Mike's Minute: The social media ban will not happen

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

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3d ago 1:49

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The social media ban is like the pay equity debate.

It's not hard to drum up a lot of emotion and it's not hard to find people who would argue passionately for it.

So in this sense, perhaps unlike the pay equity debate, the Government is on the right side of this.

For the record, my gut says the pay equity debate is somewhat of a risk, but is more beltway and union-based than many think, and won't ultimately damage the Government.

The social media ban won't damage them either, even though it won't work, which it won't.

It's not like a school phone ban. A phone ban is black and white. You either have no phones in class, or not.

That has been successful because the Government played the bad guy allowing schools to do what schools should have done all along.

The social media ban is designed to help parents be the bad guys, backed by the Government.

We are looking to Australia for guidance.

In Australia they are exempting YouTube, they are exempting Telegram, they are exempting gaming, and as part of that, the game Roblox. There are confirmed reports of paedophile rings using Roblox.

So the Government are now the arbiters of what's good, what's bad, what's right and what's wrong.

Libertarians will be having a field day. No wonder Act are not on board.

Act also, according to their leader who was listening to the Prime Minister on this show, have not moved their position on backing the idea. Because they don’t.

So the moment you go down the “Meta is bad, but YouTube is fine” pathway, that's lawyers, or possibly threats of lawyers, or possibly the pulling of a service from a country.

The Government was also looking at big tech paying our local media for content they take and make money off. We were following Australia on that too.

What happened to that? Trump did, and tariffs, and threats of services being pulled. Has any of it come to pass? No, it has not.

Will this come to pass? No, it will not.

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