7 November 2025

Welcome

It’s just 33 days until Australia’s social media age restrictions come into force, yet even now the eSafety Commissioner is changing her recommendations for which platforms are included and which are not.

I say “recommendations” because it’s not actually down to her. It’s the communications minister who has the power to make determinations for specific platforms, although it’s also the Federal Court’s role to decide whether platforms actually fall within the vaguely-worded legislation.

Meanwhile the big video streaming players are to be hit with Australian content quotas, and Microsoft is apologising for its Microsoft 365 subscription “confusion” in an attempt to placate the ACCC.

And as always, there’s much more. Read on!

Reddit to be age restricted, Roblox not so much

The eSafety Commissioner has updated the list of platforms which will or won’t be included in the social media age restrictions which come into force on 10 December — at least in her view.

Platforms included: Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.

Platforms not included: Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, WhatsApp, and YouTube Kids.

“A service being listed does not necessarily mean that the service agrees with eSafety’s views,” the agency writes.

“eSafety does not have a formal role in declaring which services are age-restricted social media platforms. In the absence of any rules made by the Minister of Communications specifying a service is either an age-restricted social media platform or not an age-restricted social media platform, any determination that a service is or is not an age-restricted social media platform is a matter for the court.”

In other words, watch this space. And watch the court listings.

eSafety’s list will be continue to be updated from 10 December.

But isn’t Roblox a dangerous hellscape?

The exclusion of Roblox from the age restrictions has confused some people. Three weeks ago, ABC News reported that Roblox has a predator problem.

This week Guardian journalist Sarah Martin described how her eight-year-old alter ego was sexually assaulted and shat on. It is not a pleasant story.

The government is now facing more pressure to include Roblox.

Meanwhile The Conversation has some advice on how to minimise family conflict over the social media ban.

It did occur to me that the age restrictions come into force just as school finishes for the year, depriving kids of the ways they’d usually have stayed in touch over summer. Although they still have WhatsApp. No one has ever been bullied on WhatsApp.

Local content rules for big streaming platforms

The major video streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime will be forced to produce Australian content under new legislation introduced to parliament this week.

“Streaming services with more than one million Australian subscribers will need to invest at least 10% of their total expenditure for Australia — or 7.5% of their revenue — on new local drama, children’s, documentary, arts, and educational programs,” the government said in a press release.

Calculations by Mumbrella suggest that “the legislation could guarantee the streamers contribute at least $372 million each year to the Australian screen industry”.

Data crunched by the Guardian shows that Australian kids’ TV has already been decimated, with production “hitting an all-time low of just 35 hours of content in the 2023-24 financial year”.

The details of the new rules are in the catchily titled Communications Legislation Amendment (Australian Content Requirement for Subscription Video On Demand (Streaming) Services) Bill 2025, which still has to be passed of course.

Free-to-air commercial TV has long had Australian content quotas, although they work in a totally different way.

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Also in the news

• The Labor government’s controversial Freedom of Information Amendment Bill 2025, which would have heavily restricted FoI applications, will be blocked in the Senate by the Coalition and The Greens. Accusations that the Albanese government is more secretive than its predecessors is highlighted in these three charts.

• Microsoft is trying to get ahead of the accusations of misleading customers over Microsoft 365 subscription pricing, which we discussed last week, because this week they apologised and offered refunds to people who didn’t want Copilot.

• Australia and the US have imposed sanctions on four entities and one individual linked to North Korea’s cryptocurrency theft operations, alleging that it funds the DPKR’s nuclear weapons program.

• Their prices have been rising on the dark web, but stolen Australian credit cards still cost less than a movie ticket. However forged Australian passports have doubled in price.

• Australia is facing an “AI divide”, according to a new national survey for the Australian Digital Inclusion Index.

• ABC news has an interesting feature on people’s attitudes to AI.

• Youth innovation leader Minh Hoang has some interesting thoughts on AI imperialism and the loss of agency. “When you import the technology, you don’t just import a line of code or a piece of metal,” they told The Commercial Disco, an InnovationAus podcast. “You actually import their politics as well.”

• Also from InnovationAus, an AI “policy quagmire” has dragged Australia to its lowest-ever digital ranking, according to the International Institute for Management Development (IMD).

• Google is planning to build an AI data centre on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean after signing a deal with the Department of Defence, reports Reuters. Apparently Christmas Island has been featuring in recent regional wargames.

• Greens Senator Barbara Pocock introduced the Fair Work Amendment (Right to Work from Home) Bill 2025, which would “introduce a statutory right for employees to request to work from home for up to two days per week”.

• A software developer has accidentally leaked Australian government documents on “two separate occasions”.

• Optus is taking on 450 staff to address the Triple Zero mess. CEO Stephen Rue is still resisting calls to resign. Perhaps they’re not getting through either.

• The NSW Parliament recently released a report which says, “Pornography is a widely consumed form of adult entertainment that is not inherently harmful. The question of when pornography can be harmful needs to consider what the pornography depicts as well as the way that an individual interacts with it”. There are concerns, of course, but it’s all more nuanced than almost all of the policy discussions.

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Elsewhere

• From the BBC, “I wanted ChatGPT to help me. So why did it advise me how to kill myself?”

• From The Conversation, “Organisations are falling for what is known as the doorman fallacy: reducing rich and complex human roles to a single task and replacing people with AI. This overlooks the nuanced interactions and adaptability humans bring to their work.” This aligns with my own observation that companies are assigning their dumbest “employee”, the chatbot, to be the customer’s first experience. Why would you do that?

• I should’ve mentioned this last week. Elon Musk has built his own Wikipedia clone (gift link). It’s called Grokipedia and based on his AI, of course. And as the Guardian reports, “From publishing falsehoods to pushing far-right ideology, Grokipedia gives chatroom comments equal status to research”.

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Inquiries of note

• The Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee is holding an inquiry into the newly introduced Copyright Amendment Bill 2025. The bill amends the Copyright Act 1968 “to introduce an Australian orphan works scheme, clarify the scope of section 28 relating to the performance and communication of copyright material in the course of educational instruction, and make other minor, technical amendments”. There’s no stated deadline for submissions, but the committee has to report back by 19 December so be quick.

What’s next?

Parliament is now on a break until Monday 24 November, when it returns for what is currently scheduled to be the last sitting week of 2025.

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