Mike's Minute: The Govt promised what they can't deliver

From the old "cart before the horse" department are two setbacks for ideas we thought were going to work, or perhaps we hoped were going to work, but aren't. 

Idea 1: We get big tech to pay for locally produced news. 

That’s Google paying NZME for news that ends up on their news feed. 

To a degree, deals had been done specifically between some companies, but the Government had the idea that as part of their "supporting the troubled media" plan they could drag big tech to the table to cough up. 

It turns out they couldn't, they can't, and they won't. 

Australia had the same idea. Then Donald Trump got wind of it, told them that these are American companies and if you tax them, he will whack tariffs on all over the place. 

We were waiting in the wings to see how it all went in Australia before we gave it the full crack here. 

Neither of us will be cracking anything. 

Idea 2: Banning social media for kids. One of those almost universally agreed upon, feel-good ideas that was never going anywhere. 

It's a nice thought. It's just not real. 

Australia had a crack at that too and, like idea number one, we are sitting, waiting and watching. 

Their ban comes in in December. It won't work. 

A landmark national study has found its impossible. The age assurance technology trial, which was commissioned by the Government, looked at everything and their conclusion was that no single solution exists. 

Can you fiddle and poke and prod? Sure. 

But they say, "we found a plethora of approaches that fit use cases in different ways, but we did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments". 

And this is where bandwagons come in. We all like to hate on social media, we all like to protect kids and we all want to be seen to be doing the right thing. 

Governments are not devoid of that particular weakness. But the problem with Governments is they shouldn’t promise what they can't deliver, and they were never going to be able to deliver either ideas one, or two. 

Not Australia. Not us.  

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