The Albanese Government has put social media giants on notice - if you want to do business in Australia, you must obey Australian laws.
As of early March, 5 million under-16 social accounts have been removed, deactivated or restricted as a consequence of Australia's world-leading social media law.
However, serious concerns remain about the number of children still accessing social media.
As the independent regulator, the eSafety Commissioner's first compliance report exposes unacceptable systems being adopted by age-restricted social media platforms, including:
- allowing under-16 users to repeatedly attempt age assurance until they pass
- not doing enough to prevent underage users whose accounts have been deactivated from immediately opening a new one
- ineffective and inaccessible pathways for parents and others to report underage users.
eSafety is actively investigating potential non-compliance in relation to five platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube.
Systemic breaches will attract penalties of up to $49.5 million.
Quotes attributable to Minister for Communications, Anika Wells:
"The kinds of tactics we're seeing deployed by social media platforms to undermine Australia's world-leading law are right out of the big tech playbook.
"This new report from eSafety Commissioner shows that social media giants seem to be trying to get away with doing the bare minimum - I have serious concerns about their compliance with the law.
"If eSafety finds these platforms have systemically failed to uphold their legal obligations, I expect the Commissioner to throw the book at them.
"All of the platforms covered by our social media minimum age requirement said they would respect the law.
"If these social media companies want to do business in Australia, they must obey Australian laws."
