Facebook And Instagram Will Require Parental Permission For Australian Children Under 16

Australian children under 16 will need parental consent to sign up for social media apps under proposed new laws.

Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, OnlyFans, Bumble, WhatsApp and even Zoom would all fall under the new requirements.

The companies must take all responsible measures to establish a user’s age and ensure a child’s parent has given consent.

Facebook and Instagram already require users to be over 13 in Australia and use artificial intelligence to determine their age.

Social media giants will face increased penalties of up to $10 million for infringing the rules, up from the current maximum of $2 million.

The changes were outlined in an exposure draft of new legislation released on Monday by Attorney General Michaelia Cash.

The new law aims to prevent children’s data from being shared without permission, and the draft legislation said that privacy practices of online platforms could be harmful to children and vulnerable persons, including sharing data for advertising purposes or engaging in harmful tracking, profiling, or targeted marketing.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher told Parliament on Tuesday the online privacy code would strengthen protections for children and other groups of vulnerable users, and he said that they’re being pretty clear in their requirements on the social media platforms under the code, and they will be expected to take all reasonable measures to establish the age of users to take more prudent steps to verify parental or guardian consent for children under the age of 16 years old.

As well as social media services, the code will install new rules for data brokers and other large online operators with more than 2.5 million Australian users such as Amazon, Google and Apple.

The code will enable users to demand their data be kept from any third parties.

The draft legislation said that a person may wish to use this when, for example, they don’t want an organisation to disclose their personal information for direct marketing. However, the law wouldn’t give users the right to demand their data to be erased.

The proposed law is a response to the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal in March 2018.

The British consulting firm used the personal data of millions of Facebook users to target political advertisements.

Mia Garlick, Director of Public Policy for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, said Facebook was still reviewing the proposal.

It comes as Facebook endured a blizzard of criticism after former employee Frances Haugen leaked internal studies showing the company knew of possible harm stoked by its sites, urging US lawmakers to renew a push for regulation.

Of course, like everything else, kids will eventually know how to bypass this, and is this really about protecting children, or is it to ensure that every person using the internet has a digital ID that shadows their every move?

All around the world every government is moving in the same direction, while forcing us all to conduct all of our banking, work-life, booking events, literally everything online, and all of this requires ID verification.

However, social media is toxic to children and yet we allow it to happen, but the theory is a great idea, but the reality is that a 14-year-old is going to be able to get around this if they want to. I believe that children should be allowed to be children as long as possible, but of course, we all insist on giving our children mobile phones and computers so that they can access the internet without surveillance.