Australia nears social media ban for children after heated debate

By Renju Jose and Byron Kaye

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia moved closer on Wednesday to banning social media for children under 16 after the parliament’s lower house passed a bill even as Alphabet’s Google and Facebook-owner Meta pressed the government to delay the legislation.

Marking some of the toughest social media controls in the world, Australia’s House of Representatives passed the bill 102 votes to 13 after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s centre-left Labor government secured bipartisan support for the ban.

The Senate is expected to debate the bill later on Wednesday, with the government keen to ensure it is passed by the end of the parliamentary year on Thursday.

Albanese, trying to lift his approval ratings ahead of an election expected in May, has argued that excessive use of social media poses risks to the physical and mental health of children and is looking for support from parents.

The planned law would force social media platforms to take reasonable steps to ensure age-verification protections are in place. Companies could be fined up to A$49.5 million ($32 million) for systemic breaches.

Australia plans to trial an age-verification system that may include biometrics or government identification to enforce the ban.

A Senate committee backed the bill this week, but also inserted a condition that social media platforms should not force users to submit personal data such as passport and other digital identification to prove their age.

The committee added that the government must “meaningfully engage” with youth when framing the law.

“Young people, and in particular diverse cohorts, must be at the centre of the conversation as an age restriction is implemented to ensure there are constructive pathways for connection,” committee Chair Senator Karen Grogan said.

In submissions to parliament, Google and Meta said the ban should be delayed until the age-verification trial finishes, expected in mid-2025. Bytedance’s TikTok said the bill needed more consultation, while Elon Musk’s X said the proposed law might hurt children’s human rights.

IMPACT ON FAMILIES

The ban was first announced during an emotionally charged parliamentary inquiry into social media, which included testimony from parents of children who had self-harmed due to cyber bullying.

It has fuelled vigorous debate with youth advocates arguing it robs children of a voice and parent groups saying under-16s are too young to navigate the digital world.

Teenagers have said the law could cut them off from their most important social and family connections, arguing a ban is not the solution.

“I understand that using social media a lot is not a good thing and I’m working on it,” said Sydney high-school student Enie Lam, 16. “But a ban is not going to work,” she said.

Albanese’s party, which does not control the Senate, won crucial support from the opposition conservatives for the bill, but has failed to win over the left-leaning Greens and some far-right lawmakers on civil liberties and privacy grounds.

One conservative lower house member broke from their party and voted against the bill on Wednesday, a rare event in Australian politics, and two conservative senators said they also would vote against it, arguing the law should be delayed until the age-verification trial was complete.

Even the Australian Human Rights Commission, an independent statutory authority, opposed the ban saying it violated children’s rights to self-expression and to participate in society.

Still, polling shows public support overwhelmingly in favour of the move. A YouGov survey released this week showed 77% of Australians backed the ban, up from 61% in August.

Australian media, from the publicly owned Australian Broadcasting Corp to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, also support the ban. An editorial campaign by News Corp, the country’s biggest newspaper publisher, pushed for the ban under the banner “Let Them Be Kids”.

“Our members feel that this is one of the biggest issues impacting on themselves and their families at the moment,” said Jenny Branch-Allen, president of the Australian Parents Council, an advocacy group.

“Big companies have to start taking responsibility. Let’s try and reduce the incidents we’re hearing involved with social media and young people in Australia.”

($1 = 1.5451 Australian dollars)

Ekwutosblog has gathered that the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has directed electricity distribution companies (DisCos) to replace obsolete meters for their customers at no cost.

The mandate was outlined in a statement released by the regulatory body’s management on Monday.

The directive came after some electricity companies required customers to replace Unistar brand prepaid meters.

Following the directive, Ikeja Electric Distribution Company (IKEDC) and the Eko Electric Distribution Company (EKEDC) announced that the Unistar prepaid meters which were first deployed over 10 years ago, would no longer be supported from November 14, due to technological upgrades and the token identifier (TID) rollover issue.

NERC emphasised that the cost of meter replacement falls solely on the distribution companies and reiterated that no customer should be subjected to estimated billing.

“The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission is aware that some Distribution Companies (DisCos) have instructed customers to apply and pay for the replacement of faulty and obsolete meters within their franchise areas.

Kindly follow Ekwutosblog for verified News and Current Affairs in addition to insightful contents that inform, inspire, educate and entertain you always.

Liberal-leaning social media site Bluesky has crashed as two million new users joined after Twitter owner Elon Musk was named to Donald Trump‘s cabinet.

Developers warned the site was likely to act up on Thursday, though they didn’t single out the massive influx of Twitter refugees as the cause.

Samuel Newman said Bluesky was in read-only mode temporarily ‘because something fell over’ – and once it was restored it was still slow.

‘Today will get interesting! If the site goes down, maybe grab a soda, pet the kitty. We’ll hit it with a wrench as fast as we can,’ his coleague Paul Frazee wrote.

Frazee warned users they could expect posts and links to look like they didn’t work or weren’t posted because the site was loading slowly.

More than a million users signed up to Bluesky since Trump named Musk the co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency on Tuesday.

Trump said that Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would ‘dismantle’ the $6.5 trillion federal government by co-leading the ‘Manhattan Project of our time’.

About 2.1 million signed up and the number of active users doubled since November 6, when Vice President Kamala Harris conceded the election to Trump.

Twitter, now branded as X, boasted it attracted more US visitors than ever on the same day, as Trump fans celebrated.

Yet it also saw 115,000 American users deactivate, a record daily high under Musk’s tenure.

Bluesky is almost visually indistinguishable from X, with its logo being a butterfly in an identical shade of blue to the former Twitter bird.

It was originally created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey in 2019 and grew after Musk’s acquisition of the social media giant.

Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, also launced Threads last year, which is far bigger with 15 million new accounts this month alone – as many as the total number of Bluesky users.

Both are seen as having liberal-leaning userbases that can seem like left-wing echo chambers due to algorithms.

Conversely, Twitter lurched to the right since Musk bought it, as those on the left steadily left or stopped using it in favor of Threads or nothing.

Outraged over Musk‘s support and promotion of Trump, record numbers fled the Tesla tycoon’s social media platform, including the singer Lizzo, who jokingly nicknamed the switch to Bluesky ‘the great migration’.

Bluesky has topped the iPhone App store rankings, well ahead of X in 25th place

The Guardian also said it would no longer post on the ‘toxic’ site in the wake of the November 5 result, complaining about how Musk used Twitter’s ‘influence to shape political discourse’.

The left-leaning newpaper’s boycott also cited the ‘often disturbing content’ such as ‘far-right conspiracy theories and racism’.

Bluesky on Wednesday shot to the top spot in the iPhone App Store – ahead of Meta‘s X/Twitter competitor Threads, ChatGPT, and Google.

Meanwhile, X sits 25th in the free app rankings, behind McDonald’s, Facebook, YouTube, Indeed, and Amazon.

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