Movement Director Melinda Tankard Reist addressed the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society this week, arguing in support of age verification for social media platforms. Our participation in the inquiry attracted national media coverage – you can read some highlights below.
The Australian
“We’re not saying that will create safe platforms,” Collective Shout’s Melinda Tankard Reist said. “The platforms will still be dangerous or unsafe. But the fact is that any year of delay will reduce harm and minimise harm. This is one lever, we need to use every lever at our disposal.”
She outlined a number of risks social media posed to children including being “served up to predators through Instagram’s algorithms which curate sexual content for them”, viewing suicide-instruction videos, and growing numbers of boys at risk of sextortion through sexual predators pretending to be hot young women.
Yahoo
Collective Shout, which campaigns against the sexualisation of girls, told the inquiry age verification should one of multiple measures used to keep children safe online.
Its director Melinda Tankard Reist said social media companies had failed in their responsibility to protect users.
“This is one lever, we need to use every lever at our disposal … let’s try everything, throw everything we can at this to limit the damage that is being done, especially to vulnerable children and young people,” she said.
“If these were standard brick and mortar buildings, they’d be shut down by now, it seems that they have been able to do anything they want.”
Ms Tankard Reist took aim at social media platforms enabling adult and sexualised content being offered to young people online.
“Too much responsibility is placed on young people to monitor their own safety online and that onus should be on big tech and social media companies,” she said.
NT News
Social media giants do not care about ethics as young people are subject to an onslaught of sexploitation, an Australian campaigner says.
“These companies don’t respond to ethics,” Collective Shout director Melinda Tankard Reist told the inquiry on Wednesday.
“They only care about the bottom line … they don’t care that they’ve moved to encryption, and police are saying they won’t be able to detect upwards of 90 per cent of the child exploitation material that is now being shared.”
Ms Tankard Reist is the director of Collective Shout, an organisation determined to end the objectification of women and the sexualisation of girls.
“These companies don’t even enforce their own terms and conditions,” Ms Tankard Reist said.
“Instagram for example should be forced to change its settings so that men can’t comment on how they would like to rape little girls, which is happening as we speak. These comments are not removed, they are not taken down.”
Trafficking, predation, sexploitation and grooming are prevalent on the “anti-social media” tech platforms which have committed “social arson”, she said.
TikTok promotes whipping, sadism and choking, including choking challenges which have killed people, the campaigner said.
At least five Australian boys have ended their lives due to sextortion scams, after being blackmailed by who they had thought were “hot young women”.
Consensual-non-consent or “rape play” is a popular tag on TikTok, she says.
Thirteen-year-old Australian girls “tell me they are regularly” sent live masturbation videos on Snapchat, Ms Tankard Reist said.
‘Tribute’ videos of men and boys masturbating to specific girls are not taken down off X, she said.
“Their products are not safe for children. Not safe for minors.”
Collective Shout wants a 16-years-of-age limit for social media, and 18 years for porn and gambling sites.
“(Age verification) doesn’t have to be bulletproof to be worthwhile. Children can still get alcohol and cigarettes, but we don’t sell it to them over the counter.”
The social media companies needed to face fines, for hosting exploitative material, which were commensurate with their huge revenues and global reach, Ms Tankard Reist said.
“This is beyond any one country on its own. It’s too big, it’s too monolithic.”
The Guardian
Organisations focused on child safety, eating disorders, and women’s rights are divided on whether age assurance for social media will be effective, and whether access should be restricted to those 16 and over.
Collective Shout, Eating Disorders Families Australia and the Daniel Morcombe Foundation speaking to the federal parliament’s social media inquiry all supported the move to ban children under 16 from accessing social media, but the Butterfly Foundation, the Alannah and Madeline Foundation and Dolly’s Dream all expressed reservations about whether it would be effective and not cause more harm.
Collective Shout movement director, Melinda Tankard Reist, said it was risk reduction and that bringing it in would incentivise the technology sector to invest and make it work:
“We believe that if we implement age assurance technologies and if we can delay access to these social media platforms, you’ll have less children being exposed to porn, to predators, to harmful online content, to bullying, [and] every year of delay means more cognitive development, more maturity and more ability to withstand the harmful elements of these products, which has been shown, are not safe for children in their current form.”
Seymour Telegraph
Social media companies fail in their responsibility to protect children from online harm, says a safety advocate renewing calls for age verification.
Mandatory and enforced measures such as age verification are a way to crack down on platforms over online safety, a parliamentary inquiry into social media's impact has been told.
"This is one lever we need to use every lever at our disposal ... let's try everything, throw everything we can at this to limit the damage that is being done, especially to vulnerable children and young people," Collective Shout director Melinda Tankard Reist told the inquiry on Wednesday.
The inquiry has also been told "digital architecture" is more effective than age verification.
Young people's wellbeing needs to be put before big tech profits, said Ms Tankard Reist, whose group campaigns against the sexualisation of girls.
The industry has shown itself not to be a responsible corporate citizen, she told the inquiry.
"If these were standard brick and mortar buildings, they'd be shut down by now, it seems that they have been able to do anything they want."
Ms Tankard Reist took aim at social media platforms enabling adult and sexualised content being offered to young people online.
"Too much responsibility is placed on young people to monitor their own safety online, and that the onus should be on big tech and social media companies," she said.
You can watch video or read transcripts of the public hearings here.
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