Mark Riley: Families of teen victims call for tougher laws as government focuses on age, not algorithms

West Australian

2 days ago

Some people we meet look into our eyes, and we see them.
Others do it in a way that allows us to see right into the very heart of them.
Robb Evans, Emma Mason and Mia Bannister did that on Wednesday morning as they sat in the Prime Minister's suite at Parliament House, waiting to take part in an announcement they hoped would prevent the eyes of other parents from becoming windows to the boundless agony of losing a child.
Robb Evans carried that pain with him as he cradled an urn containing the ashes of his daughter, Liv.
She died of anorexia in April 2023. She was 15.
It was important to Robb that Liv was there at that moment.
Emma Mason's daughter, Tilly, and Mia Bannister's son, Ollie, were there in spirit, too.
Anthony Albanese and Communications Minister Anika Wells could see them in their mothers' eyes.
Tilly and Ollie both took their own lives. Tilly died in February 2022. She, like Liv, was 15. Ollie died in January 2024. He was just 14.
All three teenagers had suffered through years of online torment and abuse.
For those of us huddled against the Canberra cold in the Prime Minister's courtyard that morning, their presence could be felt as the next phase of the Government's social media ban for under-16s was laid out.
It is far from perfect. Its impact will be real. But it will be limited. Kids, being kids, will get around it.
But it tells social media giants that Australian legislators are determined to force them to accept responsibility for the vile, misleading and downright dangerous content their algorithms spew before susceptible young minds.
Most of the companies say the right things. But they appear to do little. That's principally because governments have not yet found a way to hold them legally responsible for the treacherous rubbish their sites publish and broadcast.
Scott Morrison tried. He proposed anti-trolling laws in 2021, partially as a response to the supercharged torrent of online abuse that flooded social media during COVID.
Despite attracting the in-principle support of world leaders at various international forums, his domestic push failed.
The intention was laudable. The legislation, though, was deeply flawed.
Lawyers warned it would undermine existing defamation laws, human rights advocates said it would impinge on individual freedoms and eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant cautioned that it would be impossible to 'arrest or regulate our way out of online abuse'.
So, legislators went back to the drawing board and came up with the under-16s ban.
It is hailed as a world-first piece of legislation. The fact that the social giants dislike it so much probably tells us that it will have some impact.
And it brings some relief to the hearts of grieving parents.
'Ollie, Tilly and Liv. Their lives mattered,' Mia Bannister declared.
It was a deeply touching moment.
But I and others were struck by the penetrating feeling that Ollie, Tilly and Liv deserved something more.
This reform only treats one side of the issue.
The ban is on children, not the content.
The legislation threatens the media giants with fines of up to $50 million if they allow under-16s to operate accounts.
The objective is to let kids access social media only in a logged-off state so the algorithms can't curate a dangerous diet of content based on their profiles.
But it doesn't stop that content from being published or broadcast in the first place. Nor does it stop the kids from finding it without having to log in.
We stop 15-year-olds from using assault rifles by banning the kids and the guns.
But we don't do that online, where words are too often used as weapons.
Any mainstream media outlet that published or broadcast such dangerous content would be put straight up before the regulators and the courts and face having its operating license ripped up. Quite rightly.
But social media sites publish and broadcast this dangerous rubbish every second with apparent impunity.
I asked Anika Wells when governments would stop the platforms from allowing this stuff to be posted in the first place.
She said that question was 'ultimately one for the social media platforms to answer'.
But it's not. It is for governments.
And until governments find that answer, ministers and prime ministers and the rest of us will continue to look through the eyes of shattered parents and into the misery of broken hearts that will never mend.
Mark Riley is the Seven Network's political editor