ESAFETY - Social Media Minimum Age Law evaluation

Question

1. With respect to the $1.95 million study into the effectiveness of the social media ban the details of which are at https://www.esafety.gov.au/research/social-media-age-restrictions-evaluation: a. Is the Academic Advisory Panel conducting the study into the effectiveness of the law appointed by a fair and open competition, where any academic could apply to join? b. Will the eSafety Commissioner commit to publishing the complete data when she receives it, so that it can be analysed in an open and transparent manner by independent researchers? c. Please identify all researchers undertaking this research including their qualifications. d. With reference to the gender identity questions in the survey, please detail the advice provided by ACON in the design of the study and provide all correspondence between ACON and the eSafety Commissioner with respect to this and other studies since 1 January 2025. e. Was the Commissioner aware that Professor Jeff Hancock, the most senior person from the Commission's 'lead academic partner,' as a Professor of Communication at Cornell University, was the senior author who in 2012-14 analysed emotional manipulation data collected by Facebook/Meta and published the results? This data was obtained controversially, without the participants' informed consent and Professor Hancock's collaboration with Facebook/Meta has been termed 'ethics laundering'. The journal that published his paper, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), later noted that while the study was technically legal for a private corporation, ''the collection of the data by Facebook may have involved practices that were not fully consistent with the principles of obtaining informed consent and allowing participants to opt out.'' Please provide details of any concerns f. Does the eSafety Commissioner have any concerns about the integrity of the methodology which underpins the evaluation? g. Was the independent expert ethical review concerned that the data for minority groups would be insufficient? h. Has the eSafety Commissioner been able to recruit enough participants to monitor usage: (a) if so, will this capture other use, e.g. within a browser (b) if not, is there a risk it might underestimate non-compliance with the ban? i. I have reviewed a copy of the research ethics of the Social Media Minimum Age Study. Why does the Commission appear to propose to censor the data on minorities if the outcome is not consistent with 'lived experience'? Surely the commitment should be to convey the outcome of the survey accurately? Please confirm you will publish all the results, no matter how uncomfortable they might be.