Australian government prepares assault on privacy for under-16s social media ban

Eric Ludlow

The Australian Labor government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is reviewing the means by which it will implement a social media ban for children under the age of 16, including the possible use of technology which severely curtails the privacy of children and other social media users.

The legislation was first announced in November last year with bipartisan support and is set to come into effect this December.

Because official identification documents such as passports cannot legally be used to check online users’ ages and track individuals, the government commissioned in November 2024 a trial of different technologies to “assure” an online user’s age. More than 50 companies entered the trial. The government is expected to reveal its conclusions by the end of July.

This will lead to a major attack on individual privacy forced on all Australian social media users as a result of the anti-democratic ban.

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Proposed techniques for age estimation of social media users include facial analysis or tracking individuals’ online metadata to determine if a user is under the age of 16. In other words, the government is preparing to grant permission for tech giants to have access to every person in Australia’s personal information, track their online activity and image their faces every time they log onto social media.

In fact, facial recognition systems are so poor at estimating age that improving these tools would require a massive collection of children’s facial images—something which is illegal.

Current technologies on trial include facial recognition tools which use “selfie-based” age checks and hand movement technologies. They claim that sensitive information will be stored securely on block chains.

An analysis in the Conversation published in May highlights that the proposed social media ban “marks a significant shift in internet regulation. Rather than age-gating specific content such as porn or gambling, Australia is now targeting basic communication infrastructure—which is what social media have become.”

Albanese’s initial announcement of the proposed legislation was made on the baseless claim that “social media is causing social harm.” The real purpose of the ban is to restrict access among children and teenagers to information, above all increasingly anti-establishment commentary amid a massive political crisis and explosion of militarism overseen by governments around the world.

Now the unfounded justifications for the suppression of social media access for young people is being used to call for the legislation’s deepening nearly six months before it has even been implemented.

Last month, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, wrote an official advice to the federal minister for communications Michelle Rowland in which Grant called on the government to expand its blacklist of social media platforms to include YouTube. The original proposal included the platforms X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Reddit.

Inman Grant’s advice to include YouTube in the list of banned platforms is based on the flimsy reasoning that 37 percent of 10- to 15-year-olds who had seen unspecified “online hate” had seen it on YouTube according to a survey conducted by the commissioner’s office. According to eSafety, 21 percent of children reported their most “recent” or “impactful” experience of “online hate” occurring on YouTube.

The advice from Inman Grant has been immediately seized upon by the federal opposition Liberal-National Coalition whose shadow cabinet secretary Andrew Wallace urged that the Labor government “needs to listen” to the recommendation.

The concern around YouTube—a platform with a well-known emphasis on curating both educational and entertainment content for children—highlights that the legislation’s real aim has nothing to do with alleviating mental health problems or improving social interactions of children.

In fact, children’s charity UNICEF and Australian youth mental health foundation Headspace have both raised concerns that the ban will affect the ability of youth to stay connected with family and friends.

Labor’s proposed proscription on social media use for an entire cohort of the population is the first of its kind by a government in any so-called democratic country. It has been followed by similar initiatives in Britain, Ireland, Singapore and Japan.

Any claim that the attempt to prevent children and teenagers from accessing social media is bound up with mental health is a cynical fraud.

Youth mental health issues are on the rise not because of social media, but because of the destruction of social and living conditions, which are being exposed through social media.

Young people today are far worse off than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. The future they face is one of joblessness, soaring living costs, lack of housing, environmental collapse, war and dictatorship.

What the ruling elite in Australia fear above all is that social media, by exposing the immense social crisis that is unfolding, is playing a critical role in radicalising an entire generation. Youth are bypassing the mainstream media outlets to find their news on social media. While there, they are also encountering new ideas and perspectives which are anti-establishment, anti-war and opposed to the interests of the ruling elite.

The attempt to ban social media access for under 16s is intended to neuter that growing radicalisation and prevent the spread of oppositional, above all left-wing sentiment.

This comes amid a broader imposition of sweeping anti-democratic legislation in Australia aimed at suppressing basic democratic rights. The initial target of this has been the protests against the US-Israeli genocide against the Palestinians, which has sparked outrage globally, particularly young people who have joined demonstrations and other actions calling for an end to Israel’s ethnic cleansing and the support it enjoys from the major imperialist powers including Australia.

In Australia, young people have been at the forefront of the assault by the government on the basic right to protest and political speech.

The University of Melbourne has expelled two students and suspended two others for their involvement in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. This followed the expulsion of pro-Palestinian students at the Australian National University, before their enrolments were reinstated after widespread opposition to the university management’s move.

Management at the University of Melbourne has already been exposed for tracking its students’ movements through the university Wi-Fi network as part of its investigations to identify and discipline anti-genocide protesters.

More broadly, opposition to the Gaza genocide is being smeared as antisemitism in a government-led crackdown on anti-war speech. State and federal Labor governments are employing ever more brutal methods to suppress growing opposition, as evidenced by the police assault on a pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney last month, which saw a young woman suffer horrific injuries that could see her lose sight in one eye.

Thyssenkrupp Steel demands €200 million in wage cuts

Dietmar Gaisenkersting

Thyssenkrupp facility in Duisburg [Photo by Bundesanstalt für Wasserbau / CC BY 2.0]

The early works council election at Thyssenkrupp Steel’s largest plant has only just ended, and already the IG Metall union is preparing to implement the attacks being demanded by the company’s top management.

For several weeks now, IG Metall officials and works council representatives have been sitting down with the executive board to coordinate the “restructuring” of Thyssenkrupp’s steel division. The plan is to cut 11,000 of the 27,000 jobs and reduce wages by 10 percent.

On Saturday, the union for the first time presented the steel management’s concrete proposals for the planned cost-cutting. IG Metall listed 10 points:

1. Elimination of all one-off payments, such as Christmas and holiday bonuses
2. Scrapping of long-service bonuses
3. Pay freeze in the upcoming collective bargaining round
4. Reduction of the working week from 34 to 33 hours with no wage compensation
5. Abolition of the collectively agreed extra “winter day”
6. Reduction in working hours without pay compensation for non-collective-contract employees (details not specified)
7. Elimination of the six additional days off for non-collective-contract employees, though these can be “bought back” by accepting pay cuts
8. Halving of on-call duty additional pay
9. Fewer apprentices, no permanent positions for trainees
10. Elimination of employer’s contributions to employee savings schemes

Altogether, these measures are intended to save €200 million a year. The steel board under Dennis Grimm wants to lock them in for—initially—four years.

In its leaflet, IG Metall loudly rails against this “list of poisons,” but makes its stance clear right at the start: “There is no dispute that the economic situation at Thyssenkrupp Steel Europe is extremely strained.” Chief negotiator Knut Giesler is quoted as saying: “It’s already five past midnight, sad as it is, TKSE has become a restructuring case.”

That is why IG Metall and the works council had no fundamental objection from the outset to the loss of 11,000 jobs. They merely insisted, as always, that this should happen without compulsory redundancies. The demand for a 10 percent reduction in labour costs has long been on the table.

At this point, a clear warning is needed: Giesler, IG Metall’s regional secretary, is the one who, with the help of the union apparatus and the works council, will implement all these attacks in collaboration with steel management. When he is quoted in the leaflet saying “a grab this hard into our colleagues’ wallets is not something IG Metall will accept,” regarding next week’s negotiations, what it really means is that the attack on workers’ pay will simply be organised differently.

Giesler and his negotiating team will arrange the jobs massacre in a “socially acceptable” manner—with early retirement schemes, phased retirement, severance packages and so on. Anyone who doesn’t qualify for these because they are too young or too expensive will be shunted into a so-called “transfer company,” a short stop before the dole office.

Just as they are working out how to destroy one in four jobs, they will find mechanisms to implement a 10 percent reduction in personnel costs. It would not be the first time they have agreed a temporary reduction in working hours without full wage compensation to shift costs onto the workforce. It is quite possible that the already agreed closures of smaller plants—such as in Bochum, Kreuztal-Eichen or even the Krupp Mannesmann steelworks (HKM) in southern Duisburg with 3,000 jobs—will be brought forward.

IG Metall has always displayed great “creativity” when it comes to enforcing the interests of shareholders.

In the past, the union has always defused workforce opposition by staging loud protests and media-friendly demonstrations. It will try the same again this time. In the past, government representatives from the federal and North Rhine-Westphalia state governments have often been invited along so they could placate workers with promises—of subsidies for the switch to “green steel,” for example.

IG Metall will also play up the importance of the domestic steel industry for wartime needs. After all, it supports the pro-war policies of both the old and the new federal government, and has made it clear in this context that it supports shifting the enormous costs of rearmament and war onto the working class.

Yet despite all the militant rhetoric of the works council reps and union officials at their events, not one of their announced “fights” has ever materialised. Almost a year ago, Ali Güzel, chair of the steel works council, shouted outside the head office in Duisburg: “We will start fighting tomorrow. Someone has to stop this madness. Who if not us?” Since then, nothing of the sort has happened.

It will be no different this time if Güzel and company have their way. IG Metall and its works council now claim: “We say: Enough is enough! We stand together. We fight together. And we will not be divided. … Now is the time to show our presence and stand united.”

By “showing presence,” the bureaucrats mean more noisy protests. The emphasis on “closing ranks” is a warning to anyone who really wants to fight: do not defy the dictates of the IG Metall works council and the union apparatus behind it. Submit and stay quiet.

They will use the recent works council election as a bargaining chip—an election that was brought forward for precisely this reason. Three weeks ago, we wrote, “The election serves solely to push through the job massacre that the company has announced.”

We rejected the argument of IG Metall trust body leader and works councillor Dirk Riedel that IG Metall needed “a mandate from the rank and file” through the works council election. Instead, we said Riedel “will wave the result of the election under the nose of anyone who objects to the social plan presented in the summer and prattle on about the “mandate IG Metall received in the election.” The works council election is intended to nip any oppositional efforts in the bud.

Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”: A declaration of war on healthcare

Benjamin Mateus

When President Trump signed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” act on July 4, 2025, he set into motion legislation that will have severe consequences for Americans, particularly the working class. Not only does this act effect the largest redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest by making permanent $3.8 trillion in tax cuts overwhelmingly benefiting the rich, it also begins the wholesale destruction of the healthcare infrastructure through the slashing of Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and by extension Medicare.

A car enters the drive at Day Kimball Hospital, July 18, 2022 in Putnam, Connecticut. [AP Photo/Susan Haigh]

An open letter to the public titled, “A Message of Concern from the Nation’s Health Professionals,” with more than 6,000 signatories, warned:

We are doctors, nurses, researchers, and other health professionals alerting you that your health is in danger. The Trump Administration has taken an axe to most of the agencies and programs that protect medical care and public health in our country. It has slashed funding for health care, public health protections, and research. It has fired dedicated experts, removed health and safety regulations, and threatened medical training and scientific research. It is abandoning support for veterans, children, families, and the elderly. It is rolling back protections of the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the water we drink. The administration claims to want to “Make America Healthy Again,” but these actions will do the opposite.

That these draconian attacks have come on the heels of the dismantling of public health programs during the COVID pandemic only confirms that the “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” was a trigger event in history, which has not only unearthed all the contradictions of late-stage capitalism, but also exposed the utter savagery and disdain the financial oligarchs has for working class populations across the world.

Following the COVID pandemic that saw 1.4 million Americans needlessly perish due to malign neglect, the signing of Trump’s bill only confirms the malicious intent of the ruling elites to completely dismantle all democratic norms and make a mockery of the Constitution. It is no exaggeration to say that this bill will deliberately kill people who are the most vulnerable and disenfranchised. Andrew Stokes, associate professor of global health at the Boston University School of Public Health, told JAMA Health Forum, “These deaths reflect not individual choices, but policy neglect and deep-rooted social and health system failures.”

The bill pairs trillions in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy with deep cuts to vital health and social programs. The legislation slashes federal spending on Medicaid by well over $900 billion over the next decade. This figure represents approximately 15 percent of total federal Medicaid spending over that period. The cuts are rooted in provisions like mandatory work and reporting requirements for Medicaid recipients, repealing rules that simplified eligibility and renewal.

Beyond Medicaid, the bill targets Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, with roughly $125 billion in cuts. Compounding this, the bill fails to extend enhanced ACA premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. These enhanced subsidies currently reduce premium payments by an estimated $705 per year for enrollees. Furthermore, SNAP, commonly known as food stamps, faces substantial reductions of nearly $300 billion over a decade, by increasing red tape and shifting costs to states.

Analysts have also noted that the policy changes will have detrimental effects on Medicare as well, affecting both its financial stability and the access and affordability of care for its beneficiaries. The extensive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy proposed in the bill are not fully offset by spending reductions, leading to a projected increase in the federal deficit by an estimated $3.3 trillion over 10 years. This fiscal imbalance, under federal “pay-as-you-go” rules, is expected to trigger automatic funding cuts to Medicare totaling nearly $500 billion from 2026 to 2034. These will result in huge across-the-board reductions in future Medicare payments.

The most direct and immediate consequence of these cuts will be a dramatic increase in the number of uninsured Americans. Presently, the sixty-year-old Medicaid program covers one in five Americans, or more than 70 million people, including 40 percent of US children and 60 percent of US nursing home residents. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill will directly cause 10.9 million people to lose their health insurance through its Medicaid and ACA provisions. When factoring in the expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies, this number swells to an estimated 16 to 17 million additional uninsured people by 2034. As the Kaiser Family Foundation noted recently, this represents “the biggest rollback of health insurance coverage ever due to federal policy changes.”

Specific breakdowns paint an even starker picture:

• Medicaid: Between 4.6 million and 5.2 million adults could lose Medicaid in 2026 alone if work requirements are imposed. The CBO projects a total of 7 to 10 million fewer people on Medicaid by 2034.
• ACA marketplaces: At least 3 million current marketplace enrollees are expected to lose coverage directly because of the bill’s changes. If enhanced subsidies expire, ACA enrollment is projected to drop from 22.8 million in 2025 to 18.9 million in 2026 and to 15.4 million by 2030. For example, Pennsylvania’s ACA marketplace director, Devon Trolley, warned of a 30 to 50 percent enrollment loss in the individual market. On the absurd pretense of preventing fraud, the stricter verification rules and the expiration of subsidies could push four to six million eligible people out of marketplace plans, leading to a surge in the uninsured.
• Low-income Medicare beneficiaries: Nearly 1.4 million low-income individuals with Medicare (dually enrolled Medicare-Medicaid beneficiaries) are expected to lose their Medicare Savings Program (MSP) coverage due to the rollback of simplifications. This will also increase their prescription drug costs by making them ineligible for the Part D Low-Income Subsidy (LIS)/Extra Help.

The more immediate repercussion will be felt across the entire healthcare sector, particularly emergency departments and local economies. The job losses and rising costs will only exacerbate the social misery that hundreds of millions are confronting.

As millions lose coverage, hospitals and emergency physician groups anticipate surges of uninsured patients flooding already overburdened emergency departments (EDs). This will lead to more crowded waiting rooms, longer treatment delays, and increased patient suffering.

EDs will face more severe cases, as patients without primary care delay treatment until conditions worsen. This “hidden tax” on the healthcare system will elevate uncompensated care costs for hospitals, forcing them to absorb the financial burden or pass it on to privately insured patients through higher premiums. The American Hospital Association (AHA) warns that these cuts will “strain emergency departments as they become the family doctor to millions of newly uninsured people,” impacting everyone in the community.

The massive funding cuts translate directly into job losses across the healthcare sector. Analysts project between 322,000 and 449,000 jobs will be lost in 2026 alone, with nearly half of these directly in healthcare. Hospitals and nursing facilities, anticipating steep revenue declines, are already planning hiring freezes and job cuts. For instance, the AHA estimates that for every $1 billion in Medicaid cuts, Pennsylvania alone could lose approximately 13,352 jobs, resulting in 54,670 hospital jobs lost over a decade under current legislation. Overall, the healthcare sector could shed nearly 500,000 jobs nationwide by 2029.

For those who retain coverage, the ACA marketplace will become significantly more expensive and difficult to navigate. If enhanced subsidies expire, enrollees’ premium payments are expected to increase by over 75 percent on average in 2026. The bill also codifies stricter rules, including ending automatic re-enrollment and requiring annual re-verification for tax credit eligibility, imposing significant administrative burdens.

The longer-term impact will lead to a growing number of health deserts, broader economic decline and widening disparities. Worse, the changes brought by the bill will become structural, reshaping the US healthcare landscape and exacerbating social and economic inequities. The cuts will be particularly devastating for rural communities, which already face an acute healthcare crisis. Rural hospitals, many of which are anchors of their local economies, operate on thin margins and rely heavily on Medicaid and Medicare payments.

A study by the University of North Carolina Sheps Center for Health Services Research found that 338 rural hospitals nationwide are at risk of imminent closure under the bill’s Medicaid cuts. The National Rural Health Association predicts “deep harm” to rural patients, with many areas potentially losing their only hospital or emergency department. When a rural hospital closes, residents face average additional travel distances of 20 miles for common care and 40 miles for specialized care, significantly increasing mortality rates for time-sensitive conditions. The bill will result in large “ER deserts” across the country.

The economic stagnation brought on by these cuts will lead to a significant contraction in the healthcare sector, which accounts for one-fifth of US GDP. A recent New York Times article reports that over the past 30 to 40 years the healthcare industry has become the dominant sector for employment. The healthcare industry has consistently grown, becoming the nation’s top employer, expanding from 9 percent of the total workforce in 2000 to 13 percent by July 2025. This growth has been particularly notable in the past year, accounting for about one-third of all employment growth. The trend is expected to continue due to the aging population requiring more care.

The cuts to Medicaid and SNAP are projected to reduce state-level gross domestic product (GDP) by $154 billion in 2029, a decline 18 percent greater than the federal budget savings from those cuts. This will translate into a loss of 1.22 million jobs nationwide by 2029, with roughly 40 percent of all jobs lost due to the bill.

The job losses are equivalent to a 0.8 percentage-point increase in the US unemployment rate by 2029. The impact will not be uniform. States with larger low-income populations, such as New Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, Kentucky and Arizona, are projected to experience much sharper employment declines (1.3 - 1.7 percent of their entire workforce). Local and state tax revenues are also expected to plummet by $12.2 billion in 2029 alone.

Furthermore, the bill will exacerbate existing healthcare labor shortages, particularly for nurses, primary care physicians, and direct care workers. Medicaid cuts will worsen workforce recruitment and retention challenges in every state, potentially causing many direct care workers (nearly a third of whom rely on Medicaid themselves) to leave the field due to stagnant wages or loss of their own benefits.

Joseph R. Betancourt, Commonwealth Fund president, states that, “The ripple effect will hit the entire health care system and impact everyone—not just those with Medicaid—driving more people to emergency rooms and further straining an already overburdened system.” This will significantly reduce the healthcare system’s capacity to deliver services. Analysts anticipate a wave of hospital, clinic and nursing home closures. The remaining providers will be stretched thinner, leading to higher patient-to-staff ratios, longer ER wait times, and reduced access to critical services like preventive care, obstetrics and mental health.

In a June 25 report, the American Prospect wrote:

The suffering from these cuts will be concentrated among the poor and working class, including perhaps 51,000 preventable deaths per year, according to researchers from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. That makes this bill considerably worse than Trump’s previous attempt to repeal the ACA during his first term, which would have caused “only” an estimated 24,000 to 46,000 deaths annually.

The cuts to these social programs are not isolated, but are part of the ongoing wrecking operation that has seen Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cut over $9.5 billion in approved grants, many for research on cardiovascular diseases, cancer treatments, Alzheimer’s and HIV. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is facing a $5.8 billion cut that will end programs on chronic diseases, lead poisoning, drug overdose reduction, and maternal and childhood health.

The mortality gap has widened between Americans according to their socioeconomic status in the last two decades, underscoring the importance of public health in providing well-being and meaning to the lives of the working class. That life expectancy for many states has stagnated in the last 50 years simply demonstrates that the attack on healthcare has been at the forefront of the decades-long claw-back by the financial elite of the gains made by working people. The “Big Beautiful Bill” is an open declaration of war on the population.