Reddit Takes Australia to Court Over Child Social Media Ban

Message board platform Reddit has filed a lawsuit in Australia’s highest court, seeking to overturn the country’s recent social media ban for children, as reported by Reuters earlier today, December 12.

According to the report, the platform has called Australia’s new law an intrusion on free political discourse and is setting the stage for a protracted legal battle.

The company ranks Australia among its biggest markets, and it said in its filing that the ban should be declared invalid, as it interfered with free political communication inspired by the Australian constitution.

However, Reddit also argued that even if the court upheld the ban, its platform should still be exempt from it, since it does not meet the definition of social media.

The lawsuit came two days after Australia rolled out the first nationwide ban on people under 16 in the world, prohibiting them from accessing social media platforms. However, this is also the second challenge that the law has faced in the last month, with the first one coming when two teenagers representing an Australian libertarian group filed a lawsuit of their own in November.

With the action from a Silicon Valley major with a $44 billion market cap, the legal battle is likely to take much longer to be resolved. It is also worth noting that, should Reddit succeed, other platforms could find a way to issue similar challenges or find reasons why the ban should not apply to them.

Reddit Is Protecting Profits, Not Rights, Says Health Minister

Reddit’s filing named the Commonwealth of Australia and Communications Minister Anika Wells as defendants. A spokesperson for Wells said that the Australian government was on the side of Australian parents and kids, not platforms, and as such, it would stand firm to protect young Australians from experiencing harm on social media.

Reuters also quoted Health Minister Mark Butler, who said that Reddit filed the lawsuit ot protect profits, and not young people’s right to political expression. “It is action we saw time and time again by Big Tobacco against tobacco control and we are seeing it now by some social media or big tech giants,” he added.

Reddit, however, continues to claim that the law carries serious privacy and political expression issues for everyone on the internet, adding that this is why it is filing an application to have the law reviewed.

In its 12-page filing, the company said that barring under-16s would impede political discourse. “Australian citizens under the age of 16 will, within years if not months, become electors. The choices to be made by those citizens will be informed by political communication in which they engage prior to the age of 18.”