Censorship Creep Strikes Again: Australia to Ban Teens from Reddit, Kick

Age verification is growing in scope in Australia. This as Reddit and Kick is getting added to the list of platforms teens are banned from.

It seems like every prediction about age verification I made has pretty much come true. I warned that age verification would be a privacy and security disaster. That came true. I warned that age verification can be trivially defeated. That came true. I warned that governments would be surprised that these technologies can be trivially defeated and start expanding their censorship efforts to target these workarounds, causing even more collateral damage in the process. That process has already begun and is currently sitting in the discussion phase (let’s hope it stays there and doesn’t progress). What’s more, I warned that age verification has little to nothing to do with restricting youth’s access to “pornography” and is broadly going to be used as a censorship and surveillance tool as government expand well beyond websites that are deemed to be “pornographic” in nature. This has happened over and over and over and over and over and over again.

With respect to the latter point, as age verification gets added to more and more websites, not only is government demanding the ability to monitor the movements of users on more and more websites, but they are also taking away more and more places people can feel free to socialize and communicate with one another. That includes youth who have grown up with the internet being as ubiquitous as it is. This has damaging implications on so many levels as well which includes psychological and personal development.

Moreover, this censorship creep is continuing to expand. As the saying goes, when you get a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In this case, the government got its hands on a censorship hammer and is seeing every website as a nail. Recent reports say that Australia is expanding its social media ban list to include Reddit and online streaming platform, Kick. From Engadget:

Reddit won’t escape Australia’s child social media ban. The Guardian reports that Communications Minister Anika Wells announced Reddit’s addition on Wednesday. The nation’s law, which blocks children under 16 from major social media sites, is scheduled to go into effect on December 10.

Alongside Reddit, Wells said Australian streaming site Kick would also be included. They join the previously announced Facebook, X, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Australia considers the list to be a starting point for the ban and won’t rule out adding more.

YouTube was initially excluded because it was considered an educational tool. But after protests from other companies on the list, Australia ultimately added it.

This is simply a continuation of the ongoing problem of censorship creep in the age verification debate. Lawmakers from around the world are increasingly looking at their internet surveillance and censorship regimes and asking where else they can expand it to. Since basic human rights supposedly protected by various countries constitutions seem to conveniently no longer apply to the internet (this includes the right to free speech and the right to privacy), then there really is no limit to just how heavy handed these censorship and surveillance requirements can be. Anything can be a target for government internet censorship at this point and the list of targets continues to expand.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.