PETER VAN ONSELEN: Anthony Albanese has a big problem: PornHub
- The Prime Minister’s Social Media Bill has a problem with online pornography
- The government has a baffling answer when asked about Pornhub
The main reason the government imposes age limits on social media is to protect children, says Anthony Albanese.
The proposed new laws carry huge penalties for big tech companies that fail to ensure compliance. Fines for violations can reach tens of millions of dollars.
But if the primary purpose of these new laws is to protect children when they go online, why won’t the government include online pornography sites in the legislation?
The original laws would have included YouTube before a backlash led to the video-sharing site being banned.
The laws will apply to Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter, all of which include the ability to share both videos and messages.
But what about Pornhub, as Nationals Senator Matt Canavan asked during Senate hearings?
The online porn video sharing site offers virtually no protection that prevents children from accessing quite disturbing and explicit video content.
All you have to do is click a button confirming that you are over 18 years old. No checks are required nor do you need to provide proof to confirm your age.
If Labor is really serious about the end goal of protecting Australian children from harmful online content, it’s quite difficult to understand why banning social media sites is important, but allowing free access to Pornhub is fine and dandy.
The main reason the government imposes age limits on social media is to protect children, says Anthony Albanese
Senator Canavan pressed the ACMA representative who chaired his Senate committee on why the laws did not restrict or monitor Pornhub.
“We wouldn’t consider Pornhub to be in scope,” he was told. “It’s not seen as a social media platform.”
But that doesn’t make it any less harmful to children. It also doesn’t mean that the current accessibility settings are okay.
Why isn’t Labor doing anything about this legislatively? It boggles the mind.
The contradiction really exposes the vacuous nature of the government’s claims that these proposed social media laws are all about protecting the next generation from harm.
It shows that they are not really taking it seriously when it comes to protecting children from harmful online content.
What’s really going on here is that Labor wants to appease traditional media companies that for other reasons have problems with big tech organizations like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Meta.
Perhaps in the hope that grateful traditional media companies will show their appreciation during the election campaign.
Pornhub has virtually no protections that prevent children from accessing quite disturbing and explicit video content
Nationals senator Matt Canavan asked during Senate hearings why it did not extend to Pornhub
If Labor is really serious about protecting Australian children, it’s hard to see why banning social media sites is important, but allowing free access to Pornhub is fine and dandy
That could also be why the coalition supports the new laws and guarantees their passage through parliament this side of the new year.
In fact, Peter Dutton has been quick to claim that Labor stole this policy from its back pocket when it was first announced, echoing sentiments he had previously shared publicly.
Labor always tries to find a balance between the right and left flanks.
It may not want to protect Australian children from harmful pornography – by tightening age restrictions to include more than clicking a button to confirm you are over 18 – because this will cause unrest in parts of the left.
Whatever the reason, it is downright negligent for Labor to be so incurious about pushing these social media bills through Parliament, rather than expanding their scope to more seriously protect children from harmful content such as Pornhub.
Ask any parent what they think is more detrimental to their children’s well-being: easy access to graphic online pornography, or easy access to a messaging system that largely mirrors text messaging, and you know what the answers will be.
Yet here we are. Labor gave a full day for community consultation on its new social media laws, such was the disregard for feedback before moving forward.
When questioned why Pornhub is not included in the scope of the proposed legislation, Senator Canavan told his Senate committee: “It is very vague and unclear to any reasonable person what is and is not included.”
Indeed it is.