Background: Meta and Alphabet are two of the world’s biggest tech giants, worth a combined $7.4 trillion USD. In Australia, Meta's Instagram has around 14.3 million users (yep, more than half the population), while Alphabet's YouTube has 20.9 million Australian users.

What happened: Australia has announced plans impose a social media ban on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube for kids under 16 - starting on December 10 this year. The goal is to protect young users’ mental health and wellbeing.

What else: Now, Meta and Google are introducing new safety measures for teens. Instagram will now default to PG-13 level content and require parental permission to adjust settings. Meanwhile, YouTube will highlight mental health resources when teens search topics like depression, anxiety, ADHD, or eating disorders. It’s part of big tech trying to get ahead of the global regulatory crackdown.

What's the key learning?

💡When governments start cracking down on an industry, companies often realise that the best defence is to look like they don’t need to be policed.

💡When companies voluntarily act in the public interest, it buys them goodwill and more importantly time - because it makes regulators feel that progress is already being made. And maybe delays the need to intervene.

💡Back in 2021, after major scrutnity from ASIC, Afterpay, Zip and other buy now pay later companies launched a self-regulated “BNPL Code of Practice”. And this 'self-policing' was effective in delaying formal regulation. So it seems like Meta and Alphabet are trying to self-regulate before other countries start regulating them too.