Meta inquiry: Vice president Antigone Davis pushes online safety issue to app stores

Meta executives have denied trying to handball internet safety assurances for children to app stores, amid criticism that their algorithms were still pumping dangerous content to Australians on Facebook and Instagram.

Meta’s vice president and global head of safety Antigone Davis and regional director of policy Mia Garlick faced a joint parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday, after a hearing in June, to respond to MPs loaded with a range of questions.

In her opening statement, Ms Davis said industry-wide regulation for app stores was needed — giving parents powers to make the call on whether their child can use a particular platform.

“With this solution, when a teen wants to download an app, app stores would be required to notify their parents, much like when parents are notified if their teen attempts to make an in-app purchase,” Ms Davis said.

“They can also verify the age of their teen when setting up their phone, negating the need for everyone, adults and teens alike, to verify their age multiple times across multiple apps.”

Ms Davis denied the proposal was a “burden-shifting exercise” after the executives admitted some dangerous content was still being pumped to Australians via either algorithms on Facebook or Instagram.

“In the legislation we are proposing, we want to ensure that there are obligations for apps to then provide age-appropriate experiences and to create standards that are uniform across the industry for parents.

“It is actually trying to solve a problem for parents and make it simpler.”

The executives said Meta was continually reviewing its policies around age assurances, which they claimed they took “very seriously”.

Ms Garlick said the company had engaged in initial conversations with the government on their age assurance trial, but had not heard anything since.

Ms Davies said that being able to effectively disclose the exact number of children on their platform was extremely difficult, as many remain undetected.

“If we know that they are on the platform, we are going to remove them.”

Ms Davis said they would still assist Australia’s eSafety Commissioner by providing data used to assess the efficacy of their age assurance tools.

New committee chair Sharon Claydon asked whether Meta could reveal the potential impact of refusing to renew the News Media Bargaining Code — to which the tech giant reaffirmed that “all options” were still on the table.

“All options are on the table, but as I indicated, we haven’t had any indication about which way things are progressing and so there’s nothing further to update,” she said.

The Federal Government said it is considering using laws under the News Media Bargaining Code to force Meta into negotiating with news publishers.

Ms Garlick said she had not received any further correspondence from the Australian Government regarding the news code — but was quick to describe the current legislation as “unworkable”.

She added the current legislation was not “reflective of the economic realities of news on our services”.

The social media giant has already confirmed it would stop paying media companies to use content on its ‘news’ tab, in what is estimated to be a $70 million-a-year hit.

Ms Garlick said the team that made the call to stop paying for news content in Australia came from a range of people, and did not point to a single individual.

Independent member Zoe Daniel accused Meta of using US-centric data to say only three per cent of all content on its platforms was news in Australia.

“I think we need some more rigorous or substantive information on this to place trust in that number of 3 per cent and I don’t have a lot of faith in it, in the way that it’s been framed,” she said.

The committee is due to release an interim update following their probe in the coming weeks, before their findings are presented on November 18.