Democracy is Good Business + Debating Online Age Verification

**Doug Stephens** (0:02)
What I found when I started looking at the history of how we got to where we are today is that you see that a lot of the things that have been done by businesses have really been destructive forces in terms of our belief in democracy as a governing system. So, we've kind of brought ourselves to a point where, wittingly or unwittingly, where we are in danger of losing Western democracy. And that's a problem for business. That's just not a problem for the voter.
It's a problem for business leaders.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:38)
The Amber Mac Show on Canada Talks, SiriusXM 167

**Amber Mac** (0:43)
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Welcome to The AmberMac Show. Coming up in today's episode, Jeff and I are going to dive into social media bands that are underway around the world and how we can keep kids safer online.

**Jeff MacArthur** (1:47)
Plus, we're also going to talk to the author of a new book that unpacks how business leaders can embrace radical trust, fairness in action and collective intelligence, and we'll talk to one of the companies making the AI revolution possible. But first, let's get to the latest news.

**Amber Mac** (2:03)
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**SPEAKER_2** (2:43)
Headlines.

**Amber Mac** (2:45)
There's been so much news lately focused on social media, bands and the like, not to mention a lot of related conversations that are happening on social media, that Jeff and I wanted to do a segment focusing on this topic. Here in Canada, our government recently announced Bill C-34, which is the Safe Social Media Act, and the most recent country to put in place social media restrictions for young people at the time we recorded this is the United Kingdom. But both countries are joining an increasing number of regions that are trying to put legislation in place that will protect youth from digital harms, ranging from social media to AI chatbots and more.

**Jeff MacArthur** (3:25)
And this all started with Australia, whose December 2025 ban was the first in the world. So a lot of people have been using that as a reference point. And Australia's legislation has been the subject of a lot of criticism since they basically forced the major social media companies to lock out access for youth under 16
And they claim that that's removed almost 5 million social media accounts so far, but it's seen by a lot as being a bit of a blunt instrument and they didn't give a lot of time to prepare for it. And even with those efforts that they made, it's still estimated that about 60% of kids in Australia who previously had social media accounts still have some access to social media accounts. So it's not perfect, but it's a first mover kind of thing, so hopefully something we can learn from.

**Amber Mac** (4:12)
I think that's a really great point to bring up, that it is not necessarily perfect and also not the same as what is being planned here in Canada.
I do want to say that one of the biggest points of criticism about any of these moves to date seems to be around the privacy implications of age verification. But I have to say there's definitely some incoherency on some of these arguments. People claiming things like this means uploading your government identification directly to the social media companies. And how could you ever trust them with that information? Which would be a fair point, except for the fact that that is not how age verification should be done.