“Over time, international community concern is what will produce substantive, enduring change globally to the algorithms and a change to the design behaviours of big tech companies,” Angus Campbell, Canberra’s envoy to the EU, told POLITICO.
“If it was just Australia, tech companies could work with the carrots [positive enforcement mechanisms] and absorb the penalties, to some national benefit, but if progressively, it becomes the wider community of the world demanding change, I think you will see significant positive change,” Campbell said.
His comments come as multiple European countries work to introduce social media bans for young people. France leads the pack with a draft law to come into effect as soon as September, while the European Parliament has also urged the European Commission to propose an EU-wide system.
That’s despite the fact that Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, said in an assessment last week that Australia’s measures have not yet succeeded in keeping most kids away from platforms, and neither have reports of online harms dropped discernibly. It found significant gaps in enforcing the ban, including platforms allowing and even encouraging kids to try age-assurance methods several times until they got around them.
“Ban or no ban, huge numbers of children remain on risky and exploitative platforms,” said Leanda Barrington-Leach, executive director of the 5Rights Foundation, which campaigns for childrens’ digital rights. “Consequently, ban or no ban, companies must remain fully accountable for children’s safety, and made to design their services accordingly.”
Announcing investigations into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube’s compliance, Inman Grant said she was moving from encouraging platforms to comply with the law to more actively enforcing it.
