Social media ban 'isn't working', $100m AI war chest and Bickert steps down
Hello and welcome to Everything in Moderation's Week in Review, your need-to-know news and analysis about platform policy, content moderation and internet regulation. It's written by me, Ben Whitelaw and supported by paid members like you.
Becoming a paid EiM member supports independent coverage of the T&S industry at a time when it's most needed and gets you unfettered access to EiM's archive of 450+ editions.
Lawmakers like to make out that online speech regulation is straightforward. This week, even more so than others before it, suggests otherwise. Whether it’s Australia or the EU, it’s trade-offs and sadness all the way down.
This week’s Ctrl-Alt-Speech — Age Old Questions — gets into the weeds of those stories and a few more covered in today’s Week in Review. Get it wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review if you haven’t already.
Welcome to new EiM subscribers from Zevo Health, Automattic, Askmiso, Asia For Animals, Electronic Arts, Coimisiún na Meán, the Internet Watch Foundation and other discerning independent media consumers. This is your Week in Review — BW
Policies
New and emerging internet policy and online speech regulation
A new report from the eSafety Commission shows that Australia’s under-16 social media ban is, to put it mildly, not going 100% to plan. Despite having removed 4.7m accounts across the 10 platforms in scope, the report suggests significant numbers of children are still able to access restricted platforms — something that media reporting has highlighted since the ban went into place on 10th December last year. The regulator said it will now scrutinise how five platforms — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snap and YouTube — have implemented measures to keep children safe, with the view to announcing enforcement action "by the summer". Crikey has more.
Evidence gaps: Using 2014 population data, 4.7m accounts works out at roughly three per person; that's a number that will appeal to parents and child safety advocates. However, because the report relies heavily on a survey of 900 parents, the eSafety Commission can't be fully confident about the scale of the circumvention or how representative the problem is. As I said on the podcast, it all feels a little exceptional while analysis in The Guardian recommends that "other countries... consider waiting for more data on the effectiveness of the ban" before moving ahead.