Some things that sound simple wind up being a bit messier than expected.
Keeping kids off of social media sounds simple. Tech whizzes can achieve wonders. Surely, they can achieve this too. All they need to do is ‘nerd harder’.
I don’t think this one can be solved by ‘nerding harder’. Or, at least, not without pretty substantial trade-offs for freedom of speech and privacy.
The first thing to remember is that keeping kids off social media would require everyone to prove their age. It will not just affect those under the age of sixteen. Everyone will have to prove that they are not under the age of sixteen. Including you.
The second thing to remember is that proving your age online would be a bit different to proving your age when you walk into a bar and order a drink. In the real world, the bartender eyes you up, having no reason to care who you are. The bartender can quickly triage people, like me, who cannot possibly be under the age of 18, those who are obviously under the age of 18, and those whose IDs need to be checked.
Only a fraction of attendees need to be checked at all.
If you are checked, you show the bartender your driver’s license or other ID with your age on it. The bartender keeps no record and does not care who you are. Your ID doesn’t go into a database to help the bar do a better job in its marketing. It doesn’t go to the government to help them keep track of your drinking habits. The only thing that matters is that the bartender can tell the police or the licensing officer that the ID was checked, looked real, and showed that the holder was over the age of 18. That’s it.
If the bar says it wants to take a picture of your license for its records, you can tell the bartender what you think about that and go somewhere else – if so inclined.
Online is very different.
Two proposed members bills seeking to impose age restrictions on social media use sit in Parliament’s biscuit tin.
One from National proposes following Australia’s approach. Australia is making designated social media platforms liable if they are insufficiently diligent about keeping under-16s off their sites. The fines are large. The legislation comes into effect in December.
Nobody yet knows which platforms are going to be subject to the legislation. There’s suggestion that platforms will also be liable if they do not take steps to stop people from using Virtual Private Networks – VPNs. VPNs enable people to make it look as if they are contacting a website from a country other than the one they’re actually in. They make it easy to get around country-specific bans. A lot of people use VPNs as a matter of course for better internet security. Some corporates require VPNs.
The legislation requires platforms to prevent youths from having accounts; they could still view content on those platforms without having an account. Adults wanting to have or maintain an account may have to prove that they are not under the age limit and may be prohibited from using a VPN. There are some ways that platforms can guess at your age. But they are far from foolproof, and many adults will wind up having to provide ID.
I post online under my real name. Some people cannot – they use pseudonyms. There are plenty of very good reasons for using pseudonyms. On Twitter, I follow a fair number of people who have real-life jobs in government or council. They can’t post under their real names because it could be seen as partisan. I learn a lot from them – they know what they’re talking about.
Others post under pseudonyms for more important reasons.
I moved here from Canada and sometimes post rude things on Twitter about Canadian government policy – particularly about their years of deliberately violating the dairy access provisions of the trade agreement they signed with New Zealand. I am not worried that the Canadian government will retaliate against me or my family back in Canada.
If I had moved here from China, I would be posting under a pseudonym while using a VPN. If the platform had my real identity, the Chinese government could hack it and exert pressure on family back home. The chilling effects will be real.
Being able to post under a pseudonym has value even if you don’t use one. In the mid-2010s, it was risky to post conservative views online; in parts of the US now, it’s risky to post left-wing views online. And in the UK currently, police seem to find it easier and safer to arrest harmless people for offensive online speech than to arrest dangerous people.
If worse comes to worst, and whatever views you have become politically risky, you can always set up a new account under a pseudonym. But if the platform knows who you are, the police can issue a production order. Then the government will know who you are. It is not going well in the UK currently. The threats are real.
We have no clue how this is all going to pan out in Australia. But Chris Luxon wants to follow them anyway, and quickly, despite having no clue what the consequences will be. It sounds good and is likely to attract votes from a cohort that National has difficulty attracting. Surely waiting a bit would have some value.
Labour also has a proposed bill in the biscuit tin. That one suggests following the UK’s example rather than Australia’s. It has the support of 34 Labour MPs.
The UK’s approach differs from Australia’s. Australia will levy penalties on internet companies if they let under-16s set up accounts. The UK’s levies penalties on online content providers if they do not do enough to prevent minors from seeing material that might be harmful.
There are an awful lot of awful things on the Internet to be sure. But the consequence in the UK has been that even Wikipedia now requires Brits to upload their ID if they want to read some of its articles. As the UK legislation took effect, Brits downloaded VPNs to pretend to be in countries that did not have these restrictions. And now the UK is looking to ban VPNs.
Not all systems require showing your ID. Some verification methods try to guess your age from a selfie, or from a short video of yourself. It will be very fun to see which New Zealand MPs who vote for these legislative atrocities wind up having their selfie granting access to dodgy porn sites hacked and released on the internet for all to enjoy.
There are terrible things online that children should not see. But the regimes proposed by both National and Labour will have terrible consequences for adults’ freedom of speech and privacy. They set a path towards everyone expecting to have to provide ID to do things online. Important bulwarks for freedom will be lost.
I think every way of trying to keep kids off of internet sites winds up suffering from at least one of the following three problems. It will either be easily worked around by kids, very cumbersome for adults, or devastating for online anonymity and privacy. I expect a terrible mix of all three.
It has been suggested that the government’s coming ‘digital wallet’ with online ID could verify age without compromising privacy.
Let’s think about that for a minute. You log onto a new version of RealMe. It confirms that you are over the age limit to whichever other app you may have open, without telling that app who you are. That would provide privacy. But it would also mean that a 17 year old could log into RealMe on their 15 year old friend’s phone, then let their friend use that to log into their social media account. It would be easily worked around.
Avoiding that would require frequent verification challenges, to make it harder for kids relying on a friend’s account. That would be very cumbersome for adults.
The last alternative? The platform would verify your actual identity without anonymity. Hard to work around, a one-time burden for adult users, and a nightmare for privacy.
Meanwhile, it is already entirely possible for parents to use Google’s Family Link, or Apple’s equivalent, to limit their children’s access to social media apps – whether blocking them entirely, or setting time limits. Parents know their kids better than Parliament does.
I wish Parliament, and voters, would think a little bit harder about what they’re wishing for.
To read the full article on the Newsroom website, click here.