00:00hello and good evening i'm melissa idris welcome to consider this this is the show where we want
00:15you to consider and then reconsider what you know of the news of the day in 2026 malaysia plans to
00:21ban children under the age of 16 from signing up for social media accounts now the move mirrors
00:28australia's sweeping restrictions and signals a growing global push to limit young people's
00:35exposure online tonight on the show we'll ask are we targeting the right problems and are we prepared
00:44for the trade-offs that protection will require us to give up joining me on the show is dr benjamin lo
00:51who's the course director for monash university malaysia's bachelor of digital media and
00:57communication ben good to have you on the show always thank you so much for joining me um so
01:02malaysia is planning to ban social media accounts for those under 16 by using um the ekyc approach the
01:11electronic know your customer approach so maybe you can talk us through what exactly ekyc is and
01:18whether or not it is the right policy tool for the harm that we are trying to address here i see thank
01:24you so much melissa always happy to be on on board uh yes ekyc is the approach that we are apparently
01:31going to use to ban under 16 from using social media um ekyc if you guys are if you're not familiar
01:37is basically the method of trying to verify the identity of an account holder using um some form of
01:43verification and in most cases it's going to be some sort of id verification so for malaysia is going to be either
01:49your identity card your passport or other forms of id essentially now the problem of course is that
01:55this is always this is seen as an invasion of privacy to a certain extent because it is also
01:59essentially means that if you want to use any social media you can no longer use it in an anonymous
02:04fashion you cannot make any anonymous accounts everybody needs to the basically the social media
02:09companies will know who is used who is registering at any single time so this is the major concern that was
02:15that that comes with this kind of approach essentially oh help me understand that
02:20correctly so no one can have multiple accounts or anonymous accounts anymore uh it's unclear whether
02:28that is possible but in terms of having uh i think i think again the government has not revealed how
02:34they're actually going to implement this but from the way that we understand it is that if you want to
02:38have an account you need to verify your age through an id of sorts so while um you probably can make
02:45multiple accounts you will not be able to make them anonymously right and definitely not make it for
02:50someone who is under uh 16 years old uh ben so let's take a look at what's happening with australia
02:55because australia is enforcing a similar ban are the contexts the same i mean i'm just wondering
03:01what we can learn from the australia experience whether we should be watching australia as a sort of
03:08regulatory test case right now i think if you've been looking at the news everybody is paying
03:13attention to australia because australia i mean this whole idea of banning you know um teenagers
03:19under the age of under under a certain age or from using social media above above 13 essentially
03:24um is it's not it's not something new other countries in europe have been doing it for the
03:28last couple of years essentially but australia is doing it in a way that is very very different
03:32meaning that they're trying to expand the approach rather than just relying on either um the previous
03:37approach that america likes to use is basically um you just have to do a verbal consent you just have to
03:42to just have to indicate that you agree you assume that you're above this certain age and that's why
03:47you're using it uh whereas other kind other places are using similar to what we are proposing which is
03:52ekyc you need to have an id to verify australia on the other hand is using uh something in the middle
03:58basically whereby they do require you to verify your your age but they are also trying to implement
04:04other forms of collecting the information without using your id so what they are doing is that they are
04:10actually asking social media companies to do what is known as age inference or age assurance whereby
04:15you use other means of trying to um sort of like get to guess the age of the person essentially so
04:22this includes sort of like looking through a person's social media feed and see their past content
04:26and try to see whether or not they are have done uh they have said certain things or posted certain
04:31things that can reflect the age that they're doing so something like um if they're celebrating a birthday then they can say oh this is
04:38they celebrated their 16th birthday so this person is probably about uh 17 this year or things like
04:42that or even uh certain milestones in life like say that oh i just finished my driver's license or i just
04:48voted essentially so these are clear indications that this is obviously somebody who's an adult and
04:52whatnot as well uh but other approaches also include using ai methods whereby um you just have to upload a
04:58picture of yourself and the ai and the ai will sort of like try to guess your age based on the picture that
05:04you have essentially and um and so these are supposed to be the methods that they are going to use as
05:10the first approach before they ask you for your id essentially so uh right now a lot of social media
05:16companies that have agreed to to to implement this have tried different approaches in this way as well
05:21uh but we're also if you also look at the news there's a lot of reports about how there are a lot of
05:26uh teenagers who are able to bypass this you know trying to manipulate the pictures in different ways or
05:30just trying to circumvent it in other ways but and the government is again putting their foot down and
05:35so it's a little bit of a game of cat and mouse to see whether or not the teenagers will actually
05:39bypass this ban and whether the government and it's all its measures can go through with it again all
05:44idea of course is that to do as much as possible without asking for their personal id because that's
05:49when um the risk of uh data uh data breaches is going to happen so ben help me understand are you for
05:58the age restrictions or um on social media for under 16s or are you against it help me think through
06:05where where do you stand is it about restrict uh restricting social media for younger people or
06:11is it about the use of the ekyc approach that you object to i have a little i mean i am on the one
06:19hand i would say that i do think that we do that there needs to be social media controls to limit or
06:26to limit the damage that it does to our young people essentially you know because you're at this formative
06:30age and uh social media is doing a lot of harms rather than good in many cases as well that being said
06:36the approach to regulate it is where i have a problem you know this entire ekyc approach is where
06:41things can go dramatically wrong and again as we've seen uh if if you heard my main beef is that whenever
06:49the our government collects private data from malaysians it also always seems to be the main source
06:56of data breaches as well so uh that's always going to be a main concern so whenever there's any new
07:01measures from the government to collect this more data from us i'm always very wary as
07:06well and always going to be against it all for the most part okay yeah definitely i understand the
07:11concern about um privacy issues collecting data especially for from really young people as well
07:17talk to me a little bit about when you say regulating the tech platforms and clearly there this has to be
07:24hand in hand right there there there should be accountability and responsibility coming from tech
07:29companies but if we want to have them address the harms that children face online how do we do
07:36that without resorting to um approaches like the ekyc approach yeah so for me the very simple answer
07:45and this is where tech companies will always try to claim that that it's an impossible ask essentially
07:51is that they always claim that that it is uh for me it all boils down to content moderation or just
07:57moderation of their platforms you know tech companies have been basically dominating the public sphere they've
08:03been controlling the public sphere or become the platform for public discourses for the last more
08:08than 10 years now at this point essentially yet they always fall short in terms of whenever they are
08:13asked to oh you need to control what content comes on these things and they on the one hand they say
08:17that oh we're trying to defend freedom of speech but on the other hand they also say that it's an
08:22impossible thing to do because it's just too much content in there and it's not practical for humans to be
08:26involved in many cases but the thing is these are billion this is a trillion dollar industry and they
08:33make billions in profits on a yearly basis and they cannot afford to have people involved in the process
08:39it's a very ridiculous thing to us essentially and this all these measures of trying to get all these
08:44bands and whatnot it's i mean it's it's i would argue that i would only support it if it was proven to
08:52work and as we've seen before in many many situations where there are all these blanket
08:57bands that are done on on the basis of age it usually just results in two things number one people
09:02find a way to circumvent all of these blocks anyway or number two it forces these people to
09:08look for alternatives that are through unsafe spaces on the internet so they go into they expose
09:14themselves to you know to viruses to scams to malware and whatnot as well so it's a very problematic
09:19approach and i'm always against these these sort of like blanket bands as a result of that okay so
09:25i understand that um there are concerns where you have such heavy-handed regulation like this but
09:32why is it that so many parents are supportive of such a ban why is it that even though there are privacy
09:40and data concerns and there are concerns where young this could drive young people to seek other
09:49unsafe spaces why is it that parents are overwhelmingly supporting this proposal to ban
09:57young people on social media i think it's because you know it's it's very similar to other moral panics
10:03that we've seen over the last few decades whenever there's a new technology or a new genre of
10:07entertainment that appears it's usually um there's always this knee jerk reaction to try to restrict it or
10:14limited in many cases and i think with social media while there was no knee jerk reaction because social
10:19media basically encompassed the entire planet all at once so it was not just like the the younger
10:25generation but basically almost all ages were involved so this moral panic took a little bit
10:30longer to come into play but you know as we sort of saw with you know the the the the the stabbing case a
10:37few months back essentially a lot of parents feel that social media is putting their kids in a space that
10:43they are completely unprepared for and they're completely unaware of so in lieu of having any
10:48kind of like moderation again they they see that this is uh this is like controlled by tech companies
10:53who are unwilling to do anything so the next step of course is to make sure that the government steps in
10:57and just prevents people from doing it and and because they are so set on just trying to restrict it
11:03in this particular manner they're not there's not enough clarity about whether this is practical or not
11:08or what is the sort of like unintended consequences of doing it in this manner ben but the what i
11:15understand that uh platform accountability is ideal that this is i did i um what we want to achieve or or
11:22go towards however that's going to take many many years and to get that policy sorted because it's such
11:30a global many tech companies are global it's going to take a really long time to get this
11:34um to see this through in the meantime we have children who could be exposed and could have
11:41faced all these threats and risks online or even suffer uh from online bullying and the like
11:47how do we balance that because this seems to be the closest more achievable government regulation seems
11:54to be the most achievable um policy intervention right now as opposed to tech regulation is that a false
12:01assumption how do you see this um well i think that's a narrative that the tech companies would
12:06like to sort of like put it out there essentially for the most part and the thing is we've seen it
12:10before you know like like again looking to australia they did have the sort of like the the content
12:16code you know the the the news sharing code that they have essentially that did force uh tech companies
12:21to sort of like adhere to their regulations to certain extent so um while that can be done for look i mean
12:27that proves that while blanket bans is something that they always acquiesce to it also means that
12:31if you do want to force them to do some other forms of moderation that can also be done and
12:36that means that the governments have to step up and they have to sort of like put their foot down
12:40when it comes to dealing with tech companies in many cases ben thank you so much for being on the
12:45show always a pleasure talking to you dr benjamin lo from monash university malaysia there we're going to
12:50take a quick break here and consider this we'll be back with mark stay tuned
Comments