Melbourne, Australia – Australian authorities announced on Tuesday that social media platforms should not require age verification for all account holders starting in December, when a ban on children under 16 creating accounts comes into effect in the country.
The government has released guidelines on platforms such as Tiktok, Facebook , Snapchat , Reddit, X and Instagram, which are set to impose the world’s first ban on children using social media from December 10. It says it would be unreasonable to require age verification of all account holders.
“We think it would be unreasonable for platforms to open up to everyone,” said Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, who drafted the guidelines. Her use of the word “respectable” suggested that platforms typically already had enough data to verify that a user was over 16.
She said the platforms have “targeted technology” to focus on those under 16.
“They can target us with deadly precision when it comes to advertising. Certainly they can do it around the age of a child,” she added.
The Australian parliament passed the ban last year , giving platforms a year to work out how to implement it. Platforms face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children under 16 from accessing content.
Critics of the legislation fear that banning young children from social media will impact the privacy of all users, who must identify themselves as being over 16.
Inman Grant said he argues the ban will see every Australian account holder subject to age verification as a “scandal tactic”.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the government is trying to keep the platform’s user data as private as possible.
“These social media platforms know an awful lot about us,” Wells said. “If you’ve been on Facebook since, say, 2009, they know you’re over 16. There’s no need to verify.”
Wells and Inman Grant will travel to the United States next week to discuss the guidelines with platform owners.
Inman Grant said platforms will have to prove to their agency that they are taking “reasonable steps” to exclude children under 16.
“We’re not expecting everyone under 16 to magically disappear on December 10,” Inman Grant said. “What we’re going to look at are systemic failures to apply technology, policies and processes.”
Lisa, an information science expert at Melbourne’s RMIT University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the government’s approach recognizes that age verification technologies are subject to error.
“It will be up to each platform to determine how they will comply, and it will be interesting to see if they test the boundaries of the definition of ‘reasonable steps,'” the source said.
