Like this, I remember hearing about Ofcom trying to enforce age verification on American owned and operated websites in which was met with resistance as British legislation has no jurisdiction on US soil (there is even an actual court case about it in the US) since it contradicts freedom of expression towards American citizens. It makes me wonder why try to enforce someone else’s laws on another nation, it won’t work as laws are geographically bound.
Social Media companies are NOT headquartered on where age checks have became a thing (UK or AU), like how X (Twitter) or Facebook have their HQ in California which should render AU’s -16 SM “Ban” useless as those laws carry zero jurisdiction in the US. It doesn’t matter if they tried to fine them 50m AUD (they have more in USD and remains stronger than AUD), the thing is FB, Instagram or X are US based firms (so AU legislation has no jurisdiction).
You can be the CEO of any SM company & retort “YOUR LAWS MEAN NOTHING, AS I DO NOT LIVE IN YOUR COUNTRY!” simply refuse to comply as you are aware they cannot enforce laws from one country to someone elses since legislation is geographically bound. It happened with the “Hub” as they stood their ground refusing to comply, what happened? They simply stopped supporting those regions (as in the website no longer works there).
Because it’s not about age verification
It’s about control and dissipating the internet anonymity
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If the company has no legal presence in the country, that probably holds. But if Facebook is collecting ad revenue from anyone in the UK, they’ve got to have a legal presence there.
If you are something like 4chan or a descendant of that type of website, the answer is as easy as that. If you are Xwitter or Facebook it is not. You’re too big. You may have opened an office in the country, either because it was a legal requirement to continue operating in the country or because you collect money through it. So throwing your hands up and saying eff you we just don’t serve your country any more comes with a cost. Your ad money now needs to be paid abroad, which comes with the danger of increasing the cost for advertisers who now need to pay in dollars rather than pounds. And the representative in the local office, which you may want to close now, may find themselves in court for all the infractions that occurred before you threw your hands up (something that happened in Brazil IIRC). Also, you want the people who make the laws continue to use your platform to give it relevance. A Melon Usk Xwitter hissy fit may finally drive the rest of the politicians away. Loss of relevance will translate to loss of money.
The internet is multilaterally interdependent and scale matters.
The laws only matter in as much as the company wants to make money. Otherwise yea, no company or individual has any moral or legal obligation to abide by any law and that government has no (legal) way to enforce laws on anyone outside of their jurisdiction. Ultimately companies are voluntarily abiding by laws because they do not care about anything except making money.
These businesses bill Australian customers for advertising - they follow Australian laws. 4chan is different though…
the thing is FB, Instagram or X are US based firms (so AU legislation has no jurisdiction).
They are headquartered in the US, but in fact they are multi nationals, doing business in many countries. If you do business in a country, you have to abide to the local law. SM companies are seeing, how difficult that can be in the online space and are trying to avoid following the law.
AV is kind of a bad example of that, since it is flawed in so many ways, but the principle of jurisdiction is important and needed. Just as Apple has to use USB C (like any other smartphone company) in the EU, or the upcoming (I think) legislation about replaceble batteries in products.
Of course Apple, Facebook, Google etc could just decide to move out of the market, and for smaller markets that already happened in the past. Though moving out of any bigger market (eg the EU or China) will cost them so much more. And in addition other companies would fill the space left behind. So by moving out of a big market, the company would create its own big competition - and no big company likes competition.
The purpose of age verification is to further deanonymize internet activity, i.e. increase surveillance. As rich Western countries experience contractions and discipline labor, they react with oppression and war rather than improving conditions. This is an escalation in preparation for oppression.
There is also a secondary aspect at the heart of seemingly most national-focused tech legislation and that is to favor whatever monopolies are dominant. For example, if there are national monopolies that are getting drowned out by international ones, but that can still successfully lobby the national government, they can try to get policy that makes it easier for them to gain market share and harder for international monopolies. Or, in the other direction in terms of scale, basically every hurdle to implementation is a barrier that is much more costly to an individual or small company but easily absorbed by a big monopoly. Force most websites to implement AV and you’ve just added a flat base cost that makes small companies less competitive.
