Social media companies to monitor your location if you use a VPN!
Earlier this week I asked the government how they intend to track the age of a person if they use a VPN.
Incredibly the department suggested that if someone uses a VPN to sign up, then the social media companies would be expected to check their posts on social media to see if they’re actually based where the VPN says they are.
How is this not surveillance?
Around one in three Australians use VPNs. It’s impossible for social media companies to track that many people.
This bill is completely unworkable and clearly requires social media companies to undertake surveillance on behalf of the government.
Environment and Communications Legislation Committee
25/11/2024
Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024
Senator RENNICK: What about VPNs? About 1½ billion people in the world have a VPN. Is this particular legislation going to be able to cope with VPNs?
Mr Irwin : That will partly go to the ‘reasonable steps’ requirement that the platforms are required to take, as we discussed before. Like it or not, people put a lot of information on a platform. When you post a photo, typically the photo is geotagged. You may also talk about the location you are in. So the obligation is on the platforms to have systems to take reasonable steps to check that age-restricted users are under 16. So it’s a binary: is this person under or over 16? There is no other information. That’s what it’s looking at.
In terms of the steps, if someone is using a VPN, but over the course of a year their posts are, ‘I went to the Bulldogs-Roosters match today,’ or ‘I’m at Bondi Beach today,’ then the platform will be able to see that and take reasonable steps to at least require some other form of age assurance from that person, because there is a reasonable assumption that that person is in Sydney, for example.
Senator RENNICK: Okay. I sort of call that a form of surveillance—
CHAIR: We’ll get you to wrap up, Senator Rennick.
Mr Irwin : I’d just point out that people put that data on platforms voluntarily—
Senator RENNICK: But isn’t this going to cost the platforms a lot of money so that in the end they’re going to start on-charging this?
Mr Chisholm : The charging that happens with social media is through advertising. That’s how they make their money. The point that Mr Irwin is making is that the existence of a VPN, or the use of a VPN, does not let platforms off the hook in relation to the age requirement.
