Banning Teens From Social Media Pushes Them Into Darker Corners Online - David Inserra

We weigh the push for an under-16 social media ban against what it would take to enforce it and what it would cost in privacy, anonymity, and open debate. We use Australia and the UK as cautionary examples and argue that empowering parents and teaching digital literacy beats outsourcing speech rules to the state.
• Australia’s ban in practice, including high rates of circumvention and account shutdowns
• unintended shift of young people towards riskier platforms and unfiltered browsing
• why age verification undermines anonymous speech and creates data breach exposure
• the case for anonymity, from historical pamphleteers to modern whistleblowers
• parental responsibility, practical tools, and education as alternatives to blanket bans
• moral panic patterns and why correlation is not causation in harms research
• how “design not content” arguments can mask censorship incentives
• why government-defined “harmful speech” becomes political and inconsistent
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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Free to Speak, the New Zealand Free Speech Union podcast. If you enjoy the show, subscribe for uncensored conversations and free speech news from New Zealand and beyond.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Kioda and welcome to Free to Speak, the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union. My name is Dane Giroud. I am a council member of the New Zealand Free Speech Union and your host. Joining me today is David Insara. David is a Fellow for Free Expression and Technology at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. Kioda David. Hi, how's it going? It's glad to be here. So let's talk a little bit about Cato and who you are and what you do to start with. You had a great uh story you shared with me about the name of uh your organization. So it would be really good to talk about that too. But yeah, so who are you and what do you do?

Cato’s Letters And Anonymous Speech

SPEAKER_02 0:52

Sure. So uh yes, my name's David and Sarah. Um I work here at the Cato Institute. We're a libertarian think tank here in Washington, D.C. Um, and relevant for our conversation today um is that Cato actually comes from Cato's letters. Um Cato's letters were um these letters written um uh uh back uh before America was was a country. We're still a colony. Um but these these these Englishmen were writing letters in England about how anonymous letters, about their frustrations with the government and how they that free speech was essential um uh to protecting the liberties of the people. And they have a famous passage talking about free speech as the bulwark of liberty. Um but they're writing pseudonymously, they're writing under the the the name, the the pen name Cato, referencing obviously um Roman statesmen. Uh but that anonymity and the importance of anonymous speech is relevant to what's going on today in technology policy and online speech governing how we think about age verification laws and social media bans, all those things about anonymous speech get pulled into these discussions as well. So um I spent a lot of my time researching uh various issues regarding speech and technology, and this is really one that is on the front burner, um, certainly around the world, but we also see it being discussed here in the US as well.

Australia’s Under-16 Ban Reality Check

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, so so there you are, people. We're gonna be talking about the under-16 social media ban, which is you know pretty controversial. Um let's start with your findings. It's been rolled out around the world now. Uh, our position as a free speech union was that we we urged our government to wait and see because we knew there'd be a lot of speed bumps, and that would probably well, it could uh make people think twice about it. It's an interesting one because there is a bit of support um amongst parents for it, uh, until you ask further questions and then they dig into it, and then they're like, oh, really? It means that. So what have what have you found? What uh what are the some of the countries you've been looking at? What what are you discovering?

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Yeah, so the most obvious example is obviously your neighbor, Australia. Um, Australia's social media ban um went into effect at the end of last year. Um, and what we've seen so far is that um it seems that in terms of enforcing actually you'll be keeping kids offline just on like what it said it would do, even that it's struggling just to do that. It the latest statistic seems to be that somewhere north of 60% of kids still have access to one of their social media accounts, uh, even though they're not supposed to anymore. Um, and so it's a significant failure. Uh that involves sometimes it's the because the plot they are sort of gaming the the platforms. They're there. I've heard stories of kids like, oh, if they just put their hair up in a ponytail, it makes them look older. And so now they can beat the age estimation software. Um, or there's kids using, you know, fake IDs, or they are using VPNs to circumnavigate the law.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Drawing a handle by a mustache on, you know.

Workarounds And Riskier Platforms

SPEAKER_02 4:13

I you know, I haven't heard about that yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising um children down under have probably tried. Um, and the point is that they're finding ways around the rules. In other words, teenagers are being teenagers uh and rebelling against the rules that are being set for them. And they seem to and they seem to be doing pretty doing it pretty effectively. Um and we also see that of even despite that, you there's still obviously a large number that have been shut down. I think it's over four million accounts have been shuttered on various social media platforms. And we've seen, though, the result is that kids are moving. Uh, one of the one of the things that I'm I warned about is that when you tell kids you can't be on these major social media platforms anymore, you're not allowed to have accounts here anymore. It actually increases, it actually increases risks to many kids because the kids now they're not on, they're not on platforms that are large, that often have kid-focused algorithms that are at least trying to keep dangerous, or maybe content that's less suitable for children. Those platforms, bigger platforms are at least newsy trying to say, here's a kid-friendly algorithm. Here's we're not going to show this type of content to people we believe are under 18. That goes away once you say, no, kids just can't be on this platform anymore. So kids are simply going to darker, less public, less, less kid-friendly platforms or different, less kid-friendly corners of the internet. Um, we also see that uh just kids are, if for instance, I know in like Australia, kids can still use YouTube, they just can't have an account. Well, that means they can still search for all the potentially bad or harmful types of content that people are worried about, but now there's no filter to say, maybe this isn't good for kids. It's so we've actually removed like platform design uh tools to help help parents or help children avoid uh harmful content. And you actually see this in some of the polling. Um, I think that over 25, I think about 25% or over 25% of parents in Australia say that they've seen their children move to alternative or less safe platforms as a result of the ban. So it's it's it's maybe well-intentioned, but you're seeing kids circumnavigate and not always ending up in in safe places. See, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

I I I I I hadn't heard that one yet. So so uh because that's happening because the the lawmakers are prescribing specific sites. So if those sites are off the table, they'll just go to new sites. Yeah. So that could lead to see see where I really worry about it not working is you'll get additional, uh I mean this this is just so gonna happen. You're gonna get politicians going, oh well, we just need to we just need more censorship. We just need to ban the VPNs, we just need to ban more sites, we and it'll just get wackier and wackier and wackier. Um, so so that that's another concern. Like, like I I was talking to one person the other day who it was like, well, it's a symbolic law, it's not gonna work, it doesn't matter. But it's it's not like that. It's not like when I was a kid and my contraband was like Playboy magazine. You know what I mean? Sure. Um the fact that I could go into a a father's closet and take a magazine didn't mean that bookstores were going to be shutted soon. But the internet is a very different animal, isn't it? It's like yeah, people are going to just go even further and further if they can. They're gonna go further and further.

SPEAKER_02 7:57

Exactly. And that's like I said, that's what we're seeing in the sense that essentially you're playing a game of whack-a-mole here, and they can say they can add new platforms to the list, and they the Australian government has already started to say we're we're adding these new alternative platforms. But sometimes these platforms are sometimes it's not platforms, sometimes it's more just like websites, and sometimes it's like on darker, seedier portions of the internet where the regulator isn't like fully aware, or if they are fully aware, like they can't get their tendrils around this entity because it's just like they don't have any presence in Australia at all. Um, and so then you're talking about just blocking entire like parts of the internet, or as you mentioned, stopping VPN usage, um, which we've also seen as a common sort of refrain of people once they see their age verification system start to falter, there's like, well, we actually need to do away with VPNs because they're being used to circumnavigate our laws. But VPNs are also being used by people to circumnavigate authoritarian countries and and all sorts of other bad, like bad censorship. And so to put yourself in the same camp as countries like North Korea and Iran and Russia, like and China, like like, yeah, you can do it. It will reduce the freedom of your people and it will harm innovation and expression in ways that are best compared to the actions of truly authoritarian nations. I don't know why we're tempted to go that way.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Well, you've got no leg to stand on. You you you can't wave the finger at Iran and all these countries once you're doing this to your own people.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Um, that's that's where countries like the UK, which are very censorship heavy, they just have they've got no authority to talk to a Putin or anyone like that anymore.

Whack-A-Mole Enforcement And VPN Fallout

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Yeah, you you bring bring up the UK. Obviously, the UK has a sort of similar um, not exactly social media ban, but the Online Safety Act has had somewhat similar implications for the way that um social media platforms have to think about what kind of content am I allowed to show to users? Um, so sometimes like in the immediate aftermath of the Online Safety Act coming into play, trying to protect kids from certain categories of dangerous or or harmful online content, the kids are being, you know, blocked from seeing, well, should I say not say not just the kids, but in general, the platforms are increasingly blocking access to current news. What's going on in a conflict in Israel? Um, to at the time, I believe it was Israel and Palestine conflict was still a heated conflict. And there were platforms that were saying, you know what, we think this falls afoul of the Alliance Safety Act, so we can't show this to you. So you're not just silencing, you know, like just dangerous fringe stuff. You're silencing mainstream discussion about what Brits can see. Uh, and then of course the their regulator comes along and says, Well, we didn't we didn't want you to go for that. Like, that's not what we intended. But that's what's gonna happen when you impose a bunch of liability on platforms and say, if you d if you allow dangerous content to be shown to people, we are going to fine you massive amounts of money. Turns out that companies are going to be really reluctant to allow content that even comes close to violative, they're gonna remove that content, and that's a that's a net loss to everyone in society.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

We yeah. Uh I've discussed this before on on the podcast, but when Grok was um uh creating images of politicians that people didn't like in bikinis. Do you remember that? Sure. Yeah. And Keir Starmer said, I'm gonna speak to Macron, I'm gonna speak to Mears in in Germany, and we're gonna we we're gonna maybe ban Twitter. Like that was happening while all the Iranian protests were going on. Yeah. X, whether you like it or not, and it can be a bit of a sewer, there's no doubt about that. But it it's probably the most up-to-date news service we have when it comes to independent stuff and everything. I mean, I I try to go off it, but I can't really do my job because it it's just so current. Um, and you you'll get things like protests happening in real time in in um uh uh authoritarian regimes and and you'll see wars up close. As shocking as they are, these images, this is this is the kind of uh imagery and information that a public needs to see.

UK Online Safety Act And Overblocking

SPEAKER_02 12:37

Yeah, the whenever we talk about social media bands, we're we should always be thinking in mind, keeping in mind that yes, there's an obvious target, kids. Kids won't be able to access this content. Um, and you can say, well, you can make the case to say, well, there's harmful content, there's just bad content. And like I said, I can agree that maybe there's content that isn't appropriate for children that what that parents don't want their kids seeing. Um and I can agree that that that may be something we want to tackle. But the question is, is this broad band the correct tool to solve that problem? Because the reality is that this probably looks a little bit different for every kid about what their parents and what they deem to be appropriate for for their kid. Uh an example of this I saw um there's uh I don't want to get the name right. There's an individual in Australia, um, uh a child uh by the name of Noah Jones. He's a minor, he's 15. He's suing the government to say, I don't let this ban, I think is unconstitutional. But his mother raised him to have like strict rules around how we use technology, you know, not in the bedroom. Uh, she has his passwords, things like that. Like she's raised him to be a responsible user of technology. And we're sort of expecting him to sort of say, we're expecting children like him to have first contact with the internet when they turn 16, and then to somehow then immediately be like that somehow magically makes them responsible users. Um, or that that somehow has like protected them. If anything, it just makes them less informed and less capable of knowing how to navigate this technology because there's no even option for children uh to opt in. Parents can't say, I think this is important for my child. I want to give them limited access. I want to give them access for this important reason or that important reason. It's not an option under these broad bands. And I think that alone is doing dramatic harm to children. But as I mentioned at the top, it's also doing dramatic harm to the average user. Um, even adults are impacted because of the impact that these kind of laws can have on anonymous speech. Um, whenever these social media bans go into place, by definition, they have to have some sort of age verification um technique involved. You have to be able to prove who you are to say, yes, I'm over, I'm over the stated age of what this ban is. And you can try to, there are, there are, you can try to estimate, you can try to like, you can you can somewhat try to do this imperfectly, but at the end of the day, as I mentioned, kids in Australia are getting their, they're finding ways around it. There's ways to gain new systems. And ultimately, a lot of these systems end with show me your papers, prove to me who you are, give me your ID, and then then I'll let you on my platform. Um, but if you have to give your identity in order to be able to speak on a platform, and you say, Well, you say, Well, my at least no one knows who I am. I'm still speaking anonymously. Well, you're just one data breach away from all that anonymous speech from no longer being anonymous. You could be talking, you could be criticizing the government, you could be engaging in a really like sensitive health issue or an issue around sexuality or an issue around religion or any number of other issues where you just feel more comfortable engaging anonymously. And now those anonymous conversations are public because of one data breach. And we have countless examples of these, um, whether it be Discord, the large platform, they had a large data breach. And funnily enough, they're now trying to move to add their own age verification rules. And a lot of users are very frustrated, like you just had a data breach. Um, but there's plenty of other examples out there all across the world. And all these illustrate the fact that if you believe that your speech could become public and you can't speak anonymously anymore, that's a threat. That's a that's chilling everyone's speech, even that of adults. And that's the I think the far-ranging implication of these laws that threatens threatens speech um way more than just the kids who are implicated.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Yeah, the anonymous I struggled saying this on the phone to you too is anonymous uh uh anonymity. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, people. I don't need to explain myself to you. Um I actually tried to steel man the argument uh in a substack that I wrote. And it's not that uh people were like, oh, I agree with you, and I was like, Well, I'm kind of just steel manning it, really. I was playing with the idea and and looking at it from that perspective. I'm on X in my name. I I can get a bit a bit of abuse um uh from anonymous accounts because they're anonymous, I don't respect them really, so I'm not going to give them as much credence. But I I I I can't imagine abusing someone under an anonymous account. I mean, that to me was like it's it's pretty wormy, isn't it? I mean, uh I it's not it's not the classiest thing you could do. So I did have it in my head for a while that, well, you know, if we all had to go out in our names, uh it would clean up the internet quite a bit because there would be that you'd be responsible for what you're saying. Um that would be there. The other issue I think is that when someone uh leaps on your thread and just uh racially abuses you or there's a gen gender abuse or or whatever it is, that's sort of akin to a crank call back in the day when you know, like Bart Simpson calling the bar, you know. Um that's that that's not we wouldn't defend that as free speech. Um we wouldn't have never we would never would have defended the the crank call as as free speech. We would have looked at it as a form of harassment. Um so so how would you counter those points, I guess? Um yeah.

Kids’ Rights And Parental Responsibility

SPEAKER_02 18:39

Yeah, so I I think your first point um that look when we think about how it can be just abusive, there's r like anonymous speakers definitely allow for people to engage in various forms of of of what you might deem a somewhat abusive, not very kind speech. I I mean I think that's certainly true. I think the issue is that for all those speakers, you also have a litany of other speakers who are benefiting from anonymous speech. And I think the tradition, especially, especially in America, um, like I said, pulling on things of like of those writers of the Cato, Cato's letters, but also like in our even like Thomas Paine writes Common Sense, which is sort of this document that is really foundational to the American Revolution, this argument for casting off British rule, is written anonymously because Thomas Paine up to that point is largely a nobody who has doesn't have much success in any sort of venture he goes into, but he doesn't want the arguments he makes to be predicated on take me seriously based on who I am. He wants the arguments to be take me seriously on the arguments I'm making, of com, in his view, common sense reasons for uh uh uh leaving the British. Um that's that's the idea, though, of anonymous speech is that you can engage in actual serious conversation and debate without, and you can put aside the issue of like, well, who is it? Like, but in some ways it doesn't matter. We're engaging in real discussion of serious issues. You can have whistleblowers, you can have, like I said, people discussing sensitive topics who are very serious about these issues, but they're just not comfortable doing so in a public manner. And yes, you sort of clean up the the site, but you do so at a great cost of people who are always said they want to be whistleblowers, they want to talk about sensitive topics, they want us to criticize their government. And now they can't. Uh and an example I like to give is in Germany, a very argument almost identical to the one you sort of made is made by Friedrich Meritz, the chancellor there. And he says, like he he recently said, I want everyone, I want anonymity off, like I don't want it to be anonymity online. I want to know everyone's real name. At the same time, the German police were investigating someone for calling him a Pinocchio. Um you would understand why maybe German citizens might want anonymous speech if calling your leadership a Pinocchio is causing the police to bang on your door. That is that is the like it's sort of ridiculous, but it's also true. And it shows why anonymous speech remains just as essential today as it was when pamphleteers in the 1700s were were arguing for the importance of um a freak's free speech and be able to criticize their government anonymously.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

And and analogies, often like the one I made of the crank call, don't quite work really. I mean, they can be problematic analogies generally, especially when you're applying them to foreign conflicts and things like that. Because no two none of these things are the same. Um they can muddy the water more than anything. I guess that a better analogy of social media would be a union hall with everyone. Everyone screaming and wanting to get their qu their question answered and all that kind of stuff. And there are going to be stupid questions and there are going to be uh but the other thing is, you know, and this goes back to um uh parents uh in the under 16 thing, we have the tools. I mean, sometimes if a neo-Nazi has a crack at me, I'll push back just to see if there's any flexibility there, a bit of sport. Uh, but I could block them instantly. And and exactly never hear from the guy again, you know. So it it's you know, I I I can get the single crank call and then he loses my number if I want it to be that way. Um, we're not using these tools enough. There's a lot of a lot of complaints when it comes to um, I mean, you know, being in a minority community, often I'm sort of challenging other minorities that say, well, it's it's not a safe space for me online. It's like, well, you've got the block button. You can curate your experience pretty well. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

And I think it's also important to note that the very platforms then that are being lost to kids are also the very platforms where they can actually use their voice to make clear the things that they think are wrong. If they're facing harassment, if they're facing whether it be online or maybe it's in their school or wherever it might be, they can actually use their, they have access to a medium with which to raise their voice, which they never would have had. Um, minorities have always drastically benefited from freedom of expression as a way to make clear the plight and the repression that they face. Um, it's a, it's, we nowadays often think of somehow it's been twisted as free speech is a tool of the wealthy and the powerful. Free speech has always, throughout history, been a tool of the underdog and the victimized.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

That's a very cynical argument, isn't it? It's uh the people I think it is.

Age Verification And Data Breach Risk

SPEAKER_02 24:04

It tries to just find a few boogeymen like, oh, look at Mark Zuckerberg or or look at you know Elon Musk or whatever. I don't like them and they're controlling these platforms. But you right now and every one of your you know listeners has the power in their in their pocket on their in their in their cell phone that Thomas Paine could only have dreamed of when he was writing Thomas Common Sense or all these other folks, even just 30 years ago, when you if you wanted to write something, a complaint about an issue in your town, okay, you get to write a letter to the editor and hope that they publish it in your local magazine. But like, okay, like you know, you're rolling a dice that's like of highly unlikely that you, your, your, your view will actually see the light of day. You have the immediate access to do that now, and you have the ability to raise a spotlight on issues that are of incredible importance to you. And for, like I said, for minority groups or folks that are feel like they are under intense scrutiny and pressure, and um they have, while they can receive attacks certainly through um online tools, they also have these those tools also serve as a way for them to clearly explain to everyone else the threat that they face, the way they feel like they are being abused and and to try to seek um civil society uh to try to seek an answer to that that doesn't say like, okay, we need, you know, to ban this for everyone, but we can go after the actual wrongdoers if there's actual illegality involved. If someone is violently threatening you, okay, like you can bring it to the police and you could you you can shame them online. Or if let's say they haven't crossed the line of being violent yet, but they're just engaging in racist nonsense, well, then you can also expose them online and call attention to something where um previously, if you were being facing all that uh racist garbage, well, you might just have this like suck up and take suck it up and take it because no one, maybe no one cared, or maybe you couldn't get the ear of the local paper. So anyway, just to say that I think that we should keep in mind that the the tools of social media, of online various internet tools, they're actually empowering people. And when we strip them away, not just from minors, but like I said, also threaten it for adults, we're actually doing a great disservice to all uh all the citizens of our countries.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Progress, you know. Um progress. Uh the what is free speech for? Um sniffing out corruption, exposing corruption, uh getting the truth about wars, getting you know all that kind of stuff is instantly compromised. And um I don't know, maybe some people in power think, well, you know, I know best, I can handle it. Um, you know, I'm gonna run a good government, you've got nothing to worry about. But we do have everything to worry about, actually.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

We do.

SPEAKER_01 26:52

Especially from someone that would think that.

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Yeah. Exactly. Because and and and you mentioned parents before. I think it's a uh some parents I think are sort of open to this idea. Um, they might feel like I I can't keep track of stuff. It's hard for me to keep up with all this. I think it's important to keep in mind that, like in any other field of parenting, if I were to give you know my kid just keys to the car and said, go off and and and you know learn to drive, that I would not be being, I would not be a responsible parent. Um, and in the US, it's around 16, actually. So it's about the same age that a parent that they that kids in uh Australia can now have social media and other countries are sort of coalescing around 16. Um the same rule applies to how do you like parents have to have to teach, have to show them how to be responsible consumers of that content. I mentioned this kid in Australia. His mother showed him how to do so responsibly. She used the tools at her disposal, she used just her own good parenting sense to say, these are the rules I'm gonna set in my house. Um, and I think that's just honestly also just more responsible as parents because our kids are gonna go out into the world. You can delay it to when they're 16 or whenever it is, but the government deciding what exactly kids can see and when they can see it, that's just like it's it's bound to result in the government, you know, restricting the access to speech when many parents should be should be empowered to say, you know, I think my kid would benefit from this, or I think my kid wouldn't, and I'm gonna take the responsibility to parent my child. And yes, it's hard. Yes, kids are gonna avoid things like they always do, but that's not an excuse to just sort of outsource parenting to the government because I guarantee you the government is not a very good parent.

Why Anonymity Still Matters

SPEAKER_01 28:42

No, no, but but you know, I've heard the argument of people state it plainly, like it'll take pressure off parents because they'll be able to say to their kids, yeah, because I've had ding-dong battles with my son about you know uh screen time and things like that. Yeah, I've won some nights, I've lost other nights. I've just been, uh, I want to watch this movie, you know, uh, I can't be bothered with you. So what they're saying is that if the if the parents if the parents could say, hey, it's the law now, you're gonna get me in a lot of trouble, everyone's doing it. It's not even about me, actually. It's not about how I feel anymore. I mean, I I think that's a very weak argument. These are these are choices parents should make. And if they're not prepared to make them, maybe they need to think harder about why they got into the parenting business. What that would be my view.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

I yeah, I agree. This is one where I think we need to see more parental responsibility. And I said, I'm open to the idea of how can like governments whether help parents essentially be better parents. Can you can you try to help educate? Can you provide educational materials? Can you have uh tools for kids, uh, even like in in in high school or middle school, where it says, here are just like some generally healthy habits for how to engage online. Here's how to deal with um negative content, because kids actually they're facing this, they're dealing with difficulties online. You can actually also even learn from the kids about what are the strategies they're employing to mitigate the abuses they see, to there are things we could do as a society to improve the way we engage with our kids and our families and our parents that isn't the same as saying we have a one size fits all policy, which is none of y'all are allowed on the platform. Instead, it says, let's talk about how we can mitigate risks, how we can empower parents, how we can educate kids, and thus actually hopefully reach a place where we're minimizing harms while maximizing the benefits. Um, and it really is left to the parents to decide how we net those out and how they decide to balance uh those things, when to give cell phones, when to give internet. Like all those things are questions which can can be figured out. Um, but we can do so in a much more individualized specific way as opposed to a one size fits all policy.

SPEAKER_01 31:15

And of course, it's not always just about values, too, it's about the child. Like in um in Australia, the the band Substack because it's got comment comment section, right? So if you have a uh 15-year-old, savvy 15-year-old who's on her way to become a becoming a prefect and the head girl and all of that kind of stuff, and she wants to read uh a post by uh David Adenborough on chimps and the way they structure their societies, she can't now. Now, why what and and this gets gets to another point because one debate, one, one argument people have made to me is that well, kids don't have free speech rights. Now, we're not America, we don't have such a such a pure sort of you know uh proclamation uh as that your first amendment. But um the uh but but kids do actually have rights, um, free speech rights. Now, yes, we limit kids in all sorts of different ways. They can't drink alcohol and everything. Okay, this is a bit different. That's reasonable, yeah. That's a reasonable limit. That's what you'd call a reasonable limit. Banning this young woman from reading a David Edinburgh blog is not a reasonable limit at all. Um so uh uh our Bill of Rights says these free expression seeking information act is for everyone. Um the UN actually protects the rights of expression for children. So it it's just it's just not right. You can't say, I mean, the same argument would say we're outlawing kids wearing purple trousers. Well, it's like, well, why? Because we can put limits on kids. Is that reasonable? No, it's not, you know. Um and I think exactly the same thing is happening here. It's a blanket ban. It's throwing away all sorts of great stuff that is making kids smarter. I mean, look, kids may be learning more off the internet than school. They might be.

Moral Panic And Weak Evidence

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Yeah. The the idea that the idea that you're right, like in the US, we have obviously a strong First Amendment protection, um, which which which definitely helps us solve this riddle a little better. Um, but even so, your your your point is exactly right, which is that there's still value, there's still benefit to free expression outside of just like what the law says, what the constitution says. The constitution reflects the principle, the value that says that being able to express oneself and being able to receive and use information is of an inordinate value. There's great benefit to speech. Um, and so that when we see these comparisons that are made of like you're talking about like various other harmful things, like comparing social media to tobacco or to drugs, and we get into that sort of debate, I think it's a really, really flawed way of thinking about it because tobacco and drugs, like we all know that they have clearly harmful effects and they don't have a lot of like clear upsides. But like free expression is one of these things where you have to throw out so much benefits, so much cle history of free expression being this value that our Western liberal democracies are built on. And you have to sort of throw that out the window and say all those benefits, they don't really accrue until you reach 18 or 16 or whatever it might be. Um, and it sort of ignores the fact that, well, no, but those the the principles that enshrine it for adults still matter for kids. The ability for them to speak, the ability for them to access videos is incredibly important. And I like to always think about how, like, when kids are talking online, you meant like David Attenborough videos, like there's lots of things that kids consume online, which is exactly good information, which is helpful for them. They're finding communities which otherwise they might not find in their physical community. They are finding ways of entertaining themselves. They're ways of consuming knowledge and doing educational material. There's ways of becoming young citizens. Like they're not citizens yet. They're not going to vote yet, but they're only a couple years away from voting. Maybe they're like I was interested in politics from an early age and they want to engage in that kind of content. And now they're being cut off from it by these types of laws. And that's sort of losing the value. And it's sort of saying there's only harmful things online. That's why we're doing this, but it completely ignores the benefits and the good things that we kids can get from online. And as mentioned before, that will be different from kid to kid, and parents are in the best position to know what is best for their kid at what age.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

I mean, there are 20-year-olds that probably shouldn't be online if we want to, if we want to go into that. Or 24, there are some older 54-year-olds that probably shouldn't be online. You know, I mean, it it it's it's very much like that. The interesting thing about the politics thing is that, you know, to be fair to them, they didn't present this bill, but the opposition, who are I would say the more sensorial party, um, uh the the Labour Party here, our our center-left party, um, they're like, oh, we'll support it. So they want to support it. Now they were backing an under 16, or not under 16, 16-year-olds voting. Like they were part of a campaign there. There were people in, I don't actually, I don't know if I'm getting that completely right. There might have been the Green Party. I think they were supportive, though. I think, I think they were supportive. So now we're in a situation that's like you're not old enough to engage in basically debate uh online or engage on anything like that, but you're gonna have a birthday, and then you're going to be able to engage in this debate uh responsibly, and you can vote like at all a day, what a difference a day makes, you know. It's like it it it that makes no sense. I mean, wouldn't there be a run-up?

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Wouldn't there be a little bit of engagement um which is encouraging which would be best mediated by parents doing so in a gradual way of teaching their children how to use uh technology online? Exactly right.

Design Versus Content And Censorship

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Yeah, yeah. Well, um, so in in terms of the the research out there now, uh, because this is something I'm I I think about a lot, you know, working in the arts and screenwriting and um and everything, and uh and I've thought about censorship. I I do a lot of thrillers and horrors. Um and so so censorship is something I think about quite a bit and provocation. Um I I mean look at uh directors like Hitchcock when he when he chose to to make psycho, he was like, what's going to absolutely mess with everyone's minds? You know, yeah. He was perverse. And and but he knew that would put bums on seats. So you know censorship is a dance, it's always it's always that's why I'm part of the free speech union, but through through that artistic side. So when you look at research around um uh say horror people who watch horror films, it's not conclusive that they're more likely to become axe murderers. It's uh some research says they're less likely to become violent in real life. Yeah, gaming research too, they're less likely to take that into real maybe because they have that they're having that vicarious experience that's you know, I'm I'm not a I have no authority to say this, I'm just you know, kind of music on it, but um but the point is it's inconclusive. Yes, we don't know. I I would say the truth would be that an individual with baggage is going, you know, we all have baggage, it's gonna sort of work on people in different ways, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 39:37

As as a uh as someone who grew up playing a significant amount of video games, some of which were violence-ish, um, or yeah, like, you know, first-person shooter type games, I feel like I turned out okay. Um, but the point is, is that, yeah, this is the the debate that we're having right now over the harms of social media is sort of reflective of an age-old sort of what I was sort of called like a moral panic. Um, whenever a new technology, especially one that is expressive in nature, emerges, society freaks out because we say, oh my goodness, look what we're doing to poison the minds of the youth. Look how this is gonna lead to all sorts of negative harms to the youth. And in almost every case that I can see, those harms are not clear at all. It's not clear that because we let kim kids read comic books or like the earliest of violent shows um in like the 50s or 60s, that that somehow is turned people violent, or that people listened to rock and roll music and somehow became satanic, or that people played violent video games and now they're violent, or that they watch horror movies or rap music, or you can literally pick your boogeyman and you will always find this this constant track through history of people who are in power fearing that this new form of speech, this new form of technologically powered expression is somehow gonna rock the boat, and they need to step in to stop that rocking the boat to for the kids, is how it's always how it's always stated. But we can see clearly through history that in almost every case, it is that the research does not back up this idea that we need to be fearful of this new technology. And almost always it points to the fact that these new technologies actually inevitably become very much their own art form. They become their own their own huge field of expression and and and whatnot. Like rap music went from being something that was done just by people in inner cities, whatnot to being a huge media uh industry, uh industry. Video games went from being something that only nerds did to now there are actual like esports competitions. You can go to college and get on a team and play professional sports, esports.

SPEAKER_01 42:02

I know a Kiwi that that of um a child of a friend of ours who got a scholarship in the States playing video games and went from New Zealand to America on a scholarship.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Exactly. Exactly. And so we are sort of stuck in this reactionary moment with social media and also increasingly AI. AI is joining that now as the newest frontier in this debate. Um, but it's all the same moral panic of people worrying, is this going to be the thing that poisons our our kids? And in almost every case, it comes back to well, parents can parent how they want to. They can, they should, if they don't want their kids listening to these things, they don't want like have conversations for their kids, figure out how to manage it. And in many cases, it may actually turn out to be a good thing that their kid is engaging in in that. And it may even lead to a literal career uh in life, whether it be being artistic and doing horror films or whether it be playing video games. You just don't know. And once again, just to redouble on this, the idea that a one-size-fits-all policy somehow solves that makes it clear that that's not the case because all these kids will handle this differently.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Uh, I mean, censorship is very tricky because we exist because a mayor um cancelled some public speakers from a uh some speakers from a public venue. He created us. And we ended up defeating the hate speech laws that were going to be pushed through in New Zealand. So, you know, there people don't just shrug their shoulders and move on, and and kids are no different. Um uh if you say you cannot watch that film, it's like, uh, you really got to see this film. It's the forbidden fruit. Uh oh, yeah, completely the forbidden fruit. Yeah, you you gotta you gotta be very careful. And and I think even a parent needs to be smart about this and say, look, I'll sit with you, we'll watch it, we'll get it out of your system. And you could move on, you know, not for all content, obviously, but but yeah, I mean, on the research, I don't know if you could answer this, but um how would you even set about trying to work out if video games made people more violent? Well that would it would have to be quite a it would be a study that would take a long time, wouldn't it? Yeah, so how would you think of it?

SPEAKER_02 44:24

I think the problem has usually been showing that causal relationship. So the fact is that I think there have been studies that have tried to say there's a correlation, but there's never been any definitive proof that there's actual causal relationship. And that's actually where we sit right now with social media. You have a lot of people, I can think of like Jonathan Height being a uh sort of the foremost, probably psychologist who's talking about this in terms of you know restricting access. But a lot of the data that he seems to have is it it can't control very well for all these variables of like everything else that's going on in a kid's life and then he's and uh all the variables that could happen. And so these experiments are usually I I think flawed and at best they say a correlation, but not causation. Well, they're looking at screen. And that's what the literature seems to say.

SPEAKER_01 45:15

I think I think they can only really judge of screen time rather than the content. If you that that was what I understood. Um, if that's the case, how can you say the content is harming people if if you don't know the content?

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Or you can say yeah. And that's where the argument usually shifts because they try to say, well, we're not talking about content. We're just trying to say that the algorithms, the meet the social media itself is harmful. And they try to just generalize it to say that it's the design of the platforms. It's the the fact that there's an autoplay feature and the fact that you can keep scrolling through your reels or your TikTok. They say that the design features are, and they they try to say, well, it's not actually about the content, it's about the design. In the US, that's actually very important because that's their attempt to say, if it's not about content, well, well, then if the First Amendment doesn't apply. The First Amendment protects, you know, censorship of speech based on content. But oh, if it's just about neutral regulation of a tech company, well, then maybe the First Amendment scrutiny doesn't apply. Um, but the thing I always come back to is if kids were using YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, whatever to watch David Attenborough videos, or they were using it to talk about how to healthily cook a good meal and how to, you know, be to have a garden in your backyard and uh and to generally live a positive life of tolerance and and virtue. No one, not a single policymaker, not a single social scientist would be researching the harms of social media and calling for their ban. The reality is the reason people are saying it's about the design is because of the the the design feeds kids or feeds everyone content. And we are worried about certain kinds of content, speech that we think are harmful or bad. And that is censorship. And we try to doll it up as saying, no, this is about design of platforms. This is about the the way in which they they they feed the the way in which they just addict kids or people to their use. It's not about the design. The design is always just, in my view, a sort of a facade, a red herring. It's really about we're worried about specific types of content that these that these platforms are feeding to kids, and we don't want them to see that anymore. And the way we do get rid of that is we just sort of blame the the algorithm at um at large, and as opposed to just saying, no, we're we're freaked out about our kids listening to rap music or playing video games. It's like I said, it's that same thing, but we're just somehow trying to pretend this isn't a speech issue. It's some sort of neutral tech issue. It's a speech issue. Um claim is plain as day.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Here's here's something, going back to the whole thing of politics and and and kids being prepared for politics. Jonathan Haidt can, he doesn't do it too often, but he can sort of drift into some political talk about what kids are seeing and everything. Like my um uh younger son here, when he was about 13 or 14, or even 11 or 12, Trump's around, and him and his buddies at school think that Trump is a stand-up, really. They just think he's a hilarious character. And Halloween comes around, you know, he's got the ties, got the hair, he's got the hair, he wants to go as Trump, he's got an orange face, you know, all of that. Um, because he's a little crass, he's out there, and of course they just think he's a riot, you know. So got it. Um, but for someone who was dead set on the other side of the aisle, they would probably think what kind of man are you that would let your kid giggle along with this monster? So is that is that an elephant to the Ruby or is there something unspoken? Is it like because the thing is that I think even looking at my son that I I don't think the 15-year-old, 16-year-olds today are going to be woke anyway. Like they might not be Trumpist or anything, but I think they're sort of they're they're pushing back on that because it's that that that's 25 and 27 year olds now. They're lame, they're old. You know what I mean? So they want something new and fresh, and there could be a wanting to hold on to that sort of messaging politically. I think I think that goes into play because it's happening all over the internet. So why wouldn't it happen here? This idea that these young sponges are going to sort of absorb, think Trump is funny, and they're going to sort of like this and like that. And I mean, have you what do you think of that?

SPEAKER_02 50:33

Yeah, I think we see this on a lot of other regulation around online speech. So the I'm not so sure it's a direct fit for the bands, because the bands are usually fairly complete in the sense. They're trying to block a lot of stuff. Although it can impact like the platforms that are chosen and not chosen. Politics can get into the mix of like, well, I think this is a good platform because of my ideological priors, and you think this is a good platform because of your ideological priors. And could that affect the way your e-safety commissioners or or regulatory bodies determine who gets on the list and who doesn't get on the list?

SPEAKER_01 51:09

I think Blue Sky originally in Australia was off the list. But then there was like some reporters might have been like, hey, man, what's going on here? And they were like, ooh, ooh.

Hate Speech Laws And Blasphemy Logic

SPEAKER_02 51:19

I could see that being the case. Yeah. Um, but even outside the banning context, all the other speech regulations, for instance, that I know Australia and Europe and a lot of other countries have, um, it gets right to this issue of when you empower the government to sort of set the standards for like, this is the kind of speech I'm gonna punish or or say has to be taken down. You've put the government in power over that. You're gonna quickly see that the content that is being punished reflects the government's view of what is harmful. Um, and whether that's in a regulatory way or whether it's in a legislative way, policymakers and regulators are going to put the things that they think are harmful in bills. And that's not always gonna align with the way average people will think is harmful. And that is a way for governments to censor, to put their finger on the scale to try to say, we're gonna favor this side while suppressing this side. And that's like I said, in the US, that that is sort of blatantly forbidden, but that hasn't stopped that kind of idea from bubbling up in kids' safety legislation in the US, where they say, well, these topics are taboo. Please platforms take action to stop these types of content. And you actually get a Strange Bedfellow sort of situation where people on the left will often be like, Well, does that mean that like LGBTQ content is going to be considered harmful to kids and being taken down? And then you have some people on the religious right who might also have the same worry like, does that mean that my religious views are gonna be viewed as problematic by people on the left? And when you empower the government to make those decisions, it should come as no surprise that eventually they're gonna make a decision to censor you. Um, because your ideas, you have ideas that are pop that other people view as problematic and offensive. And that's why, like I said, we should never empower our governments to go after that kind of speech because it will, A, it will always be turned on you, but just even turning it on other people is harmful to your your your democracy. Um, even if it never does come from you, um, you shouldn't want to solve your debates via censorship because that's just it's not the way you settle things. Well, censorship is political.

SPEAKER_01 53:35

And it's it's never applied fairly. It can't be applied fairly. I mean, all the people I who I often throw this question at them. Okay, cool. So what's something that you'd happily never talk about again? Because, you know, presumably it's gonna affect you as well. So so what's the topic? And they're like, uh I'm one of the good guys. I'm one of the good guys. It's not gonna affect me. My my politics are perfect, my thought, I'm the most moral character you'll ever meet. It's I'm the package, you know. They they don't they they never point the finger inward and say, well, actually, you know, I have a few dodgy views, maybe I do need to sort of settle down a bit. They don't do that. No one does that.

SPEAKER_02 54:25

When we look at various hate speech laws that have been passed around the world, inevitably you see this sort of trend of they may be passed with this intention of like helping like some marginalized group, but inevitably they get used to silence the marginalized group. Um, I think it was like in the UK, uh, one of their early versions of a of a of a uh of hate speech law um was supposed to protect um like uh uh black British um individuals. Uh and I think with the first prosecution was for uh a black individual who said something in in in a in a riotous situation. I forget it, but it's like these these types of laws always will come for you. And as I mentioned before, freedom of expression is actually a great tool for the minority, for the repressed group, for the people who feel powerless because it's the way they get their message out. And when you say, oh, hate speech, you're like like you're offending the majority. Like if you're a minority and you're offending the majority, then they'll call it hate speech.

SPEAKER_01 55:27

Um Well, the other thing is the other thing with with minorities is um uh which I think people need to talk about a bit more, is it divides them because what what's happening is as soon as you have these hate speech laws, the state is basically, whether they know it or not, they're telling you who are the good Jews and who are the bad Jews. You know. Like are they going to side with the anti-Zionist Jews who are a fringe? They're a small group, but they're entitled to their freedom of speech. Or are they going to side more? Are they gonna take my lead, who's, you know, Zionist, two-state guy, but that's all right, but you know, I get offended by some of what they say. I think they're siding with terrorists. I've got all these arguments against them. Um, so who who? And in the Muslim community, does that mean the reformers get to dictate what the hate speech laws are, or the most conservative people in the community? It can't be both. You know, both sides can't argue, can't author these things together because they're they're in conflict actually with each other. Like a lot of communities are in conflict, and you know, and it's actually healthy conflict. You know, should we reform? Should we hold on to stuff? How do we feel? You know, in churches, uh the Catholic Church, all these churches. So what the what what a government's doing when it makes a commitment to hate speech laws is saying, we'll decide who's the the good Jew and the bad Jew. You know?

SPEAKER_02 56:59

It's it's the it's that same dynamic we see, um, for instance, with like blasphemy laws. Um essentially who is the most offended, um, whoever the government thinks has the greatest right to be offended. So you you see this in places like uh but Denmark had had done away with their blasphemy law, but they brought it back effectively a couple years ago because someone was burning Qurans. And so effectively what we have is the most offended group that the government cares about, there that's what matters. That's that that speech is now forbidden to be able to do that. It is a is a powerful, is certainly as you said, censorship is political. It is a matter of one group saying our view of what is good and bad speech should be enforced upon others. And so, therefore, sacrilege of religious objects is now a crime in the you know liberal, modern, progressive Denmark. Um, but you see this extending to other states as well. The UK doesn't have a blasphemy law, um, but it isn't using its sort of public order laws in a blasphemy law way, where if you're burning a Quran in the street and then someone comes up and stabs you, well, that maybe you were asking for it. You know, maybe you were the problem for burning the Quran, not the fact that someone came and stabbed you because they were the they were the least tolerant person. That doesn't mean that we should go around once again, that doesn't mean that burning Qurans or or this type of speech is necessarily good speech. It's not necessarily things that we can all applaud and say, yes, I agree with it, but it isn't still protect it should be protected speech because someone is making is criticizing a religion, they're criticizing something, and we're saying, no, that criticism is out of bounds because it offends another group. That is giving into sort of the it's the worst form of the heckler's veto in the sense that just if enough people scream about it, you don't have free speech anymore. And if that's the case, you don't really have free speech about anything.

Final Takeaways And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 58:57

Yeah, see, and and and the public order, using public order um laws is is interesting too, isn't it? Because what that's saying is, you know, a relatively benign law. Um if there's a culture of censorship, they'll find a way to use it, you know. Um so you you don't want to open that door at all. You you just don't want to open that door at all. Hey, look, we we've been speaking an hour. Um I've had you an hour, and um uh it's been fantastic, David. I've really appreciated this. I think we've um covered a lot of really good ground and and it's been really informative, and you've got a lot of expertise, which is great. And I'd probably like to um uh uh tap you on the shoulder again in future for for updates and on on all sorts of tech issues because you know this is the public square today. Um, you know, your job is very, very important. It's central to the free speech fight. It's uh the public square is online. Um so we've got to take that seriously. And we um in all power to you and thank you for the work you do for free speech loving people all around the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:07

I appreciate you having me on, and thank you for the work you're doing in New Zealand.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:11

Thank you for listening to Free2Speak. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider sharing the podcast with others. We release new episodes regularly, and subscribing is the easiest way to stay up to date. If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions, you can contact us at podcast at fsu.nz. If you want to find out more about the New Zealand Free Speech Union, visit fsu.nz.