The Australian Government’s Social Media Minimum Age laws come into effect in just over a month (Five weeks), and today the Minister for Communications has named specific platforms that have been deemed to be “age restricted social media platforms” with a couple of surprises.
Companies and platforms are not specifically named in the legislation, nor are they named in the eSafety Comissioners advice to the Minister. Only YouTube has ever been specifically mentioned due to the controversial early exemption that was mooted by the previous minister.
Today’s listing is no surprise to some platforms, but many users will be shocked by two inclusions in the list – Reddit and Kick.
eSafety has used the assessment criteria to recommend Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, X, Reddit and Kick all be listed as age-restricted social media platforms.
No arguments from me on the first six.
Reddit is an interesting one, as on the face of it you might say it’s a link sharing platform, but when you compare X to Reddit they are in fact quite similar, share a link, and comments flow. People engage in the comments and those comments can continue and go in any direction. Perhaps more worryingly for parents and something they might not know is the sheer amount of pornography on Reddit, though that has nothing to do with this Social Media ban, nor the assessment of Reddit as being included.
Kick though is another issue. Kick is a video streaming platform, primarily used by gamers to live stream their gameplay to fans, or in fact anyone can live stream anything they like.
Users can watch, comment, donate, and the streamers earn money for their time streaming based on a share of advertising revenue.
This raises two distinct questions for me.
Firstly, how is Kick included and not Twitch. They are near identical sites and services, Kick being the upstart newcomer taking business an streamers from Twitch in a different revenue sharing model. But on the face of it, they are like for like.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, how is Kick a social media platform? How? Ok, live streaming is like posting content, comments are like replies, but its far less “social” and more “broadcast” in the traditional sense. A very tight and quite controversial ruling.
For those that don’t know, here is the eSafety Commissioner’s own “flow chart” for self assessment by platforms to determine if they fall under the regulations and need to implement age verification processes.
At the same time as announcing those nine included platforms, eSafety has specifically listed nine others that are NOT considered to be required to be age-restricted. They are:
- Discord
- GitHub
- Google Classroom
- LEGO Play
- Messenger
- Roblox
- Steam and Steam Chat
- YouTube Kids
It’s good that we can define YouTube kids as excluded as that helps parents understand the difference in the platforms.
But how is Discord excluded? It’s a chat app that allows people to create groups, themes and topics and engage in discussion within it.
While Messaging is “excluded” from the ban, and thus Messenger and WhatsApp are allowed, Discord is more “chat” than “messaging” and thus comes very, very close to the borderline of assessment here.
The grey and non-specific nature of this legislation was always going to result in confusion.
Perhaps the bigger issue is how and when parents and teens will become aware of all this, because they’re not all watching media coverage or reading ministerial press releases.
Trev is a Technology Commentator, Dad, Speaker and Rev Head.
He produces and hosts two popular podcasts, EFTM and Two Blokes Talking Tech. He also appears on over 50 radio stations across Australia weekly, and is the resident Tech Expert on Channel 9’s Today Show each day and appears regularly on A Current Affair.
Father of three, he is often found down in his Man Cave.
