under-16s social media ban<\/a>. Governments and tech firms are closely watching Australia\u2019s efforts, which will likely rely on artificial intelligence and behavioural data to estimate the age of users, and not conduct blanket age-verification.<\/p>\nAttempts to regulate online content and platforms has driven public concern in PNG about access to information and fears of censorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn paper it sounds like protection, but in reality it could silence people who rely on Facebook or TikTok to speak out,\u201d Jonathan Makil, a political science student at the University of Papua New Guinea, said.<\/p>\n
Emmanuel Tipi, a comedian known as KabbageGang on Facebook, said the platform was \u201cone of the most powerful tools for ordinary Papua New Guineans to share information, express themselves, and access news beyond traditional media.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the government introduces heavy-handed regulations such as ID registration, it risks silencing voices, especially those who rely on humour and creativity to educate and engage,\u201d Tipi said. \u201cPeople may feel less free to interact, comment, or share because of fear of surveillance.\u201d<\/p>\n
In March, the government prompted outrage when it temporarily shut down Facebook as a \u201ctest\u201d to assess its capabilities to regulate online content. It did so under new anti-terrorism laws that gave the government powers to monitor and restrict online communication.<\/p>\n
Facebook is the most widely used social media platform in the Pacific nation of around 11 million people. It is most popular with 18\u201334 year-olds and commonly used for political discussions and activism, though the country also struggles with the spread of misinformation and violent content.<\/p>\n
The shutdown prompted widespread anger from users across PNG. The government said its actions were designed to protect young people from harmful content.<\/p>\n
Small business owner Sylvia Pascoe, who relies on Facebook to run her events management company, said the shutdown \u201cdisrupted everyone, yet no one has explained what it achieved or why it mattered. That only deepens the distrust.<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial media isn\u2019t just for fun for most people; for many people, this is their shopfront and their only source of revenue for feeding their families,\u201d Pascoe said. \u201cThe more they make life harder for ordinary people just trying to survive, the more that trust breaks down.\u201d<\/p>\n
Technology expert and activist Yuambari Haihuie has spent over a decade advocating for good governance with Transparency International Papua New Guinea. He said the attempts by authorities to \u201csilence discussion\u201d on platforms, such as the Facebook shutdown, should not be the way to make social media safer.<\/p>\n
Haihuie said online media can be made safer \u201cthrough education to promote safe conduct and media literacy in schools and on the platform itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t developed the same instinct for our digital freedoms on social media, which is the modern public space \u2026 this thinking needs to change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Papua New Guinea is in \u201cearly\u201d discussions with Meta on imposing age restrictions to reduce the impact of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-57961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}