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Australia’s e-Karen continues to beclown herself and demonstrate beyond all doubt the autocratic arrogance of the censorious left. This is, after all, the unelected bureaucrat who not only deliberately exceeded her lawful authority to deceitfully trick X into removing perfectly legal posts. And then had the chutzpah to tell a court that she was effectively above the law. By acting outside her statutory powers, she unsuccessfully tried to argue she “could evade judicial scrutiny”.
With this sort of mindset, it should surprise no one that the e-Karen refuses to admit that her ‘teen social-media ban’ has been a monumental failure. Anecdotal claims are that less than 10 per cent of teenagers were ever actually banned. Even the government admits that less than half of underage Instagram and Snapchat users had their accounts deleted – and it’s almost certain that most of those simply created new accounts with easily faked credentials.
So, what’s an e-Karen to do? Admit that her whole job is a sick joke? Or double down?
Big surprise: she’s taking the Principal Skinner approach.
Australia’s online safety watchdog has accused five major social media sites of failing to do enough to prevent children from accessing their platforms, launching investigations into potential breaches of the Albanese government’s under-16 ban.
Nearly four months after the world-first restrictions took effect, the eSafety Commission is probing Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube over “potential non-compliance” with rules requiring platforms to prevent under-16s from creating or holding accounts.
Because that is a whole lot easier than admitting it was all a stupidly non-workable idea in the first place.
At least, without implementing a universal digital ID. But surely that couldn’t be the case. I mean, it’s not like the government to use ‘But think of the children!’ as a sleazy excuse to foist draconian surveillance laws on the rest of us.
I mean, I have no doubt that social media companies like Meta are less than interested in enforcing bans on under-16s. After all, they’re one of their most profitable demographics. But that doesn’t mean that Labor’s laws aren’t a ridiculous overreach, doomed to fail.
Unless, of course, they make the laws even harsher – which is clearly the end-game.
The announcement comes as the commission on Tuesday will release its first compliance report into the new laws, which finds that while some progress has been made in removing accounts, “major gaps” persist with some platforms adopting a number of “poor practices” […]
As a result, [Julie Inman Grant] said the regulator had now shifted to an “enforcement stance”, and would seek to gather sufficient evidence to determine whether platforms had failed to implement “appropriate systems and processes”.
Aaandddd… there it is…
Meanwhile, the government are trying desperately to baffle us with bullshit.
News that social media platforms now face investigation come despite repeated claims from the government that the ban was already delivering results. In mid-January, Communications Minister Anika Wells released figures showing 4.7 million teen accounts had been expunged in the month since the ban took effect on December 10.
And those were just the ones that passed on news of her grotesque plundering of public funds in order for her and her family to whoop it up at a string of big events.
Industry sources have also privately questioned the figures lauded by the government, and overstated the effectiveness of the restrictions, arguing they overstate the policy’s effectiveness by counting duplicate and dormant accounts among those removed.
The commission’s fresh compliance report follows a landmark US ruling last week that found Facebook parent Meta and YouTube’s Google liable for social media addiction and harm linked to use of their platforms.
And that is how it should work. If it can be demonstrated that these companies, like Big Tobacco, knowingly allowed harm from their products, then they should be held accountable by courts.
Orwellian, nanny-state surveillance laws are entirely the wrong way to go about. And this is why, of course, socialists like Albanese are so gung-ho for them.
