Experience with similar regimes overseas does not suggest that this will end well. And it will be difficult for any online age-verification regime to keep kids off social media without also imposing substantial encumbrances on adults or threatening privacy.
Let’s look first at what each of the parties has proposed, and what the different coalitions might then bring.
National’s proposed Online Safety (Minimum Age and Child Safety Risk Assessment) Bill requires covered social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children under the age of 16 from holding accounts. They will also require those platforms to assess and report on risks to those under 18, including risks from false or misleading information.
Under National’s regime, the Secretary for Internal Affairs would be the online regulator for mainstream social media platforms as well as AI companions designed for social or emotional interaction. Messaging, gaming, and other platforms would be excluded, at least for now. The Department of Internal Affairs says that other kinds of platforms, like gaming platforms, may be included in future phases of policy work.
For breaches of the age limit or age-check privacy rules, court-imposed penalties can be up to the higher of $40 million, or 10% of the affected platform’s global turnover.
National’s likely coalition partners, ACT and New Zealand First, do not support National’s proposed legislation. ACT warned the legislation threatened adult privacy while risking driving children to less visible and more harmful platforms. New Zealand First warned the legislation could not be implemented effectively without unacceptable risks to online privacy and to access to Virtual Private Networks.
Labour, like National, would require social media companies to prevent under-16s from having accounts. It would set an independent digital regulator to oversee a broader set of online services, including games, to investigate harmful practices and enforce safety standards.
It would also regulate how platforms present social media posts to users. Platforms would be required to offer users the option to see only posts from accounts that they follow, rather than algorithmically-recommended posts. A broad digital duty of care would apply and would regulate the algorithms used to present content to users.
The Green Party has worried that youths losing online communities that they find valuable may switch to less-safe services. They have also raised privacy-related concerns with online age verification, and have been sceptical of online age limits. But the Greens, like Labour, support an online duty of care and independent regulation of platform design and conduct.
Opportunity also supports stronger platform regulation but has not taken a final position on National’s proposed legislation.
Labour and National together could legislate for social media age limits or an online regulator, regardless of other coalition partners, unless their coalition partners prohibited those age limits as condition of support.
And it brings a few problems.
National’s legislation proposes maximal fines on covered platforms far in excess of any plausible New Zealand revenue.
The current American administration has been very clear that it will not tolerate foreign governments disproportionately penalising American platforms. A February 2025 memorandum established a policy of using tariffs to respond to these kinds of fines. In July 2026, Trump promised Section 301 investigation for retaliatory tariffs against Europe for fines imposed on Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Google.
That is, of course, if overseas social media companies were inclined to comply with New Zealand judgements.
Major social media platforms that earn advertising revenue in New Zealand would have some incentive to comply. US-based and other foreign platforms with New Zealand users but no other New Zealand presence would have little reason to take any notice of our regulator’s demands.
The British experience demonstrates the potential futility here.
The UK’s communications regulator Ofcom has attempted the kind of extraterritorial regulatory adventures that National proposes New Zealand pursue. UK legislation asserts authority over overseas services accessed by people in the UK. But enforcing Ofcom judgements is another matter. America’s First Amendment protections for speech are very broad.
Lawyer Preston Byrne acts for US-based platforms that are happy to assert their First Amendment protections. In response to Ofcom demand letters, Byrne replies with reminders that the UK lost the revolutionary war and has no jurisdiction over the United States. The replies often include drawings of giant hamsters, and warnings that they may respond to further correspondence with drawings of even larger rodents.
Platforms like Meta or X might comply with New Zealand regulation; others, following 4chan’s British example, will not. Ofcom’s 22 October report Ofcom has found “no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content” in the nine months after July 2025, when children’s safety duties came into force.
Ofcom is seeking broader powers to block websites, lowering the threshold required for interim blocking during investigations. It also anticipates making further requests of Parliament.
National’s proposed legislation would also allow website blocking. For ongoing breaches, the High Court could order a site blocked for all New Zealand users, regardless of their age.
It seems likely that 4chan and platforms like it would ignore demands made by the New Zealand government. The government would then have to decide whether it wished to pursue compliance, and eventually block all Kiwis from accessing those sites, or let it go. Platforms like 4chan are unlikely to care, but their New Zealand users would lose access to conversations they value.
Labour’s alternative has its own additional issues.
An overseas platform told to change its algorithms or to moderate its content to meet New Zealand requirements can choose to fight the regulator, to change its service, to stop serving New Zealand – or simply to ignore the demands like 4chan. Platforms could decide that carrying lawful but contentious speech under duty of care requirements is not worth the regulatory risk, and speech rights would then be affected.
The Americans worry that US-based platforms may find it easier to set blanket restrictions on all users to comply with UK, European, and other countries’ regulatory requirements, rather than setting different algorithms and different content-moderation practices for different countries.
The US Embassy in Canberra has raised concerns about the exposure draft of Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill, which would bring in duty of care requirements like those suggested by Labour. The Embassy’s statement worries that mandates on platform algorithms could easily provide mechanisms for viewpoint-based censorship, and that American users of those platforms could also be affected. It restated the American government’s clear “opposition to foreign measures that result in extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online.”
The Federal Trade Commission’s chairman has also warned platforms that applying foreign speech restrictions to American users could breach US consumer-protection law, even if adopting global rules simply makes compliance easier.
Trump’s bellicosity should not deter our government from enforcing sensible rules without fear or favour. But fining US tech platforms based on their global revenue, for activity in New Zealand, is both unreasonable and unreasonably risky. Trump seems to want excuses to increase tariffs. It may be best not to provide those reasons.
And it will be hard for any regulator of online platforms to avoid embroiling itself in controversies about what speech should or should not be allowed, and especially where the regulator asks platforms to report on risks from false or misleading information. I had a bit of fun imagining applying this standard to the substantial mistruths present on the National Party’s Facebook page. Under National’s proposed legislation, Meta could well be justified in cancelling the National Party’s Facebook account to help protect the children.
If ACT and New Zealand First do not want an under-16 social media ban or National’s proposed regulator, and if the Green Party is wary of online age requirements, they may need to set hard bottom lines in coalition negotiations.
Dr Eric Crampton is Chief Economist at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was sourced HERE
Under National’s regime, the Secretary for Internal Affairs would be the online regulator for mainstream social media platforms as well as AI companions designed for social or emotional interaction. Messaging, gaming, and other platforms would be excluded, at least for now. The Department of Internal Affairs says that other kinds of platforms, like gaming platforms, may be included in future phases of policy work.
For breaches of the age limit or age-check privacy rules, court-imposed penalties can be up to the higher of $40 million, or 10% of the affected platform’s global turnover.
National’s likely coalition partners, ACT and New Zealand First, do not support National’s proposed legislation. ACT warned the legislation threatened adult privacy while risking driving children to less visible and more harmful platforms. New Zealand First warned the legislation could not be implemented effectively without unacceptable risks to online privacy and to access to Virtual Private Networks.
Labour, like National, would require social media companies to prevent under-16s from having accounts. It would set an independent digital regulator to oversee a broader set of online services, including games, to investigate harmful practices and enforce safety standards.
It would also regulate how platforms present social media posts to users. Platforms would be required to offer users the option to see only posts from accounts that they follow, rather than algorithmically-recommended posts. A broad digital duty of care would apply and would regulate the algorithms used to present content to users.
The Green Party has worried that youths losing online communities that they find valuable may switch to less-safe services. They have also raised privacy-related concerns with online age verification, and have been sceptical of online age limits. But the Greens, like Labour, support an online duty of care and independent regulation of platform design and conduct.
Opportunity also supports stronger platform regulation but has not taken a final position on National’s proposed legislation.
Labour and National together could legislate for social media age limits or an online regulator, regardless of other coalition partners, unless their coalition partners prohibited those age limits as condition of support.
And it brings a few problems.
National’s legislation proposes maximal fines on covered platforms far in excess of any plausible New Zealand revenue.
The current American administration has been very clear that it will not tolerate foreign governments disproportionately penalising American platforms. A February 2025 memorandum established a policy of using tariffs to respond to these kinds of fines. In July 2026, Trump promised Section 301 investigation for retaliatory tariffs against Europe for fines imposed on Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Google.
That is, of course, if overseas social media companies were inclined to comply with New Zealand judgements.
Major social media platforms that earn advertising revenue in New Zealand would have some incentive to comply. US-based and other foreign platforms with New Zealand users but no other New Zealand presence would have little reason to take any notice of our regulator’s demands.
The British experience demonstrates the potential futility here.
The UK’s communications regulator Ofcom has attempted the kind of extraterritorial regulatory adventures that National proposes New Zealand pursue. UK legislation asserts authority over overseas services accessed by people in the UK. But enforcing Ofcom judgements is another matter. America’s First Amendment protections for speech are very broad.
Lawyer Preston Byrne acts for US-based platforms that are happy to assert their First Amendment protections. In response to Ofcom demand letters, Byrne replies with reminders that the UK lost the revolutionary war and has no jurisdiction over the United States. The replies often include drawings of giant hamsters, and warnings that they may respond to further correspondence with drawings of even larger rodents.
Platforms like Meta or X might comply with New Zealand regulation; others, following 4chan’s British example, will not. Ofcom’s 22 October report Ofcom has found “no significant change in the proportion of children encountering harmful content” in the nine months after July 2025, when children’s safety duties came into force.
Ofcom is seeking broader powers to block websites, lowering the threshold required for interim blocking during investigations. It also anticipates making further requests of Parliament.
National’s proposed legislation would also allow website blocking. For ongoing breaches, the High Court could order a site blocked for all New Zealand users, regardless of their age.
It seems likely that 4chan and platforms like it would ignore demands made by the New Zealand government. The government would then have to decide whether it wished to pursue compliance, and eventually block all Kiwis from accessing those sites, or let it go. Platforms like 4chan are unlikely to care, but their New Zealand users would lose access to conversations they value.
Labour’s alternative has its own additional issues.
An overseas platform told to change its algorithms or to moderate its content to meet New Zealand requirements can choose to fight the regulator, to change its service, to stop serving New Zealand – or simply to ignore the demands like 4chan. Platforms could decide that carrying lawful but contentious speech under duty of care requirements is not worth the regulatory risk, and speech rights would then be affected.
The Americans worry that US-based platforms may find it easier to set blanket restrictions on all users to comply with UK, European, and other countries’ regulatory requirements, rather than setting different algorithms and different content-moderation practices for different countries.
The US Embassy in Canberra has raised concerns about the exposure draft of Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Digital Duty of Care) Bill, which would bring in duty of care requirements like those suggested by Labour. The Embassy’s statement worries that mandates on platform algorithms could easily provide mechanisms for viewpoint-based censorship, and that American users of those platforms could also be affected. It restated the American government’s clear “opposition to foreign measures that result in extraterritorial censorship of protected speech by Americans online.”
The Federal Trade Commission’s chairman has also warned platforms that applying foreign speech restrictions to American users could breach US consumer-protection law, even if adopting global rules simply makes compliance easier.
Trump’s bellicosity should not deter our government from enforcing sensible rules without fear or favour. But fining US tech platforms based on their global revenue, for activity in New Zealand, is both unreasonable and unreasonably risky. Trump seems to want excuses to increase tariffs. It may be best not to provide those reasons.
And it will be hard for any regulator of online platforms to avoid embroiling itself in controversies about what speech should or should not be allowed, and especially where the regulator asks platforms to report on risks from false or misleading information. I had a bit of fun imagining applying this standard to the substantial mistruths present on the National Party’s Facebook page. Under National’s proposed legislation, Meta could well be justified in cancelling the National Party’s Facebook account to help protect the children.
If ACT and New Zealand First do not want an under-16 social media ban or National’s proposed regulator, and if the Green Party is wary of online age requirements, they may need to set hard bottom lines in coalition negotiations.
Dr Eric Crampton is Chief Economist at the New Zealand Initiative. This article was sourced HERE
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