Australia wants to know if GitHub is a social network that endangers children?

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has written to GitHub to ask it to consider if it’s a social network that endangers children.

The reason for the cyber-safety regulator’s correspondence is Australia’s imminent requirement that some social media platforms restrict access to Australian residents under 16 years of age, on the grounds that such services can be harmful to children.

The ban on providing service to kids under 16 starts on December 10th, but the eSafety Commission – Australia’s cyber-safety regulator – does not decide which platforms have obligations to block children under Australia’s Online Safety Act. The Commission has said that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube “meet many of the conditions” in the Act.

But it’s also written to many other services – see the list in the box to the right – to point out that they need to complete a self-assessment process to check if they need to comply with the Act.

At first glance, GitHub will not have to deny service to Australians under 16 years of age, because the criteria that require a platform to do so are:

• Having the sole, or a significant purpose, of enabling online social interaction between two or more end-users;
• Allowing users to link to, or interact with, other end-users;
• Allowing users to post material on the service;
• Hosting material that is accessible to, or delivered to, end-users in Australia .

GitHub’s purpose is not to enable social interaction.

However, the platform is not always a safe space, as GitHub allows comments and developers can be brutal to each other. The site can also host images, and the GitHub Pages service allows users to create websites based on their repos.

So there’s plenty of potential for GitHub to host revolting material that could be bad for kids.

That GitHub is even a candidate to be regulated under a law that aims to keep kids off social media is yet another oddity of Australia’s plan, which doesn’t prevent kids from accessing social media using accounts registered by adults. It also won’t stop them using such services without signing in, which The Guardian recently found allows anyone to see some truly vile stuff. ®