Report from BBC
In Brief – The Australian eSafety Commissioner has announced that nine digital platforms will be required to comply with the country’s new threshold of 16 years of age for individuals to have an account on social media platforms when the mandate goes into effect on December 10. The covered platforms are Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X and YouTube. The regulator noted that they meet the key requirement that their “sole or a significant purpose is to enable online social interaction”. The Commissioner also said that a group of platforms were notified that are currently excluded from the ban for various reasons, including Discord, GitHub, LEGO Play, Roblox, Steam and Steam Chat, Google Classroom, Messenger, WhatsApp and YouTube Kids. It is up to the individual platforms to implement the age limit for all their Australian account holders, potentially including systems that use official ID documents and facial recognition technology.
Context – Online age verification continues to march on globally. Australia provides insight into how age checks proliferate. Not only does the country now have a social media age threshold, but additional rules implementing Australia’s Online Safety Act (OSA) also go into effect in December to limit access by minors to harmful but legal online content, including online porn and sexually explicit material. Age checks are therefore coming to search engines in Australia, including Google. While gaming platforms with social functions were somewhat surprisingly not included in the social media age limit mandate, including oft-criticized Roblox, the regulator noted it was covered by the OSA. The UK Online Safety Act is being used to expand online age verification along a similar rubric of porn, social media, and game sites with social features. In Europe, President von der Leyen says that the Commission will explore a social media age limit and has announced a five-country pilot of an age verification app. In the US, the Supreme Court ruled that age check mandates were acceptable for porn sites and states are rapidly attempting to expand them to social media.