The Chaser Report - The Social Media Ban Begins!

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

As of today, under-16-year-olds are saved from the horrors of seeing what their uncle liked on Instagram. No more will a child see Minion memes reposted by their grandparents. Finally, the children are safe from seeing whatever memes politicians post. Now that the social media ban is in, Dom and Charles have one question: Does it go far enough?---Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] 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 with Dom and Charles. And the good news today is that the children are safe. All children below the age of 16 are now safe from social media, unless they have faces, according to one 14-year-old who managed to get past. I think it was Snapchat's brilliant, facial recognition-based system, because the social media ban is in action as of today.

Yes, yes. And look, what do you think is going to happen, Dom? Is it going to be like the show in all the ads that they've been putting out where people suddenly get off their phones and start, you know, is it going to be a sort of utopia for our kids where they just start, I don't know, looking at the flowers and smelling the roses and, I don't know, becoming birdwatches and, you know, wholesome things. Actually, Anika Wells, like, it's the childhood that Anika Wells, you know, sort of grew up with, isn't it?

That's the vision that we want, which I think is mainly travelling around on taxpayers' money. Isn't that the, maybe that's what's going to happen. Maybe all the people who would have been, you know, heads down on social media, having not been banned, they'll now become budding politicians and just get to go to the Australian Open and make their driver wait in the car park for eight hours. I'm just very relieved that, and I'm assuming that Anika Wells's drivers have been over the age of 16, because otherwise, can you imagine how tedious would be sitting in a com car all day at the tennis or whatever else that might be the grand final? Yes, not being able to. Without access to social media, what are you meant to do?

Well, you read books on. No, the flowers. Yeah, that takes 10 minutes. You read books. You know this. You do what we used to do. No, no, this is the whole thing. What they, all the ads are about this nostalgic, it's sort of, almost Trumpian level of nostalgia that, oh, wasn't our childhood great? You know, like, and, and what did we do? Well, what did we do? Well, we read magazines that don't exist anymore. So, I mean, I'm just trying to think what I did.

I read computer magazines, which you now get, by scrolling on social media, what else do you do? You, um... You started a bulletin board. You started the closest thing to social media when you were a teenager. That's right. I had the Big Bang Burger Bar baby, yeah. Bang Burger Bucket. Which was in the days before the internet.

It was called Fidonet, which is now I've discovered a haven, or at least it, you know, like maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago. It became a haven for pedophiles for a while because it was completely off the grid. What an idyllic childhood you had, Charles, back. No, it wasn't pedophiles when I was doing it. It was like pedophiles like 20 years later, you know, in the sort of, like, after the internet had been invented. They went, how can we re-purpose this other? This old technology. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How's the only one's life. Where do we start? So what's going to happen? Like, I think the first thing is, this is my prediction. This has been my prediction since day one, which is the government is now going to fall in love with just banning everything. Like, you can already see the instinct of, well, hang on, like, you know, it worked for kids. Why don't we just ban, like, they're just going to ban everything. They're just going to, like.

slippery slope. Yeah, it's a slippery slope. This is the beginning of a sort of complete descent into authoritarianism. So the next thing banned is, it's banning for right-wing parties and then after that. Fun, it's just banned or fun. Is that what you're saying? Well, because the thing is, like if social media is bad, why are you allowed it after your 18? I actually think, no, I've decided to 180 my position on this. I think the whole point about the social media ban is not that it's so fucking condescending and stupid, it is that it doesn't go far enough. That is what I think.

Oh, goodness me. Yes. And that... Now, I just have to clarify one thing, because I've been away, I haven't been following the latest stages of the debate. There's some discussion of what was and wasn't going to be included in the ban. Yeah. A podcast's OK.

Is our friend Jack, who listens to 8,000 minutes of this podcast a year safe? Because goodness knows, we wouldn't want him protected from a mum. Well, I... subscribing to the Chaser Report. I think the problem, though, is that, yes, podcasts will still exist. they'll still be available for under 16-year-olds. But how the fuck will any of them find it? They'll be required to go through their parents.

Now, do you know how daggy the taste in parents is? But they'll probably tell Jack that his podcast should be the Geraldine Doog podcast on Radio National or something. They'll probably go, oh, late night live, that's a jolly listen. You know what I mean? Like the young kids want this sort of hip, young groove chaser report stuff. They don't want this sort of... With a 50-year-old and a nearly 50-year-old. Yeah.

Old Fuddy-Dunty. I'm young in my head too, Charles. Yeah. They'll probably go... Global roaming. Yeah, global. They're all going to listen to global roaming. Yeah.

Hamish MacDonald, who's younger than us, by the way, and Geraldine Dink. Yeah. Okay, so your position is that we should just ban all social media. If it's bad, I mean... If it's bad... I did. Then ban it. If it's not bad, then don't ban it for kids.

I think the whole point about this is... is any good parent has an ongoing conversation, any even mediocre parent has an ongoing conversation about the fact that we're all fucking addicted to our screens, right? And it's an ongoing thing that everyone has to sort of deal with in life nowadays. Now, if you ban that from kids, and yet the parents are still there like zombies at the dinner table, you know, wherever, you know, like just, then that's a real,

All it's teaching kids is that there's one rule for one, one for, oh, maybe that's the reason they're doing. Maybe it's so that politicians can teach the kids of tomorrow that there's one rule for one set of people, another rule for another. And that's why Annika Wells is so keen on it because she wants everyone to sort of get the idea that, you know, like, just because, you know, everyone else doesn't have travel entitlements, that she can do as much as she likes because she's, she's, she's, she's, He's got all these travel entitlements. That's what's going on. It's just one rule for her, another rule for everyone else. That's the reason. And how would you even have found out about that story but for social media?

I mean, no, it's reading the news anymore, are they? But, Charles, look, I think not enough's been praised. I think the social media companies haven't been praised enough in the speed. I mean, can you imagine how annoying it is for them having to re-engineer their platforms for Australia, this blip of a market in their billion-strong kind of user numbers? and so I just think they've been so much to comply with the government's rules

and it's not just the age verification it's not just whatever they're doing the face scanning and whatever it might be apparently they're trying to work out that teenagers click their mice differently or touch the screen differently from adults maybe they can tell how sweaty they are no they probably it's to do with the reflexes

isn't it but you and me probably are now where's the where's the box to tick And with the kids, it's just like, click, click, click, click, you know, all the way through it. But the social media companies have gone all in on this with a years-long program

of making social media completely terrible. And I applaud this. I mean, to the point where we've been talking about it for years on the podcast, in shitification is the real source of social media ban. You know, a couple of weeks ago, I don't know whether we discussed this on the podcast. I gave up all social media for a week.

Just to see if I could. I went completely cold turkey. Your friend of mine at work was sort of challenging people to give up a dopamine hit for a week. And I went, okay, no social media. Yeah. I put restrictions on all my apps. Yep. It was much better.

It's just really boring. I'm still addicted to it, but they're really boring. I used to love Twitter and getting into stouches and stuff. They're not like they were in our days. No. Back when you used to be able to have fights with people all day about the COVID lockdown rules and stuff. Yes. No, I really miss those days.

And all I missed was crappy videos with AI. voiceovers about maps. That's basically all that I see now on social media. Do you think maybe one solution to this is that the government should unbanned social media for under 16 year olds, but only in the halcyon days of social media. So like Twitter in 2012 and, oh, that was good. You know, and Facebook in 2008. Facebook, back when we were all young and there were young people You know what my social life used to work? I used to actually have a social life from Facebook. I used to open my Facebook and there'd be invitations to party for like a couple of years there.

And then I don't know if they're still happening and I'm not invited anymore. Was that Corey? Or if they don't happen anymore. Did you get invited to Corey? What was his name, Whitehouse? Corey Worthington. There's a deep cut. Corey Worthington wouldn't have happened without social media.

But no. But you remember those days when, you know, expats would come back or whatever. and there'd be drinks here and there and the weekend would be sorted without any effort? No, they still organise them, but they've already organised it. It's on the 28th. I haven't been invited. Oh, okay.

Well, I suppose it's an accurate... Oh, you're not in the WhatsApp group, hey. Oh, okay. Oh, no, oh, the WhatsApp group. Oh, that's genuinely awkward. Anyway, so this is the sort of shunning that my children will be protected from. And as my children, they probably will be shunned.

So I think it's better to not have them exposed to their social reality until they turn 16. Yeah, right. Okay. Well. Isn't that kindness? No, but it's just, like, it's not like, like, you can't go back to the past. Like, one of the funnest things that my 15 year old does is write songs using AI right at the moment, the Suno app. It's so fucking fun.

Yeah, yeah. Right. It's so stupid. But that's not banned, is it? No, it's not. But how did he find out about it? Like, he fanned out about it because all these stupid YouTubers, which is banned, right, you know, mess around and do stupid songs on YouTube, right, as content, right?

And it's parosocial relationships, it's all that sort of, but they're not, it's not in any way inherently evil. It's like, it's kind of cool and stupid at the same time. But, I mean, it's also led to an extraordinary upswelling of creativity. in this housework. Like, not a day goes by, the Angus isn't writing lyrics for some terrible song about farts.

There was a very good song at your third or fourth birthday, actually. In honour of your 50th. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often. Well, one thing to note, and this is the thing where it's a bit strange, you can still

use YouTube. I don't know about other apps, but you can certainly use YouTube as long you're not logged in. I know, this is my conspiracy theory is the reason why they've jumped at that is because they then get to play all the ads at you. Because the whole point about the, when you log in, is we've got the premium YouTube. You don't get any ads. So now, my kids, if they follow the band, which they're definitely not,

I'm going to make sure that they're hooked up to all the sort of ways around that ban, would be played ads all day. I mean, it's so stupid. And also, YouTube, like, YouTube. Like, that is the, that's how you learn to do anything. Like, if, I don't know, if, I don't know, the kids, how do you, how do I tie my shoelace is dead? I don't know, son, look it up on fucking YouTube. Yeah, how do you tie a real bow tie?

Now, I've never known how to do that. Yeah. Fortunately, I never need to know anymore. But once upon time I got invited to formal events and I needed to know and I didn't know. But I bet you there's a video on YouTube. No, I bet you this is. The closest I overcame to learning it was on YouTube. There's 50,000 videos on YouTube.

Like, anything. Like, literally, like, we've built lizard enclosures, snake enclosures, based on YouTube tutorials, all of that. Oh, that, no one's thought of the lizard-owning community, have they? Yeah, it's sort of, you know what it's like? It's like if the Hawke government had got in, and the first thing they'd gone is, you know what we're going to do? We're going to ban World Book Encyclopedia because the kids are just in there getting information all day, sharing it with their friends. some of them are using it for bad purposes like, you know, the description of how to make a bomb.

Could you use World Book? Could you find out how to make a bomb in World Book? Because I've still got them somewhere. I'm pretty. Have you got World Book? Oh, I would love to look at a World Book. No, I never. I never, we could never afford that sort of thing when I was kids.

No, no, no. We couldn't even afford YouTube premium. The School Library. Always had it. A slightly outdated. That's what we did. Instead of doing proper research, we went to the World Book. That's right.

And then you weren't allowed to reference. World Book in your writing. So you'd pretend that you'd actually read the references the World Book read. There always were references in the World Book. But Charles, look, one more thing to note on this, which is that if this government has learnt anything, and in concert with the Labor State Government as well, is that banning things works very well.

There's never any blowback. No. You can just ban something and then it will disappear from the street, which is why there are no vapes anymore. Yeah, exactly. I just think, you know, prohibition. Um, history has shown it to be 100% effective. Yes.

And I mean, I haven't seen it. I wouldn't know where you'd get a vape anymore. By the way, what are the tobacconists on every corner of every single city doing? What are they selling like, I go and get mineral water and chocolate and stuff in there? I think they sell, they wouldn't be selling vapes. Given the prices of their mineral water and chocolate, I can actually understand how they survive without any illegal. But no, no, well, it's funny because just that's very. topical of you, Dom, because there's just been a $150 million illegal tobacco ring busted just

today in the news. That's there? That's the headlines. I know they've finally got actual kind of people with enforcement powers to go in and do that. Goodness me, Charles, if only there had been some sign that tobacco is out of control. Well, so do we should, instead of banning it, should we do like we did with tobacco and tax social media? Maybe that's... Imagine if the social media company's paid tax.

Oh, my God! Oh, no, that'd be too hard. Getting them to completely change their... No, yeah, that's... Getting them to completely modify their platform to stop teenagers. No, yeah, that's true. That's fine. We can get them to do that.

Sorry. But paying tax. No, God. Sorry, yeah. What are you? I don't know what I was thinking. Pie in the Sky Fairyland, First? Yeah, that's...

Sorry. Sorry, I'd take that. Lockland, I think you should cut out this whole bit because... The idea of social media companies paying tax in Australia, even though they're making billions and billions of dollars. In vast amounts from ad revenue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even more now that they, you know, all the kids have to watch the ads. And this is actually the reason why I think that the companies are jumping at the ban, right,

is because actually it's far cheaper to just ban under 16-year-olds, knowing that you've got an addictive product, they're all going to come back at the age of 16 anyway. And it also gives this sort of slightly edgy wear-banned vibe, you know, in the early team. Oh, yes. It's cooler than it's been in a long time, social media right now. Yeah, but it's much cheaper than doing what the government should have done as a law, which is actually requiring that all their fucking unmoderated forums of misinformation and disinformation are properly moderated by real Australian editors to actually, you know,

and spend some of the billions and billions of dollars on actually employing Australians to, to oversee the operations of their extremely profitable companies? That's outrageous, Charles. I mean, that's almost as ridiculous as suggestion as saying that these social media companies, when you publish something that could be misinformation or disinformation, that's actually got to be compared in great detail with, I don't know, some sort of engine that knows what's true

because it's ingested all the bits of information on the internet. Yeah, right. That would be like getting, I don't know, let's call it a large language model or something. to scan every statement and see if it's actually true or dangerous or not. These companies couldn't possibly do that. They'd need to own AI engines in order to have that functionality, wouldn't they? Yeah, no. I mean, expect meta to scan every Facebook post or Instagram post to see if it was actually true or dangerous.

That would be inhumane. How would that be possible? That would be horrible, job. Even for an AI. Poor AI. You can't do that. That's true. When someone think of meta.

There you go. By the way, Charles, our local shopping centre has. There's a giant display now with the cameras flogging the cameras of glasses in them. I think I'm going to lose that one. I tried them. I tried them the other day. The meta glasses. They're not just Rayban.

There's Oakley ones as well. Yeah, there's really, there's like ski instructor ones. Start at just $700. Hey. And they play you in music and you go, oh, right, like headphones, but sort of slightly worse quality. And then they allow you to have a camera. for a little while and you go just like your phone

so it's like I don't quite understand why you would need it unless you're a perv Charles we could definitely yeah that's very good for pervs yeah because it's really discreet we could record this podcast both wearing sunglasses looking at each other

that would be yeah I think that is something with terrible audio quality the government should ban you should make that happen if META wants to sponsor us making an episode where we both wear glasses

and can't quite hear each other talking. It can translate you into other languages. It can probably fact-check you in real time. I don't think it can do that. Because I got the woman to do the demonstration with me. There was no translation. There was no live translation. Oh, it could translate a menu.

I did test that out. I don't know if it can translate a conversation. But it doesn't have any a screen. From Spanish sting. How did it? No, it spoke out. It was very clunky. It read out everything that was on the menu.

Oh, that's horrible. It would have taken a very long time. Did it have a sort of? We didn't say they were good. Manuel's style accent, who is it? Hello. Pretty much. Yeah.

It was a menu with five items on it. Menu. Hey, Mehta. Is Charles being racist right now? Oh, come on. They're the glasses I want. No, we're just going back to the old days. We're doing what the government wants.

This is what the go. This is Kingswood country now. Well, what we get, I mean, look, Mehta has obviously raised the white flag. The government started the social media ban. Other countries, other territories are looking to copy, looking to follow suit. Yes.

European Union's looking at it. Portugal. But fortunately, Meta can get out of the social media game and just transition to its main game, which is making terrible glasses with AI in them. I'm going to buy shares in Meta. Their future is safe. Okay, well, we're part of the iconocles network.

You can catch us on social media unless you're under 16, in which case, don't because you're banned. Because we say lots of really daring and cool things that you're too young for. Yeah, that's right. That's what we do.