfliped on both of those positions. So now Snapchat is getting banned and YouTube is not. And the reason that YouTube is not is because they were lobbied by the Wiggles. Yes. It's being reported that the Wiggles made a big lobbying effort and that has overturned that rule. So did Lala. I actually spoke to some people from Lala because I know one of the guys. And he was worried, yeah, the most innocent kids' music would be banned. Although that said, if you search for Pepper Pig and are not discerning about the results,

you can get some truly file stuff out there. And I mean in the episodes of Pepper, quite apart from the gross parodies that are out there. too. Well, one of my favorite things about this small change for kids' music is I've seen experts today say that the way the government has described what will not get banned opens the door for both TikTok and Pornhub to not get affected at all. Oh, well, goodness, why would you want to ban Pornhub for the under 16s? But I'm imagining, John, that the reason Snapchat wasn't banned was because the people who were in charge of the list were over the age of 30 and couldn't figure out how it worked. That's certainly been my experience with Snapchat.

I assumed it was that, but it was because Snapchat calls themselves as a messaging service, which has now left this weird loophole where Facebook is going to be banned, but Facebook Messenger won't be banned. Right. Which no one knows how that it will work, because to have a Facebook Messenger account, you need a Facebook account. Yeah. And the government has clarified that that is what's going to happen with those two apps.

Okay, so I can have a Facebook Messenger account, but not a Facebook account, but to have a Facebook account, I have to have a Facebook account. Someone really needs to clarify what the reality it is. Because isn't Facebook Messenger chat very popular as well? I know I'm not on it much, but I gather it's... I know with young people, it's more popular than Facebook. Yeah. Like, I know a lot of people who have Facebook accounts

just because Facebook Messenger is a really good messaging app. I have fun of it. But this confusion, of course, is why the government allowed that open call for everyone to give their own take once the bill was introduced for a whole 24 hours. Yeah, I saw the schedule. for the one-day review period and they didn't even manage to go past lunchtime

with presentations. What's going on there? Well, there was one slight error in this plan of having no one respond because you give no time, which is that 15,000 responses were handed in. No way. How many were just one-line tweets going, no! It was, it's been

looking through it all, there's been condemnation from Six News, which makes sense, because Six News is the group of teenagers running a news site. Other groups include the Human Rights Commissioner, Young Labour Left, and the person who wrote the study that is the only study the government has cited in support of the bill. Oh dear, that's a bit awkward, isn't it? I mean, look, Young Labor, whatever, human rights, shmuman rights,

but if six news aren't in favour, I've got concerns, John, those are reputable people. I mean, also, this bill, whether or not it banned six news, great for Leo Paglisi. You can't watch the news in the last two weeks about Leo Paglisi appearing somewhere during broadcast. Yeah, he was made for this money. Every single outlet has interviewed that boy. So maybe what the government will want to do is start with just banning Leo Puglesi because we're sick of him. Is that the strategy that Almo should be adopting? I think that's why they're pushing it before the election. They moved it early because they don't want to get grilled by six news again. Oh, that's right. That was very effective last time. Look, he's been on

the show. Leo Pigliss, the extraordinary young man that he is. Although once he turns 18, I'm wondering whether the novelty will wear off, I guess we'll see. Good on you, Leo. Come on the podcast again. We are talking about this bill very negatively, and reading Mumbrella today, there was a headline that shows there's one group that's hugely in favour of the bill, Gen Z. Oh, really? Now, not to besmirch the journalistic and integrity of Mumbrella, but there may have been a manipulation of some statistics there. Because according to the article, over 91% of young Australians think there should be some sort of social media reform. Oh, okay. And less than one third support the social media ban.

your social media handles, John, which is the most important information about you publicly available, you identify as a Zoomer. So has your generation been wronged? Well, yeah, like they, despite the fact that the survey specifically said one third of Gen Z supports the ban, this article just pushes through this idea of like the vast majority of Gen Z support the ban, which is just, I love the idea that they just were like, well, like, well, we've got this article that says that Gen Z loves the ban. Who cares? what the actual survey said and just pushed it through anyway. That's the sort of claim that can be disputed more easily on social media.

Yeah. If you have access to it. That is also basically how the government has handled this entire bill. Like, they keep saying that there's expert approval when all the experts have come out against this ban. I think this is the only time I've ever seen like children's psychology activists be like, no, we can't do this with social media. So that's interesting. I mean, this is a bipartisan proposal. And you're saying that there's pretty much an expert consensus against it.

I haven't talked to anyone about this, really, except for the one expert I showed to do today who thought it was completely unworkable. So what's the consensus? What's the basis of these experts, John, in thinking that it's just not a good idea? So there's a few different bases. Tech experts say it won't work, just like the technology isn't there. To ban it. Yeah, to ban it.

Well, like the government, whenever they get asked about VPNs, which are saying you can easily install on your computer to make it look. like you're another country. Yeah. They just keep being like, oh, we'll figure it out. I mean, isn't it the case that Netflix hasn't been able to stop people using VPNs and they're pretty good technology? Yes, that's true.

If the Chinese government can't figure that out and that, like, covering up social media is their whole thing and they can't do it. But the Australian government is pretty sure they can just sort of wing it. It's presumably literally millions of people working on putting up the great firewall, as they call it. Okay, so you know what they don't have over in China though, John? They don't have Aussie ingenuity and pluck. Ah, yeah.

And well, there's also this whole weird thing that the government is very heavily saying you cannot trust social media platforms, which is correct. But then also, we should trust them implicitly with our ID. Yeah, okay, so that's interesting. So I think increasingly we're all, that's one thing we can agree on

is that social media platforms are not exactly our friends, even though they might have archives of them. So the idea is that there has to be some sort of verification system where you might, I don't know, upload your driver's license or whatever it might be. Did all of us have to prove that we're over the age of 18? Is that what's going to happen? Well, so according to the government's report,

they only think 22,000 of us will need to prove our age. Really? Which doesn't make, no one understands where they got the figure of 22,000 from. Right. Because that wouldn't even be enough to cover all the teens. So there's no way of knowing how they determine if you're over the age of 16. Like, do we know?

Well, so the two main ways would be ID. Yeah. Or facial recognition technology has been thrown around a lot by the government. Oh, wow. But it also does not exist. But there's windows, hello. Yeah. That's so weird.

It's there. It just won't. Like, all the companies that make it are like, it doesn't, it won't work. They can't tell the faces very well every time they've tested it. It hasn't worked. And the government's like, oh, maybe that way, maybe ID, we don't know yet. I mean, again, the army of the country's finest bounces haven't yet been able to work out how to stop underage people getting in. And, I mean, not even joking.

Like, you can fake ID, right? We know this from any bar. So how will the, even if there was an online ID system where you uploaded a driver's license, even if that wasn't scary in the edge of the dark web. I mean, I got hacked as part of the Optus and Medibank private things and my information's everywhere. I don't know that I want platform companies to have my driver's license, particularly.

Yeah, that is going to be a weird reboot of Superbad. It's a version of Superbad, but it's just teens trying to use the internet. That's right. Or ironically, maybe if they make the ID system complicated enough, it will have the exact opposite result, whereby only those under the age of 16 have the computer skills to actually get in. Yeah, it's going to be weird to, like, because you're going to have a bunch of people who aren't paying attention

all of a sudden getting told to add their ID, and they're going to think it's a giant conspiracy. This is so bizarre. So, I mean, one thing we can agree on, John, I think, in 2024, is that there is one place where they don't need age restrictions, and that is Facebook, right? I mean, you're saying maybe the solution to this Facebook Messenger versus Facebook account problem is that no matter what Facebook does, there's no way anyone under the age of 16 will go on it.

Surely, hasn't Facebook solved the problem already by being shit boring if you're under the age of 40? Yeah, I mean, that is a great point. And all the people who are, like a lot of people who are supporting the bill will be on Facebook already. So they're not going to notice much of a change anyway. But TikTok, I guess, this is what this is all about, right? So the weird thing is, because the way they're doing YouTube as an exemption is that you don't need to log into YouTube, you also don't need to log into TikTok. Right. So weirdly, like, one of the apps they keep talking about could end up having an exemption because, but also, you should point out, the exemptions are not in the bill.

The bill they're rushing through now has no room for exemptions. And the government says they will introduce something to add in exemptions later on before the 12, because there's a 12 month rollout of the bill. okay so because again very clearly they've thought through this a lot so it's a right to do something not terribly specific that no one knows how it will work yeah i mean the cynic the cynic and us could say that this is all to appease news corp because because the entire campaign has been run by news corp and anthony albnees he specifically called out news corp and thanked them for the bill during one of the speeches announcing it really yeah like so the the group called let them be kids which has done all behind the entire campaign is a team up of of News Corp and, is it 3AW? Whichever radio station is owned by Loughlin Murdoch? The Melbourne, um, now 3AW is owned by nine newspapers.

Oh, whichever radio stations owned by Lachlan Murdoch is the other half of this, uh, Nova. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's a team up of news corp and Nova. And so it must be said, John, in the interest of balance. I mean, some of the examples they've highlighted in the media, some of the bullying is completely egregious and upsetting and awful.

And the sort of thing you'd want stopped. But if there's one thing I know about teenagers is that if you, ban something over here, they'll kind of, they'll go and do it over there. Like, they'll revert to sending me notes written on paper, won't they? Well, something that's, something that's a lot of the experts in child psychology have pointed out is that the trend of the increase in a lot of the horrible stuff began before social media. Oh, really? And has stayed around, like, there hasn't, there's no provable spike post social media. If you, if you just show how, like, the big spike after social media, they usually just don't show on the graph, the pre-social media.

numbers. So when you zoom these were all teenagers, did it somehow get more toxic? Yeah. So it's just like it's always been a problem and there's a lot of underlying factors. So that's why a lot of child psychologists experts are coming out against this bill is that there's not really much evidence to show that this will actually stop the bullying and will stop the increase of mental health issues. But what it will do is especially queer kids and disabled kids and kids from abusive households who struggled to find a place to speak to people. This means that they will have a from communities that have been found to be helpful online. Yeah, so if you're the one LGBTIQA plus keyed in a small town,

there'll be no way you can kind of join your tribe online. So that's why there are a lot of the experts coming against on that angle to be like we need a much more nuanced response, but also to those experts, why did you think the government would listen to people saying we did a nuanced response? That's antithetical to everything the government is, especially this close to an election. But John, why can't we just let the kids be kids?

That's such a, it's such a homespun sort of slogan, isn't it? I mean, the PM has said this today. But what that actually means is enormously complicated. Yeah. And like, it's just like this weird thing of a good, of like a weird thing of, there's a really good intention behind it. But if you have a genuine good intention, you would also listen to what the experts are saying. That's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I must say I worry having grown up in a time before social media.

and I mean going up in a time before the internet really in school like they just I know that that seems impossible but there was no internet when I was in school it was some sort of server-based thing we had to log in there's no way anyone's going to bully anyone unless they sort of wrote some weird application in I don't know C++ or something to do it but yeah the notion that if if you're being bullied you can't escape from that because it's coming in on your device 24-7 and there's no break from it at home and not feeling safe at home that would be all awful. I mean, I can completely relate to that. But if your bill isn't actually going to solve that, then we need to think carefully. Yeah, and then one really strange, very last minute thing that

has happened with the coverage of this bill is Murdoch has back flipped on it. Really? Let's take a break and then you can tell me exactly how, because that's quite the surprise. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. can't take being on hold anymore FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes mobile plans start at $15 a month certain conditions apply

details at fizz.ca The Chaser Report more news less often Okay so you're saying the government gave into the Murdoch campaign and now what's happened? So this campaign that launched

coincidentally just after meta announced they would not be resigning the the news media bargaining code yeah yeah so the

campaign coincidentally launched within a month of that announcement they um in the last

couple days news corp has changed their tune on the bill they lobbied for so the two angles I've seen

especially from sky news has been the effort shouldn't just be getting them off social media it should be

getting them away from smartphones altogether so just completely moving that goal post oh so they're

not going against the ban they want to go further well so that's One angle they're taking, the other angle is today, like, on Monday when we're recording this, they have started putting out articles where they're speaking to the experts who say the bill is bad,

and they just frame me as Labor is once again not listening to experts. Really? Like, I mean, I think part of it is that News Corp's audience has been very against this bill because of the privacy concerns. So, like, it's this weird thing of once again, the Murdoch family are treating Labor, party like they're Charlie Brown and the peanuts and they're going to have to kick that football and every single time they pull that ball away. We need to have an intervention with Labor. We need to tell them that no matter how hard they try. They are never getting

that Murdoch endorsement. They're never getting the phrase from Murdoch. Even they do exactly what they want, Murdoch will just pull that football away every time. And like, what a, weirdly, it's a surprisingly good retreating move from Lachlan Murdoch of getting exactly what wants in parliament, but then also get into publicly slam labour for doing the thing they asked for. Well, the Herald reports today that there are quite a few coalition MPs who are against the bill, but that Peter Dutton's going to stare them down, which is a horrifying prospect of getting the Dutton death stare to get you to remove your objections. I mean, it's one of those things where, when I first heard about it, yeah, it was just like,

well, how would this actually work in practice? But somewhere in there, it feels to me like there's some sort of germ of a good intention. But you've got a right legislation that actually is workable, right? Yeah, but I think we're both just also living in a fairyland where there's not an election coming up and the PM doesn't desperately want everyone to stop saying he's spineless. Because, like, I mean, got like, everything they're rushing, they also just announced they're not doing the gambling ads reform. Oh, yes, I saw that. So they're protecting kids from social media, but they really are fine with kids looking at gambling ads and they're fine with kids listen to Kyle and Jackie O in the morning. We just need to keep them away from Mr. Vese videos

online. Well, Tim Kisler made that point, yeah, that the, they're saying gambling ads are fine. Unless they're gambling ads on social media, maybe two birds with one stone. Gambling ads only on social media. But look, I think it's unfair to criticise Anthony Alamnees for being spotless. I think that's outrageous. I think his decision to buy a $4.3 million house during a housing crisis is one of the gutsiest things I've ever seen. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. And also, I mean, having a meeting with Loughlin Murdoch, I think it was like last week or two weeks ago at a time when people would tell him not to do that. That's really showing a spine. And look, when the PM has mates, he sticks, Kyle, Kyle invited out by to his wedding. I'm assuming Carl's going to go to Albo's

wedding in a short while. I hope Kyle gets to officiate. Oh, wow. I hope he gets to officiate. And for the music, they'd pay the P-Tape that he had of his employees. I don't even want to think about the gross things that Kyle would ask a newlyweds to do. Although I can probably find out if I listen to the Kyle and Jackie O's Show. All right. So what's going to happen from here? Is it just going to go through in whatever flawed, potentially unworkable form based on what you're saying, the experts are saying? Is it just going to sail through anyway because there's an election coming up?

It does look like that because it looks like both Albo and Dutton doesn't want to. give any ground on it, no matter how much Labor left and the Nationals want to put out. I mean, in a way, this bill has brought social cohesion. But the amount of the government keeps talking about social cohesion, you've got experts, academics, conspiracy theorists, the Nationals party, young labor, the greens, the teals, young people, elderly people, all coming together to say, please, for the love of God, do not do this thing. So why have the nationals opposed that?

Did it not give enough money to farmers, the bill? Yeah. No, it's just like, I mean, some of the first nationals that come out against it were all, like, conspiracy theory against it. Oh, okay. Well, I mean, Elon Musk is against it. Yeah. The rest of them have started flooding through more on the free speech and fear of giving big tech your ID sort of thing. But I think I've come up with a workable solution that is a compromise.

Thank goodness someone's got a solution. John, lay it on us. So maybe the best way to protect teens on social media isn't to ban them, but to ban people. politicians. Oh. Just imagine how much better social media would be if we got rid of politicians and their terrible cringe-inducing posts that they constantly do, especially now, because we know that this week there's been Wicked and the new Kendra Klamar surprise album that has been

dominating the news. You know they're going to start posting about both of those things in a few days once their social media managers find out that those two things exist. And it's going to be terrible posts. We should protect everyone now from those posts. That is a very good idea. I reckon we could even go one further. Why don't we ban everyone over the age of 16 from social media? I mean, that would be fantastic if none of us ever had to look at it again.

I can't see any downside. Plus, it would save the time of so many young people while they're studying because they won't have to set up their grandpa's account. That's true. That would be a very big plus. One more thing, John, I want to just praise Peter Dutton's guts in all this. Because if I was a conservative leader in Australia, and I had just watched Elon Musk help Donald Trump

to the tune of many, many millions of dollars to win an election, I would not be doing anything to piss him off right now. Yeah, that's a big stance from him, taking on Elon Musk. Also, one thing we haven't heard yet, will truth socially be banned? We know that Elon Musk is becoming a diplomat. So there's already potential issues there. Will the Australian government sanction something owned by the US president?

That is such an interesting question. I mean, I presume maybe that all they need to do is have a threshold in the bill that the social media has to have more than 20 users in Australia. And that way they're not out of banning it. I mean, that's how I'm assuming threads will get past. I think threads will be fine just because everyone's going to forget the threads exist. Oh, my God. Is this going to impact on blue sky?

The one place, I'm actually enjoying social. media at the moment. I doubt it mainly for the same reason as Facebook being fine. There's no teenagers on Blue Sky. That app is that the way that app forces you to always be positive and I think people get annoyed at is anyone who shows any side of negativity or does any jokes. No young person is going anywhere near that app. Well, that's where I'm going right now. John, thank you very much for talking us through that. It's going to be fascinating to see if anyone does actually consult the experts. Maybe after the election, hey? Yeah, that's always the best time to do it. We are part of the Iconiclass network. We will see you tomorrow on the feed, and you can catch

john at chaser.com.a.u or in the pages of the new chaser annual. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. Fizz is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.