On December 10th, the Australian government launched its “world-first” social media ban for under-16s. Sold as an initiative to rescue vulnerable kids from the clutches of Big Tech, in reality, it is a mass-surveillance program aimed at adult users that will have long-term impacts on free speech.

The law requires an ad hoc list of 10 major platforms to verify that all users in Australia are 16 years of age or older. That means ID-ing grandma and grandpa and mum and dad just as much as your 12-year-old kid. It does this in three ways:

• Through government-issued identity documents (such as uploading your passport or driver’s license)

• Through facial recognition (using your camera to scan your face)

• Or through AI-driven profiling – monitoring your online behaviour, such as what you post, pages you visit, etc.

As a result, users are required to handover even more sensitive data to companies whose key business model is mining people’s personal information for profit. Australia has seen a slew of hacks and privacy breaches in recent years, and such data would be a bonanza to any foreign adversary. One of Australia’s human rights commissioners recently noted that “just last month, a data breach at Discord exposed copies of government identification documents collected for age verification. More than 68,000 Australians were affected.” And the digital gating is unlikely to stop at just ten sites, and as people get around the ban, new restrictions and sentry posts will spring up across the internet.

In addition to the extra surveillance, the legislation doesn’t change the nature of the platforms themselves, such as addictive infinite scrolling. Things could have been done to make the platforms better for everyone, but that isn’t what the legislation does.

The impact on adults has been played down, with the emphasis placed instead on horror stories of teenagers who have suffered from online bullying and, on occasion, taken their lives, the implication being that social media was the main cause of the suicide or self-harm, despite the obviously complex situation involved in every such tragedy. Surely such bullying leaves digital traces – could those bullies not be held accountable? Collective punishment is much more to the government’s liking.

The legislation also ignores that people who are bullied use social media to find support and build community.

Much of the government’s intellectual ammunition is drawn from supposedly heterodox hero Jonathan Haidt, who played a key role in the ban, advising government officials and turning up to a key UN General Assembly lobbying effort where access to heads of state was available for just 150k AUD a pop.

Haidt has written, “Is it unreasonable for companies to check that the person signing a contract is old enough to sign a contract?” For Haidt, de-anonymising social media and handing them even more data is no big deal. Despite Haidt railing against a culture of “coddling”, the teen social media ban is the ultimate in safetyism, with the boot of the State to back it up. Australians already live in a deeply over-regulated society where citizens are increasingly infantilised by government. The State now sees itself as co-parent (or chief guardian) of all the nation’s children.

Unfortunately, Australians are highly primed for these kinds of safetyist efforts, having led the world in public health efforts from seat-belts to anti-smoking to littering. Hardly a bad thing, but the teen social media ban is a key example of where technocratic social engineering can go too far. Australia’s Covid response is the prime example of how this logic can spin out of control, however in the eyes of the majority of Australians, there was no government overreach in the Covid period. The lesson our governing class learned is that Australians can’t be regulated enough, so why not try a social media ban.

Australia’s Murdoch press was a key driver of social panic, turning its newspapers and Nova radio (wholly owned by Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch) into government propaganda. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Murdoch’s “Let them be kids” campaign “the most powerful use of print media I have seen for a very long period of time.” I question whether Murdoch’s main concern is children’s mental health. The same goes for the Labour and Liberal parties, who both supported the ban and, during Covid, closed schools and confined low-risk teenagers at home, driving them further online.

The bill is a gift to legacy media, which have put a dent in the profit margins of their Big Tech rivals. In turn, legacy media are spruiking the government’s achievement. That the largest media company in the country acted as the main promoter of government policy rather than a check on it is, in itself, scandalous.

The Guardian also largely celebrated the bill and fawned over American-Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant who led the “battle” against Big Tech. But the righteous movement to hold Big Tech accountable has here been hacked by Big Gov. For a less celebratory backgrounder, you can read my take on Inman Grant.

To its credit, Crikey has been writing critically about the bill for some time, including releasing leaked documents from UN General Assembly lobbying efforts led by corporate campaigners, as well as from 36 Months, another key astroturfed effort that helped pass the bill. Crikey also revealed that 36 Months co-founders produced gambling ads, because nothing says you care about kids more than trying to get their parents addicted to gambling.

The adult internet identification legislation follows last year’s defeat of the wildly unpopular mis/disinformation legislation. The teen social media ban has proved to be a more resilient tool for social panic, ultimately advancing the same agenda, making Big Gov and their legacy media partners top dog again in the information domain and mitigating popular dissent.

While the legislation is now live, the game is still in play, not just because its effective implementation is so dubious, but because the bigger game is to export it to dozens of countries around the world, including the EU. President von der Leyen has praised the laws, and some U.S. Republicans and Democrats are now echoing their support.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said the legislation was “the moment that sparked a movement” and Prime Minister Albanese made Australia’s imperial ambitious still clearer: “The world will follow like nations once followed our lead on plain tobacco packaging, gun reform, water and sun safety. How can you not follow a country with clearly prioritising teen safety ahead of tech profits?” Inman Grant however spent most of her career enjoying those same “tech profits” while in highly paid roles at Adobe, Microsoft and Twitter.

One upside is that many progressives opposed the bill and are learning that authoritarianism exists across the spectrum—that concepts like “protection” and “care” can be weaponised for control. The Australian Greens and right-populist One Nation both consistently opposed the bill. It exemplifies uniparty authoritarian centrism, with support from both the centre-left and centre-right.

With that in mind, I’d encourage as much civil disobedience as possible: get a VPN if you haven’t already, and refuse government checks when possible. Making these measures difficult and politically costly discourages other countries from adopting them. For example, today, Reddit is challenging the ban in the High Court, and other platforms are following suit.

Kicked out of the digital mall, the kids will now hit the back alleys where they are more likely to encounter dangers. The authorities are no doubt very ready for a game of wack-a-mole and will use any non-compliance to add more platforms, more ID requirements and collect more data, but friction in the system is still good as it limits the likelihood that others will take up this draconian approach.

Supposedly our only options were Big Tech or Big Gov — Cowboys versus Karens. But alternatives exist: changes in when or if phones can be brought to school, cultural shifts in smartphone timing for kids, and more browser or ISP-level controls, to say nothing of Big Tech reforming its addictive algorithms for everyone. Perhaps we could try some technology enabled solutions instead of having a Chinese-style internet with Australian characteristics imposed on us.

My main hope is that this will inspire a new generation of tech-savvy kids (and adult citizens) to stick it to the eKarens and launch a new wave of free speech and digital civil liberties activism. We defeated the misinformation bill, and the fight against Big Gov’s new surveillance state is far from over.