Julie Inman Grant, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner: Keep kids away from social media until they are ready

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the Apartment Bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962.

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1:13Hello, I'm Katie Watson, the BBC's Australia correspondent, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC, people shaping our world from all over the world. If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. We have never seen a people so united. Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. We're more popular than populism. For this interview, I met Julie Inman-Grant, Australia's East Safety Commissioner, at her office overlooking Sydney Harbour.

1:52Brought up in Seattle, North America, she's built her career in the technology sector, posted to Australia just over 25 years ago whilst working for Microsoft. She then went on to work in public policy and safety, heard both Twitter and Adobe, before moving into government. As eSafety Commissioner since 2017, she's been a lightning rod for critics of Australia's Online Safety Act, including Elon Musk, who's accused her of trying to censor the internet, a factor which Julie believes led to a barrage of abuse, online hate and death threats. Now, as the public face of the world's first ever social media ban for under-16s, she's facing up to some of the world's most powerful tech companies and making sure that they abide by the new rules.

2:36We're all going to have our challenges. We're coming up against technology companies that are richer and more powerful than many nation states, and they're not going to be regulated without a fight. That's why we refer to technological exceptionalism, because it is. If you think about any other consumer-facing industry, whether it's food handling and safety standards or consumer goods, when you import a car into the UK or to Australia, these car companies know that they have to build to Australian safety standards and to share the crash test dummy results. That's just expected. Why shouldn't we expect them to be delivering a much safer experience?

3:17If they had built safer spaces, I don't think we would be where we are today with a social media ban and countries embracing it all over the world. People want a decisive change. Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant. I think it's going pretty well. It certainly exceeded our expectations, but we are playing the long game here. So what we've asked the companies to do is basically take a five-step process. The first was in deactivations of under-16s that they identified. That's the low-hanging fruit or the easy bit. The second part is going to be much harder for them, and we can talk about this, and that is preventing recidivism or kids coming back onto the platforms and preventing a range of different forms of circumvention.

4:09We've asked them to make discoverable user reporting. if accounts are missed. If people are overblocked, we'd ask them to have an appeals process. We've asked for constant improvement to measure the impact as well. Now, you've released some data that in the first two days of the ban, 4.7 million accounts were closed. Does that mean that companies are complying? Well, initially, yes. So like I said, that was sort of the easy part. To keep that number in perspective, there are about 2.5 million and young Australians between the ages of 8 and 15. And when you think about it, it's taken us about 20 years to get here.

4:50So if you think about Facebook was established in 2004, and Twitter now X, 2006. These were online spaces that weren't built for safety, and they weren't built for kids. They were built for adults. But eventually kids from all over the world have gravitated and inhabited these spaces. And in many cases, none of these platforms ever enforce their own policies around 13 and under, or just use self-declaration or age gating. So in some ways, what we're asking them to do is retrofit a set of tools by identifying who is under 16 and who isn't without doing it in a way that's too invasive for adults.

5:32Meta did release some of its own data that they've removed just over half a million users from platforms, but they've still been very critical of this ban. How are you working with the big tech companies to implement this ban? Well, we've always had to play a bit of a dance with the tech companies. Clearly, they don't like to be regulated, but we need to work with them cooperatively, particularly when we're taking down cyberbullying content or deepfakes or image-based abuse. Of course, they're protecting the status quo. And right now, this is incredibly lucrative for them. If you look at the discovery documents from the U.S.

6:12litigation,

6:1712 as having a herd mentality. Get them hooked as quickly as possible, and then you've got customers for life. So they're building a pipeline for the future, and they do not want this to be the first domino. And what we will see, if the UK and Denmark and France and Malaysia and Indonesia come on board and do the same thing, will be a network effect. And I believe that in the next four or five years, it will have a normative change. Not only will kids learn to drive when they're 16, 16 will be the age that they are able to enter social media. And we'll be working with the schools on digital and algorithmic literacy to make sure that they're ready for the time that they come on there.

7:03Now, this figure 4.7 million, obviously, it's a huge number. It could be seen as a sign of success. But what it's not showing is how many accounts from other platforms not targeted by the ban have been opened in that time, which was the fear. Well, we've been looking at migratory patterns, and we did so months before the implementation date of December 10th, because we started seeing spikes or increases in signups. But what we found over this first month, and none of this can be considered a trend, is that there were a range of platforms that kids went to that weren't captured, or at least publicly, as an age-restricted social media sites.

7:43So they went to sites like Lemonade, which is also owned by ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, to Big O Live, to Ubo, to CapCut and others. But what we saw was spikes in downloads, but not spikes in usage. And they didn't last a long time. And I think the primary reason for that is the mainstream social media companies that we're capturing here have done such a great job of developing a critical mass of young people on their platforms through snap streaks and endless scroll and all these harmful and deceptive design features that keep them all hooked and engaged. But now as kids are fanning out to different platforms, they've lost that critical mass of friendship roots.

8:24Now, before this ban was even discussed, you yourself weren't a fan of a ban. You said yourself, and I quote, we don't fence the ocean or keep children entirely out of the water, but what we do create is protected swimming environments that provide safeguards and teach important lessons from a young age. That was in June 24, I believe. But isn't that what you've done? You've shut them out of teen accounts. They no longer have these potentially more protected accounts than adults. They are then less protected. You don't have to sign in to YouTube, for example. You can still get on YouTube, which then means that perhaps they're more vulnerable to the harms of being online.

8:59We're doing a major implementation evaluation with a academic advisory group to look at these questions. Are kids sleeping more? Are they interacting more face-to-face? Are they taking fewer antidepressants? Are their test scores getting better? Are they out in the footy field reading more books? But are they also going to darker areas of the web? Where are they going? What are the experiences that they're having? I actually don't think they're necessarily less safe. It depends what you consider safety. I don't think many 13-year-olds are opening up tour browsers and going to the dark web. And, you know, one thing we've been clear to parents about is that there will always have to be a holistic approach.

9:43Just like with water safety, we have to continue teaching our kids to swim until they're strong swimmers. We need to teach them about risks like rips or algorithmic rips. We need to teach them about predators in the water, it's sharks online, it's pedophiles or scammers. So I think there are a lot of lessons that can be learned, but parents will still, you know, have to be engaged in their kids' online lives. For somebody who wasn't initially a fan of the idea of a ban, it wasn't your decision, but you were implementing it. How difficult is that? I actually had to come around to it because, you know, we've been at this for 10 years in terms of trying to make the places safer, to try and make safety by design the default design principle for the industry to remove harm when kids in particular are in the grip of online crisis.

10:39And these have been incremental changes. I sort of thought, okay, if I can have some latitude in terms of how I roll this out. And one of the reasons I don't refer to it as a ban, but rather as the social media delay, is when you think about the gamification of snap streaks or endless scroll or the opaque algorithms that take us all down rabbit holes and keep us addicted, we as adults have a hard time resisting that. What chance do our kids have with these systems that are literally built to keep them entrenched and entranced? It's just not a fair fight. So if we can delay their entry into social media for three years and we can supplement that with digital action plans so that we're building their critical reasoning skills and resilience, then that's something that I think is worth exploring.

11:34I've got 13-year-old twins. They're in the midst of figuring out who they are, building their identities. They don't have great impulse control. They are comparing themselves. They want to be where their friends are when they see where they are on SnapMaps. I don't know about you, but I didn't have any of those same pressures. I was able to screw up as a teenager and not have it filmed and amplified all over the place. So I think we'll see over time some really beneficial impacts. and the normative changes of moving the burden from parents and families and the children themselves to the platforms to make their platform safer and to keep kids away until they're ready is, I think, that monumental circuit breaker move that we need to move to.

12:24And if other countries do that, then we have a network effect. So what do you see as success? Is it closing accounts, better mental health, finding big tech that's not complying? Yeah, I mean, I think success can come in in different ways and they'll come in different timeframes. We are in this for the long game. And I think people, they wanted every account to disappear magically overnight. You know, we tried to set expectations that wasn't going to be realistic. We also wanted to set expectations about this phase that we're in now, which is still early days, but it's, you know, preventing the re-entry or the recidivism of young people and preventing the circumvention.

13:03That will happen for a while. These companies are going to have to update their classifiers and probably change some of their settings. And this is what I'm using the legal notices for. I think, again, ultimately where we want to get to when generation alpha, kids that are from zero to nine now, hopefully they don't have an expectation that they're going to be on social media at eight or nine years old. They'll know it's 16 and they'll be able to grow up and find themselves and their identity and their friendships in really healthy ways. But there is that criticism that this is a law that's been implemented by older people who perhaps don't really understand how young people work.

13:42What would you say to that? Well, we try to engage young people throughout the process. We have a youth advisory council and it's been really interesting when we did talk to young people about it, particularly people who are over the age of 16 and say, oh my gosh, I wish that were in place when I was there. I spent so much time scrolling or comparing myself and I felt like, you know, I didn't sleep. I didn't apply myself to my homework. I wish I didn't have that distraction, but I didn't know how to extract myself from it. And, you know, having my own laboratory at home with two 13-year-old twins.

14:24I had one that wasn't really fussed about the idea, but another who thought the sky was falling, that her Instagram and her Snapchat might be taken away. So every child is going to have a slightly different experience, I think. A lot of people will be wanting to know when the fines are coming. When will companies be held to account, companies who many people feel should have been fined a long time ago and more should have been done? So I've got 10 complex investigations going into the biggest companies in the world. We'll send out the second set of notices very soon. We're starting to see some anomalies and weaknesses, and I will probe those.

15:05Such as? So there are some kids that are obviously getting through. Snapchat is the one that has been the primary focus now. So I need to probe whether or not their liveness features are working, whether they've implemented their settings in the right way. You've also got to realize that these companies have come to this regime, if you will, kicking and screaming very, very reluctantly. They don't have a huge incentive to get this perfectly right. And they don't want this to be an incentive for other governments to follow suit. So we will have to be clever. I've got a number of different ways I'm sort of looking at impacts and whether or not this is being successful.

15:51But I will have to prove in a court of law and I'll have to build evidence that these companies are not following the reasonable steps. But Snapchat is a particular concern? They are one that the media seems to be focusing on now, but I'm looking at all 10. So I'm not going to divulge some of the concerns that I have about others when I can. and I certainly will.

16:18You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

16:27If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962.

17:08And I'm Max Kennedy, the nephew of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. We explore what was a terrifying moment in history. The story of the Cuban Missile Crisis. How close the world came to nuclear war. And what they had to do to pull it back from the brink. The bomb, Kennedy and Khrushchev. All episodes available now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

17:35I went down to Pyrmont in Sydney Harbour to record this interview with Australia's eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, an ordinary office building with an extraordinary view, as is so often the case in Australia's most famous city. We'd been asking Julie Inman Grant for an interview for quite a while, but she's a busy woman right now. Not only is she having to monitor how this world-first social media ban is going, but she's also getting lots of calls from other governments keen to ask her advice on how they can implement something similar. I couldn't help thinking how hard it must be personally.

18:10She's talked a lot about the online abuse she and her family have faced. And with tech companies threatening lawsuits, it must be a constant stress as she squares up to these giants angry about the ban. But she does a good job of sounding upbeat too, chatty, friendly and approachable, with plenty of anecdotes from these past few years. Okay, so let's return to my conversation with Julie Inman Grant. Obviously, you have pitched yourself against big tech companies, wealthy companies. Elon Musk has called you a censorship commissar, an unelected bureaucrat. Donald Trump has said that he'll come after countries that have basically come after his tech companies.

18:47What do you say to that? I mean, are you worried about the implications for Australia, for you personally? Well, unfortunately, I've been living that reality for the past several years. I get regular death threats. Of course, a lot of these companies have deep pockets. You know, they lawyer up, which is their democratic right. But no, I mean, it's a form of threat to get us to back down. So again, I think you have to have resolve in the face of this strength, and you have to have a certain degree of resilience. but the overriding goal is making sure that all Australians, particularly children, have safer, more positive experiences online.

19:28Like I said, the people with the most to lose here, if this is successful, are the companies themselves. You've also been asked to testify before the US Congress about online safety laws. You've been accused of harassing American companies. Republican Jim Jordan is now threatening you with contempt charges if you don't testify. You're a US citizen. Is it something that you're entertaining? Well, he has asked me to testify. I've explained to him what my regulatory role is and how limited it is. He's concerned about Australia's laws and policies. I can't represent what the Parliament has deliberated on and delivered or the government's policies.

20:09but I'm happy to talk about how we implement the regulation that I've been asked to interpret and enforce. Nothing that we do here affects the ability of American companies to show any content that they like to Americans. And I'd love to give you a cautionary tale. You mentioned the whole idea of Elon Musk referring to me as the Australian censorship commissar. That was around an issue where a 16-year-old violently stabbed a bishop in the face. It started a riot. It was deemed a terrorist incident. So we took action. Ultimately, after litigation, XCorp ended up geoblocking that for Australia, which meant that Australians couldn't access it anymore.

21:00But it was accessed in the UK. And Axel Ritokabana, the 17-year-old who stabbed those three little girls at the Taylor Swift party in Southport, claimed that that very video that he was able to watch 25 minutes before the killing on X was what inspired him to kill those little girls. You know when terrorist violent content is so openly available to young children, it normalizes, it desensitizes, and it sometimes radicalizes. At some point you have to take a stand. And this is also why countries like Australia are working with the UK and the European Commission and other like-minded countries that want to work together to create safer online environments for their citizens.

21:52People talk about moral panic, you know, when something's new, that perhaps there's a resistance for this change. And actually, this is something that we've seen throughout history, that something creative new will come along, and we just need to get used to it. I'm wondering whether something like social media will, in 50 years time, will we look back and think, did we panic overly? Or do you think there's so much more harm that perhaps people don't realise? I think we've come late to the game with social media. Social media has been a fixture on most adult lives and now children's lives for almost 20 years.

22:30And the fact that we're actually making these decisive safety changes now, I think, says that we are a little bit late. In many cases, the damage has been done. But what I think we need to do as governments is think one step ahead and be anticipatory. In some ways, I'm more concerned about the catastrophic harms that AI could have on our children. And this is why in March we're implementing some standards around AI companions and chatbots so that these AI companies cannot be delivering pornographic content, suicide, self-harm, and disordered eating to under-18s. how many suicides and deaths, how much damage do we need to see until we act?

23:19I, in fact, don't think social media will look the same even in two or three years. We're going to see a convergence of gaming and the metaverse. So even this idea of having exemptions for messaging and gaming platforms may not make sense when we review this law in two years, because it's getting difficult to really draw those distinct lines between all these different platforms today. So do you think the UK, obviously following your example, is going to have it easier? Or do you think the challenges against big tech companies, the teething problems will still be there no matter which country now takes on a social media ban?

23:58I mean, I think we're all going to have our challenges. Again, we're coming up against technology companies that are richer and more powerful than many nation states and they're not going to be regulated without a fight. That's why we refer to technological exceptionalism because it is. If you think about any other consumer facing industry, whether it's food handling and safety standards or consumer goods, when you import a car into the UK or to Australia, these car companies know that they have to build to Australian safety standards and to share the crash test dummy results. That's just expected.

24:37Why shouldn't we expect them to be delivering a much safer experience? If they had built safer spaces, I don't think we would be where we are today with a social media ban and countries embracing it all over the world. People want a decisive change.

24:57Thank you for listening to The Interview. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can find many more episodes of The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including ones with Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, and Taiwan Cyber Ambassador Audrey Tang. Until the next time, bye for now.

25:27If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I am Nina Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union in 1962.