This week, the government introduced legislation intended to protect youths from online harms.

If the Bill passes, covered social media platforms will be required to take ‘reasonable steps’ to stop under-16s from having accounts. Platforms that do not do enough will risk large fines. And Kiwis of every age could be blocked from accessing sites that fail to comply.

Risks to freedom of expression are not funny at all. But another part of the Bill could have amusing consequences.

Covered platforms will have to produce child-safety risk assessments. These assessments must consider harms to under-18s, including harm from “false or misleading information”.

It is an election year. False and misleading information is not hard to find.

Meta’s first assessment could include a section that reads something like this:

“Thank you for the opportunity to report risks we have seen from false and misleading information over the past year, which includes the election period.

On 21 May, the National Party posted a graph suggesting that the number of core public servants fell under the 2008-2017 National government. But full-time-equivalent numbers actually rose by 8.5%.

On 29 June, National posted a video saying, “If you ever want to earn $160,000, you’d need to pay 45 per cent of it to the Greens and Labour. It’s right there in their document.” But only income above the threshold would face that tax rate. And only if Labour agreed to the Greens’ proposal.

On 4 July, a National Party MP posted a billboard claiming a Labour, Green, Te Pāti Māori government would “Triple Your Taxes.” A person earning $160,000 currently pays $42,677 in income tax: 26.7% of their income. Tripling that would lift it to $128,000 in tax – an implausible 80% of their income.

On 16 August, the National Party posted that Labour “is looking to bring back their Ute tax plus a Streaming tax.” There is no evidence that Labour still supports a ute tax. And while Labour has considered a streaming tax, Hon Goldsmith has considered requiring Netflix to invest in New Zealand content. The measures are similar, and the cost of either would pass through to subscribers.

To address the risk of false and misleading information, we have deactivated the National Party’s Facebook page.

Some may describe this as censorship of important political speech. We believe it is proportionate risk mitigation. Why do these naysayers refuse to protect children?”