eSafety Commissioner has launched a major evaluation of Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age to understand how platforms are applying the requirement and what effects it is having on children, young people and families.
The study aims to deliver robust evidence about both intended and unintended impacts as the national debate on youth, wellbeing and digital environments intensifies.
Over more than two years, the research will follow more than four thousand children and families in Australia, combining surveys, interviews, group discussions and privacy-protected smartphone tracking.
Administrative data from national literacy assessments and health systems will be linked to deepen understanding of online behaviour, wellbeing and exposure to risk. All research materials are publicly available through the Open Science Framework to maintain transparency.
The project is led by eSafety’s Research and Evaluation team in partnership with the Stanford University Social Media Lab and an Academic Advisory Group of specialists in mental health, youth development and digital technologies.
Young people themselves are shaping the study through the eSafety Youth Council, ensuring that the interpretation reflects lived experience rather than external assumptions. Full ethics approval underpins the methodology, which meets strict standards of integrity and privacy.
The results will inform a legislative review conducted by Australia’s Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications, Sport and the Arts.
eSafety expects the evaluation to become a major evidence source for policymakers, researchers and communities as the global conversation on minors and social media regulation continues.
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Investigators in the US say that AI used by Meta is flooding child protection units with large volumes of unhelpful reports, thereby draining resources rather than assisting ongoing cases.
Officers in the Internet Crimes Against Children network told a New Mexico court that most alerts generated by the company’s platforms lack essential evidence or contain material that is not criminal, leaving teams unable to progress investigations.
Meta rejects the claim that it prioritises profit, stressing its cooperation with law enforcement and highlighting rapid response times to emergency requests.
Its position is challenged by officers who say the volume of AI-generated alerts has doubled since 2024, particularly after the Report Act broadened reporting obligations.
They argue that adolescent conversations and incomplete data now form a sizeable portion of the alerts, while genuine cases of child sexual abuse material are becoming harder to detect.
Internal company documents disclosed at trial show Meta executives raising concerns as early as 2019 about the impact of end-to-end encryption on the firm’s ability to identify child exploitation and support investigators.
Child safety groups have long warned that encryption could limit early detection, even though Meta says it has introduced new tools designed to operate safely within encrypted environments.
The growing influx of unusable tips is taking a heavy toll on investigative teams. Officers in the US say each report must still be reviewed manually, despite the low likelihood of actionable evidence, and this backlog is diminishing morale at a time when they say resources have not kept pace with demand.
They warn that meaningful cases risk being delayed as units struggle with a workload swollen by AI systems tuned to avoid regulatory penalties rather than investigative value.
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The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office has fined Reddit £14.47 million after finding that the platform unlawfully used children’s personal information and failed to put in place adequate age checks.
Although Reddit updated its processes in July 2025, self-declaration remained easy to bypass, offering only a veneer of protection. Investigators also found that the company had not completed a data protection impact assessment until 2025, despite a large number of teenagers using the service.
Concerns were heightened by the volume of children affected and the risks created by relying on inadequate age checks.
The regulator noted that unlawful data processing occurred over a prolonged period, and that children were at risk of viewing harmful material while their information was processed without a lawful basis.
UK Information Commissioner John Edwards said companies must prioritise meaningful age assurance and understand the responsibilities set out in the Children’s Code.
The ICO said it will continue monitoring Reddit’s current controls and expects online platforms to align with robust age-assurance standards rather than rely on weak verification.
It will coordinate its oversight with Ofcom as part of broader efforts to strengthen online safety and ensure under-18s benefit from high privacy protections by default.
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In December 2025, the Macquarie Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, and the American Dialect Society named ‘slop’ as the Word of the Year, reflecting a widespread reaction to AI-generated content online, often referred to as ‘AI slop.’ By choosing ‘slop’, typically associated with unappetising animal feed, they captured unease about the digital clutter created by AI tools.
As LLMs and AI tools became accessible to more people, many saw them as opportunities for profit through the creation of artificial content for marketing or entertainment, or through the manipulation of social media algorithms. However, despite video and image generation advances, there is a growing gap between perceived quality and actual detection: many overestimate how easily AI content evades notice, fueling scepticism about its online value.
As generative AI systems expand, the debate goes beyond digital clutter to deeper concerns about trust, market incentives, and regulatory resilience. How will societies manage the social, economic, and governance impacts of an information ecosystem increasingly shaped by automated abundance? In simplified terms, is AI slop more than a simple digital nuisance, or do we needlessly worry about a transient vogue that will eventually fade away?
The social aspect of AI slop’s influence
The most visible effects of AI slop emerge on large social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Users frequently encounter AI-generated images and videos that appropriate celebrity likenesses without consent, depict fabricated events, or present sensational and misleading scenarios. Comment sections often become informal verification spaces, where some users identify visual inconsistencies and warn others, while many remain uncertain about the content’s authenticity.
However, no platform has suffered the AI slop effect as much as Facebook, and once you take a glance at its demographics, the pieces start to come together. According to multiple studies, Facebook’s user base is mostly populated by adults aged 25-34, but users over the age of 55 make up nearly 24 percent of all users. While seniors do not constitute the majority (yet), younger generations have been steadily migrating to social platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and X, leaving the most popular platform to the whims of the older generation.
Due to factors such as cognitive decline, positivity bias, or digital (il)literacy, older social media users are more likely to fall for scams and fraud. Such conditions make Facebook an ideal place for spreading low-quality AI slop and false information. Scammers use AI tools to create fake images and videos about made-up crises to raise money for causes that are not real.
The lack of regulation on Meta’s side is the most glaring sore spot, evidenced by the company pushing back against the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), viewing them as ‘overreaching‘ and stifling innovation. The math is simple: content generates engagement, resulting in more revenue for Facebook and other platforms owned by Meta. Whether that content is authentic and high-quality or low-effort AI slop, the numbers don’t care.
The economics behind AI slop
At its core, AI content is not just a social media phenomenon, but an economic one as well. GenAI tools drastically reduce the cost and time required to produce all types of content, and when production approaches zero marginal cost, the incentive to churn out AI slop seems too good to ignore. Even minimal engagement can generate positive returns through advertising, affiliate marketing, or platform monetisation schemes.
AI content production goes beyond exploiting social media algorithms and monetisation policies. SEO can now be automated at scale, thus generating thousands of keyword-optimised articles within hours. Affiliate link farming allows creators to monetise their products or product recommendations with minimal editorial input.
On video platforms like TikTok and YouTube, synthetic voice-overs and AI-generated visuals are on full display, banking on trending topics and using AI-generated thumbnails to garner more views on a whim. Thanks to AI tools, content creators can post relevant AI-generated content in minutes, enabling them to jump on the hottest topics and drive clicks faster than with any other authentic content creation method.
To add salt to the wound, YouTube content creators share the sentiment that they are victims of the platform’s double standards in enforcing its strict community guidelines. Even the largest YouTube Channels are often flagged for a plethora of breaches, including copyright claims and depictions of dangerous or illegal activities, and harmful speech, to name a few. On the other hand, AI slop videos seem to fly under YouTube’s radar, leading to more resentment towards AI-generated content.
Businesses that rely on generative AI tools to market their services online are also finding AI to be the way to go, as most users are still not too keen on distinguishing authentic content, nor do they give much importance to those aspects. Instead of paying voice-over artists and illustrators, it is way cheaper to simply create a desired post in under a few minutes, adding fuel to an already raging fire. Some might call it AI slop, but again, the numbers are what truly matter.
The regulatory challenge of AI slop
AI slop is not only a social and economic issue, but also a regulatory one. The problem is not a single AI-generated post that promotes harmful behaviour or misleading information, but the sheer scale of synthetic content entering digital platforms. When large volumes of low-value or deceptive material circulate on the web, they can distort information ecosystems and make moderation a tough challenge. Such a predicament shifts the focus from individual violations to broader systemic effects.
In the EU, the DSA requires very large online platforms to assess and mitigate the systemic risks linked to their services. While the DSA does not specifically target AI slop, its provisions on transparency, content recommendation algorithms, and risk mitigation could apply if AI content significantly affects public discourse or enables fraud. The challenge lies in defining when content volume prevails over quality control, becoming a systemic issue rather than isolated misuse.
Debates around labelling AI slop and transparency also play a large role. Policymakers and platforms have explored ways to flag AI-generated content throughout disclosures or watermarking. For example, OpenAI’s Sora generates videos with a faint Sora watermark, although it is hardly visible to an uninitiated user. Nevertheless, labelling alone may not address deeper concerns if recommendation systems continue to prioritise engagement above all else, with the issue not only being whether users know the content is AI-generated, but how such content is ranked, amplified, and monetised.
More broadly, AI slop highlights the limits of traditional content moderation. As generative tools make production faster and cheaper, enforcement systems may struggle to keep pace. Regulation, therefore, faces a structural question: can existing digital governance frameworks preserve information quality in an environment where automated content production continues to grow?
Building resilience in the era of AI slop
Humans are considered the most adaptable species on Earth, and for good reason. While AI slop has exposed weaknesses in platform design, monetisation models, and moderation systems, it may also serve as a catalyst for adaptation. Unless regulatory bodies unite under one banner and agree to ban AI content for good, it is safe to say that synthetic content is here to stay. However, sooner or later, systemic regulations will evolve to address this new AI craze and mitigate its negative effects.
The AI slop bubble is bound to burst at some point, as online users will come to favour meticulously crafted content – whether authentic or artificial over low-quality content. Consequently, incentives may also evolve along with content saturation, leading to a greater focus on quality rather than quantity. Advertisers and brands often prioritise credibility and brand safety, which could encourage platforms to refine their ranking systems to reward originality, reliability, and verified creators.
Transparency requirements, systemic risk assessments, and discussions around provenance disclosure mechanisms imply that governance is responding to the realities of generative AI. Instead of marking the deterioration of digital spaces, AI slop may represent a transitional phase in which platforms, policymakers, and users are challenged to adjust their expectations and norms accordingly.
Finally, the long-term outcome will depend entirely on whether innovation, market incentives, and governance structures can converge around information quality and resilience. In that sense, AI slop may ultimately function less as a permanent state of affairs and more as a stress test to separate the wheat from the chaff. In the upcoming struggle between user experience and generative AI tools, the former will have the final say, which is an encouraging thought.
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AI chatbots may pose serious risks for people with severe mental illnesses, according to a new study from Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. Researchers found that tools such as ChatGPT can worsen psychiatric conditions by reinforcing users’ delusions, paranoia, mania, suicidal thoughts, and eating disorders.
The team examined health records from more than 54,000 patients and identified dozens of cases where AI interactions appeared to exacerbate symptoms. Experts warn that the actual number of affected individuals is likely far higher.
AI’s design to follow and validate a user’s input can unintentionally strengthen delusional thinking, turning digital assistants into echo chambers for psychosis.
Despite potential benefits for psychoeducation or alleviating loneliness, experts caution against using AI as a substitute for trained therapists. Chatbots should be tested in rigorous clinical trials before any therapeutic use, says Professor Søren Dinesen Østergaard.
The researchers urge healthcare providers to discuss AI chatbot use with patients, particularly those with severe mental illnesses, and call for central regulation of the technology. They argue that lessons from social media show that early oversight is essential to protect vulnerable populations.
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South Korea’s leading terrestrial broadcasters have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, claiming that the company trained its ChatGPT model using their news content without permission. KBS, MBC, and SBS are seeking an injunction to halt the alleged infringement and to recover damages.
The Korea Broadcasters Association said OpenAI generates significant revenue from its GPT services and has licensing agreements with media organisations worldwide.
Despite this, the company has refused to negotiate with the South Korean networks, leaving them without recourse to ensure proper use of their content.
The lawsuit emphasises the protection of intellectual property and creators’ rights, arguing that domestic copyright holders face high legal costs and barriers when confronting global technology companies. It also raises broader questions about South Korea’s data sovereignty in the age of AI.
Earlier action against Naver set a precedent for copyright enforcement in AI applications.
Although KBS subsequently partnered with Naver for AI-driven media solutions, the current case underscores continuing disputes over lawful access to broadcast content for generative AI training.
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Wikipedia editors have voted to remove all links to Archive.today, citing allegations that the web archive was involved in a distributed denial of service attack.
Editors said Archive.today, which also operates under domains such as archive.is and archive.ph, should not be linked because it allegedly used visitors’ browsers to target blogger Jani Patokallio. The site has also been accused of altering archived pages, raising concerns about reliability.
Archive.today had previously been blacklisted in 2013 before being reinstated in 2016. Wikipedia’s latest guidance calls for replacing Archive.today links with original sources or alternative archives such as the Wayback Machine.
The apparent owner of Archive.today denied wrongdoing in posts linked from the site and suggested the controversy had been exaggerated. Wikipedia editors nevertheless concluded that readers should not be directed to a service facing such allegations.
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Regulators aim to assess safeguards for children and ensure stronger compliance with local standards.
The ruling party is expected to introduce a family package that would require identity verification for every account through phone numbers or the e-Devlet system. Children under 15 would not be allowed to create profiles and further limits could apply to users under 18.
A proposal that would also allow authorities to order the rapid removal of content deemed unlawful without waiting for court approval, while platforms that fail to comply may face penalties such as phased bandwidth reductions.
Rights advocates warn that mandatory verification and broader enforcement powers could reshape online speech across the country. Some argue that linking accounts to verified identities threatens anonymity and could restrict legitimate expression instead of fostering safety.
Turkey has already expanded online oversight since 2016 through laws that increased the government’s ability to block websites, require content removal and oblige major platforms to maintain a legal presence in the country.
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OpenClaw has introduced a firm community rule prohibiting any reference to Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies on its Discord server, according to its creator, Peter Steinberger.
Enforcement drew attention after a user was removed for mentioning Bitcoin block height as a timing method in a benchmark, with the developer later offering to restore access.
The policy follows a rebrand scare when scammers hijacked old accounts to promote a fake Solana token. Market value spiked then plunged after Steinberger denied involvement, warning that no official token would be issued.
Rapid growth of the open-source project, which has attracted a large developer base within weeks of launch, contrasts with wider industry momentum linking AI agents and digital assets.
Leaders such as Jeremy Allaire of Circle argue stablecoins could become default payment rails for autonomous software, while Coinbase is already rolling out infrastructure enabling agents to transact on-chain.
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The transatlantic debate over ‘digital sovereignty’ is also, in a discrete measure, about whose rules govern online speech. In the EU, digital sovereignty has essentially meant building enforceable guardrails for platforms, especially around illegal content, systemic risks, and transparency, through instruments such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) and its transparency mechanisms for content moderation decisions. In Washington, the emphasis has been shifting toward ‘free speech diplomacy‘, framing some EU online-safety measures as de facto censorship that spills across borders when US-based platforms comply with the EU requirements.
What is ‘freedom.gov’?
The newest flashpoint is a reported US State Department plan to develop an online portal, widely described as ‘freedom.gov‘, intended to help users in the EU and elsewhere access content blocked under local rules, and it aligns with the Trump administration policy and a State Department programme called Internet Freedom. The ‘freedom.gov’ plan reportedly includes adding VPN-like functionality so traffic would appear to originate in the US, effectively sidestepping geographic enforcement of content restrictions. According to the US House of Representatives’ legal framework, the idea could be seen as a digital-rights tool, but experts warn it would export a US free-speech standard into jurisdictions that regulate hate speech and extremist material more tightly.
The ‘freedom.gov’ portal story occurs within a broader escalation that has already moved from rhetoric to sanctions. In late 2025, the US imposed visa bans on several EU figures it accused of pressuring platforms to suppress ‘American viewpoints,’ a move the EU governments and officials condemned as unjustified and politically coercive. The episode brought to the conclusion that Washington is treating some foreign content-governance actions not as domestic regulation, but as a challenge to US speech norms and US technology firms.
The EU legal perspective
From the EU perspective, this framing misses the point of to DSA. The Commission argues that the DSA is about platform accountability, requiring large platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks, explain moderation decisions, and provide users with avenues to appeal. The EU has also built new transparency infrastructure, such as the DSA Transparency Database, to make moderation decisions more visible and auditable. Civil-society groups broadly supportive of the DSA stress that it targets illegal content and opaque algorithmic amplification; critics, especially in US policy circles, argue that compliance burdens fall disproportionately on major US platforms and can chill lawful speech through risk-averse moderation.
That’s where the two sides’ risk models diverge most sharply. The EU rules are shaped by the view that disinformation, hate speech, and extremist propaganda can create systemic harms that platforms must proactively reduce. On the other side, the US critics counter that ‘harm’ categories can expand into viewpoint policing, and that tools like a government-backed portal or VPN could be portrayed as restoring access to lawful expression. Yet the same reporting that casts the portal as a speech workaround also notes it may facilitate access to content the EU considers dangerous, raising questions about whether the initiative is rights-protective ‘diplomacy,’ a geopolitical pressure tactic, or something closer to state-enabled circumvention.
Why does it matter?
The dispute has gone from theoretical to practical, reshaping digital alliances, compliance strategies, and even travel rights for policy actors, not to mention digital sovereignty in the governance of online discourse and data. The EU’s approach is to make platforms responsible for systemic online risks through enforceable transparency and risk-reduction duties, while the US approach is increasingly to contest those duties as censorship with extraterritorial effects, using instruments ranging from public messaging to visa restrictions, and, potentially, state-backed bypass tools.
What could we expect then, if not a more fragmented internet, with platforms pulled between competing legal expectations, users encountering different speech environments by region, and governments treating content policy as an extension of foreign policy, complete with retaliation, countermeasures, and escalating mistrust?
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