Source: Australian Ministers 1
MINISTER FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND SPORT, ANIKA WELLS: Good morning, everybody. The eSafety Commissioner and I have just finished briefing the state and territory Education Ministers on the social media minimum age laws and our broader work in online safety. That work includes the minimum age law, digital literacy, digital duty of care, and work to restrict nudify apps in Australia. With less than two months now until 10 December, we will continue to engage with teachers, students, children and parents because we want this law to be discussed openly and regularly in classrooms, on the drive to school and around kitchen tables when people eat together at night.
On Sunday, you will start seeing our national education campaign on televisions, on billboards, on radio and digital channels. We have hard copy information packs aimed at raising awareness about the upcoming changes. There are tailored versions that have been developed for remote and regional First Nations secondary schools, and language and religious secondary schools. We have digital information kits which provide in-depth information about how the social media minimum age laws will work. And today there is a suite of resources available on esafety.gov.au.
This law is happening. It is happening on 10 December and it will change lives. We want children to have childhoods. We want parents to have peace of mind and we want young people, young Australians to have three more years to learn who they are before platforms assume who they are.
So I’ll hand over to our eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to further detail the resources that have become available.
ESAFETY COMMISSIONER JULIE INMAN GRANT: Thank you. For those of you who have been on esafety.gov.au, you know it’s a rich repository of not just resources, but the ability for any Australian who’s experiencing online abuse, whether it’s cyberbullying or image-based abuse, whether they’re seeing horrific content or child sexual abuse material, that they can come to us and we have a very high success rate in terms of getting that content down and remediating harm in real time. The social media minimum age has been a topic of discussion for the past year and we’re so pleased after an extensive consultation with parents, with educators and children themselves, we have developed a whole new repository or suite of education materials to really help them navigate what these changes will look like.
We know this will be a very monumental event for a lot of young people. So some of the resources, to give you an example, for parents might include checklists but also conversation starters. What are the things that we need to do to talk to kids about where they’re seeing people now? If they’re following an influencer that we approve of, can they find them on a website? How do we start weaning them from social media now so it isn’t a shock on 10 December? How do we help them download their archives and their memories? And how do we make sure that they’re in touch with friends and are aware of mental health support if they’re feeling down when they’re not tethered to their phones over the holiday period?
I’d also like to thank Beyond Blue, headspace, ReachOut, Kids Helpline, and Raising Children because they’ve all provided us with tremendous support in terms of developing this content and making sure that we do have young Australians’ mental health and wellbeing front of mind.
So again, all of these resources are at esafety.gov.au. We encourage parents and educators to look at these, but also to sign up for our 43 webinars. We will be offering 43 free webinars that are tailored for lunchtimes or after dinner, and they will cover everything from adolescence and algorithms to being a young man online to issues like sextortion, cyberbullying, and other forms of harm that kids are experiencing today. But the huge focus will be on the social media minimum age and how to prepare for the social media delay.
I’d also add that this is not a static thing. We will continue to have a range of other deeper curricular materials available so that schools know at what ages and stages we need to prepare kids for building their digital resilience and critical reasoning skills at 13, at 14, and 15, so that when they do go back on social media they’re prepared with the skills they need to navigate that online world safely.
ANIKA WELLS: Thank you, we’re both happy to answer your questions.
JOURNALIST: Just to start with, this is obviously relevant today in relation to the deepfake images that police are investigating in Sydney. How far away is the government from implementing restrictions on nudify apps?
JULIE INMAN GRANT: Okay. So I would say we do have some tools available today, and the Minister will talk about additional tools that the government is considering. So deepfake image-based abuse is covered through our image-based abuse scheme and we have a 98 per cent success rate in terms of getting this down. I can say with that particular event in New South Wales our investigators are in touch with New South Wales Police as well as the Department of Education.
One of the things that we have done, because we are seeing deepfake image-based abuse incidents happening at least once a week in Australian schools, we’ve put out a deepfake image-based abuse incident management tool for schools. So they know when to go to police and then they know when to come to us to have the content taking down. I’d also say that we are taking some action today against some nudifying services, in this case against a company that probably makes some of the most popular undressing apps that are used by at least 100,000 people in Australia and we are just ramping up our investigation. They’re based in the UK and we’re working with our sister regulator Ofcom to take further action.
JOURNALIST: You mentioned that this is- reports are being made weekly, similar. Can you tell us roughly how many similar cases you’ve had reported?
JULIE INMAN GRANT: I mean, we’ve seen a doubling of deepfake image-based abuse reports to us over the past 18 months. So it’s still a small proportion of our overall image-based abuse reports. But I think it’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you look at what we’ve just seen over the past two weeks with the release of OpenAI’s Sora, which is an AI generated social media app where you’re converging the two and you’ll be able to harvest images of someone else and create a hyper realistic deepfake video in a matter of seconds, this is real cause for concern. This is really putting potential online harms on steroids.
JOURNALIST: Do you think social media and tech companies are doing enough to protect Australian children from exposure to this?
JULIE INMAN GRANT: I think they could do much more. Obviously, with the social media minimum age, there will be some really important structures in place to prevent children’s access to social media, and we’re using our transparency powers, our codes and standards, to make sure that we’re covering the broader technology sector up and down the stack. So questions have been asked about sites like 4chan. Why aren’t these being covered by the social media minimum age? It’s because we are targeting social media sites and where young people are. What our codes will be able to do is to tackle the worst of the worst sites.
JOURNALIST: Are there other countries who are tackling this in a way that Australia can look towards?
JULIE INMAN GRANT: I think Australia is leading, and frankly, they’re asking us about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it, and we’re continuing to have those conversations with our international counterparts.
JOURNALIST: Question for the Minister. So just your response to this story and also in relation to how far away is the government, do you think, from implementing restrictions?
ANIKA WELLS: Yeah, we just heard a lot of helpful things from the eSafety Commissioner about where eSafety is up to in this space. Additionally, the Albanese Government announced at the start of September that we’re looking at ways that we can restrict nudify apps across the country. You would be aware that different states and territories have already banned either the creation or distribution of these. We want to stop it before it starts. We want to move from an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff setting where as much as we do important and vigorous work, it’s always a case of whack-a-mole to a place where these things never reach the app store in the first place. So that is the work we’ve announced that we are doing from September, and we’ll continue to do it as quickly as we can.
JOURNALIST: On the social media ban, given we are less than two months away, don’t platforms need to know if they are or aren’t on the list in order to ensure they are ready for 10 December?
ANIKA WELLS: The most conspicuous and prolific apps are already aware whether they are or are not part of the ban. The eSafety Commissioner and I met with various platforms earlier this week and will continue to meet with platforms over the coming weeks on this particular question and to make sure that there are no excuses. Every question they have of us is answered so that come 10 December, this lands in the most meaningful way as possible. I have said a number of times, happy to say it again, we are not expecting perfection here, but we are expecting significant change. We are expecting a meaningful difference that will create cultural change across this country that will not just change a law, it will change a generation.
JOURNALIST: Just before we go back to the Commissioner, a question on Optus. Have you finalised a date with the telcos to host drills on Triple Zero calls?
ANIKA WELLS: Yes, we have.
JOURNALIST: For either of you, the Anti-Bullying Rapid Review is set to be unveiled today. How important will this be to tackling bullying in schools, particularly those in Far North Queensland, who has one of the highest rates of bullying in the country?
ANIKA WELLS: Yes. The eSafety Commissioner and I actually left the Education Ministers Meeting to come and speak with you when they were on the topic of the response to the bullying review. So I imagine that you will hear more in some form from the ministers once they have settled that response across the course of their day. Obviously, the eSafety Commissioner and I play an important role in response to the proliferation of bullying and the way that has changed from something that we might recognise, I’m dating myself here, as schoolyard bullying to something that happens on a supercomputer that comes with you in a pocket when you leave school and stays with you wherever you go. That means that bullying looks very different. But the work that we’re doing in both the social media minimum age laws to change how kids interact with each other online and where they can do that, in tandem with some of the work that the education ministers have already been doing, phone-free schools, the response to the national bullying that you’ll hear more from once they’ve said all that today – I think it’s all important work and we’ll keep on doing it.
JOURNALIST: So you mentioned the ministers will finish wrapping up, kind of, today. Do you know when the review will be made public?
ANIKA WELLS: That’s a question for the education ministers.
JOURNALIST: With the resources that are being rolled out, is any of it compulsory for students to do in school or something before 10 December?
ANIKA WELLS: I think what is compulsory is that everyone must comply with the law. But I think what we’re trying to do here is instill a sense of confidence and faith in parents and teachers that the onus here is not on parents, teachers, and schools to make the kids comply with the law. The onus is on the tech platforms to comply with Australian law. It is on the platforms, and we’ve made that very clear even this week in meetings with them. We expect them to provide notification to their users ahead of 10 December. We expect them to be able to assess for age and provide a notification to their users, we have assessed this account as likely belonging to someone under 16, so that people will know ahead of time. And also, an appeal right. So if there has been a case of mistaken identity or the age assurance tools have not proven 100 per cent effective – nothing is 100 per cent effective – there’s an appeal mechanism so that adults who may have been using Facebook peacefully for 15 years to sell their caravan continue to do that on 10 December and are not at all impacted by a social media minimum law affecting under-16s.
JOURNALIST: A couple of questions for the Commissioner again on the social media ban. Are you finalising a list of which platforms will be covered by the social media ban?
JULIE INMAN GRANT: We’re continuing to engage with a number of companies that have online social interaction as a sole or significant part of their platform. As you would understand, we have to give them fair due process when we’re considering these things. And so, and I’ve always said that this list will be a dynamic list. We’ll let you know when we’re ready to announce additional ones that are either on the list or have been exempted either through the messaging or online gaming exemption.
But again, this is a really hard exercise. We see services morphing. There is no bright line. All of these gaming companies are using messaging and social interaction and chat. Even messaging looks different than what we might traditionally think of a text. We’re seeing streaks and we’re broadcasting. We’re using video and imagery and filters. So, they’re morphing into very different experiences than the traditional definition of messaging.
JOURNALIST: Sure. So there’s not like a set date that you’re going to release?
JULIE INMAN GRANT: There’s not a set date, but it will be coming in the next couple of weeks. We need to give the public clarity, but we also need to ensure fairness in our assessments.
JOURNALIST: So it was mentioned that the larger platforms know whether they’re on it or not. What about smaller platforms? How can they plan if they don’t know whether they’re a part of the social media ban or not?
JULIE INMAN GRANT: Well, we’ve broadly sent out self-assessment tools. I do not have a specific declaratory power in the platform, and we’ve been very clear to industry broadly that it’s up to them to hire lawyers and to do the assessment to assess whether or not they’re in there. Obviously, we’re going to be focused on our compliance and enforcement efforts on where the preponderance of young people are. And with the six platforms that we provisionally announced last week, we will be capturing a number of those.
And I guess I’d also say that this is just one tool in a toolkit. As I mentioned, we’ve got transparency powers. We’ve got the complaint schemes. We’ve got codes and standards. All of these will work in tandem together. We also have our Safety by Design initiative of which the digital duty of care will pivot upon if you want to talk about that.
ANIKA WELLS: Just that it’s coming as part of the Albanese Government’s broader response to the Online Safety Act Review, and that it’s an important part of capturing what we consider to be a platform’s responsibility to their Australian users, their Australian customers, as they conduct their business online.