In yet another instance of history repeating itself, Australian teens are flocking to alternative social media platforms to evade the ban.
There is little doubt that the roll out of Australia’s age verification system which bans people under 16 years of age has been a complete, though predictable, disaster. Age verification systems are letting under 16 year old teens access social media despite the promise that they would totally block them outright. In fact, the age verification systems are so bad, even I was surprised just how bad they were when a golden retriever fooled them.
Members of the mainstream media, however, saw the unfolding (and destined) train wreck that was happening and quickly tried to paper over the problems by declaring that the rollout has gone off with “barely a hitch”. The BBC even wrote the headline, “Teens say goodbye to social media in Australia as ban comes into force“. Given that mainstream media tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong with the technology, in retrospect, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that they would completely lie about the results that ensued as well.
The reality is, of course, very very different. The ban has not, in fact, stopped teens from accessing social media. Instead, it is actually teaching them to be more savvy in trying to defy the will of the government. This by circumventing the process entirely. Whether it is through taking advantage of the absolutely terrible age verification system or, in this case, utilizing the oldest trick in the book and accessing social media platforms that are not part of the ban. Mobile World Live notes that teens are simply seeking out and using other social media platforms altogether so they don’t have to deal with the age verification system altogether:
According to Bloomberg, Apple’s app store rankings showed TikTok-backed Lemon8 as the most downloaded free app in Australia, followed by private photo-sharing service Yope and Coverstar, which positions itself as “the safest alternative to TikTok” for children aged 9 to 16.
Market intelligence company SensorTower reportedly found Coverstar’s usage in Australia jumped 488 per cent compared with the same period last year, while Chinese-owned app Rednote recorded a 37 per cent increase in weekly active users.
This outcome is not only predictable, but a clear cut example of history repeating itself. When the UK implemented age verification, users began flocking to alternative websites that didn’t comply with the age verification laws. These findings would be later confirmed through additional statistical analysis. Traffic to non-compliant websites spiked while traffic to websites that complied simply plummeted. Knowing all of this, the outcome that Australian teenagers are flocking to alternative websites was simply an obvious outcome of all of this.
For users who have a little bit more knowledge about how technology works, however, there is another method of defeating age verification altogether. As the report further notes, Australian teens are also flocking to VPNs:
At the same time, demand for VPNs, a potential method for bypassing restrictions, rose 103 per cent in the country compared with the daily average of the previous 28 days, Top10VPN statistics showed.
This, too, is truly a case of history repeating itself. Last year, when Texas passed their own age verification laws, VPN use soared as users did what they could to evade the government mandated surveillance of age verification. Some online outlets, for their part, even went so far as to straight up sell VPNs as a method to circumvent age verification laws. In the UK, following the passage of their age verification laws, lawmakers began discussing the possibility of banning VPNs altogether as they realized that the supposed co-conspirators of “Big Tech” turned out to be absolutely correct that VPNs were going to be used to circumvent their laws. This well and truly is a moment where “good luck with that” is a highly appropriate response here.
At any rate, the government was warned this would happen. The government had precedent of this happening. Yet, the government responded by simply ignoring all of that and proceeded with this stupid idea anyway. Now, the outcomes that have happened elsewhere is happening in Australia. The train wreck of failure with age verification laws continues.
