Meta Bosses to Meet eSafety Commissioner as New Report Suggests Age Checks Work

Two senior executives of the social media company will have talks with eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to discuss keeping young people safe online.

Facebook Head of Global Safety Antigone Davis speaking during a roundtable discussion on cyber safety and technology hosted by U.S. first lady Melania Trump in the State Dining Room at the White House March 20, 2018 in Washington, DC. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is sending two senior executives to Australia this week to meet with eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant on Sept. 4.

The visit from Meta Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis and Engineering Director Dustin Ho follows a trial that found workable age verification technology exists.

Meta has refused to implement the technology, insisting that app stores should be made responsible instead.

Discussions will focus on age verification and the government’s planned ban on social media use by children under 16, due to start in December.

Social media companies that fail to implement age checks will risk fines up to $49.5 million.

A post on Medium on the Meta Australia Policy Blog says that the company thinks there are “important factors missing from the conversation.”

It says the law fails to account for “parents’ desire to be involved in teens’ online lives” and “the unintended consequences social media age limits may have if implementation ... is not given greater thought.”

Meta says a survey it commissioned from Ipsos showed 82 percent support for “a law requiring parental approval for children under age 16 to download apps.”

“By a two-to-one margin (67 percent), Australian parents surveyed say that parents should be able to choose if their teen under the age of 16 is able to use social media apps over outright bans of social media for minors under 16 (33 percent),” the company says.

It claims the average teen uses up to 40 apps a week, requiring their parents to navigate as many as 40 different approval and age verification methods—meaning operators of every app will gain access to “their teen’s IDs, birth certificates, and other sensitive information.”

It would therefore be better if, when setting up their teen’s phone, a parent had to go through the process just once, in the app store.

“Think about it,” Meta says. “Movie theatres verify your age before you watch a movie, not the movie producers. Theme parks check IDs before you enter, they don’t check every time you want to get on a ride.”

Return Visit by Meta

Davis and Meta’s regional director of policy, Mia Garlick, faced a joint parliamentary inquiry exactly a year ago.

At that time, Davis denied Meta was trying to shift the burden of age verification, after earlier admitting that Australians were still seeing dangerous content on Facebook and Instagram via algorithms.

Their alternative proposal is unlikely to find favour with the Albanese government, which remains committed to placing the onus on social media platforms.

This position has been strengthened in the past few days by the release of the report of the Age Assurance Technology Trial, which concludes that “While no single solution fits all contexts, the trial found that a wide variety of technologies already meet meaningful thresholds for accuracy, security, and privacy when carefully selected and implemented.”

Inman Grant will likely also want to raise recent reports that Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots were engaging in “romantic or sensual” conversations with children.

Then there’s the case of a generative artificial intelligence chatbot named “Big sis Billie”—a variant of an earlier AI persona created by the social media company in collaboration with celebrity influencer Kendall Jenner—which lured 76-year-old Thongbue Wongbandue, also known as Bue, to New York, believing “her” to be real.

Rushing in the dark to catch a train to meet her, Bue fell in New Brunswick, New Jersey, injuring his head and neck. After three days on life support and surrounded by his family, he was pronounced dead on March 28.

In response, Meta has announced updates to its AI chat policies.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said the Age Assurance Technology Trial “is the latest piece of evidence showing digital platforms have access to technology to better protect young people from inappropriate content and harm.”

“While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to age assurance, this trial shows there are many effective options and, importantly, that user privacy can be safeguarded,” she said.

The trial, however, did find support for one part of Meta’s argument: several ID companies kept “full biometric or document data for all users” even when it wasn’t required, justifying the policy by saying they thought regulators might demand it in the future.