Australian authorities stated on Tuesday that social media platforms should not demand age verification from all account holders beginning in December. The directive comes ahead of a new law, the world’s first, that will ban children under 16 from having accounts, taking effect on December 10. The government’s guidelines, drafted by eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, say that verifying the ages of all account holders would be “unreasonable.” Her use of the word “reverified” implies that platforms already have sufficient data to confirm a user is over 16.
Grant argued that because platforms have “targeting technology” that can focus on users under 16 for advertising, they can certainly apply that same technology to enforce the new age requirement. “They can target us with deadly precision when it comes to advertising,” she said. “Certainly they can do this around the age of a child.”
Regulators Push for Targeted Action
The ban was enacted last year, giving platforms a full year to prepare for its implementation. Platforms face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children under 16 from holding accounts.
Communications Minister Anika Wells supported the eSafety Commissioner’s stance, stating that the government seeks to keep users’ data as private as possible. “These social media platforms know an awful lot about us already,” Wells said. “If you have been on, for example, Facebook since 2009, then they know you are over 16. There is no need to verify.” Wells and Inman Grant plan to travel to the United States to discuss the guidelines with the platforms’ owners.
Challenges of Implementation
The eSafety Commissioner said platforms will need to demonstrate that they are taking “reasonable steps” to exclude children under 16, but she does not expect “every under-16 account is magically going to disappear on Dec. 10.” Instead, the agency will be looking for “systemic failures to apply the technologies, policies and processes.”
Lisa Given, an expert on information sciences at Melbourne’s RMIT University, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the government’s approach acknowledges that age verification technologies can make errors. Given noted that it will be up to each platform to determine how they will comply and that it will be interesting to see if they “test the limits of the definition of ‘reasonable steps.'”
Author’s Opinion
This ban places the social media industry in a difficult position, caught between a government mandate and the practical realities of enforcing such a law without alienating a massive user base. The government’s guidance against universal age verification is a pragmatic recognition of both user privacy concerns and the technical limitations of such a system. However, by using the vague term “reasonable steps,” the law places a significant, and potentially unfulfillable, burden on platforms. This ambiguity sets the stage for future legal challenges and a continuous debate over what constitutes sufficient compliance, suggesting that while the law may be in place, the battle over its true enforcement is only just beginning.
Featured image credit: Julian via Unsplash
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