Proposed not long ago, Australia's ban on under 16s on social media is already law.
The law will make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts. The Senate passed the bill 34 votes to 19. The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved the legislation by 102 votes to 13. The amendments bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver's licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system.
Something else for Mark Zuckerberg to chew on!
"Naturally, we respect the laws decided by the Australian Parliament," Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms said in a statement. "However, we are concerned about the process which rushed the legislation through while failing to properly consider the evidence, what industry already does to ensure age-appropriate experiences, and the voices of young people."
The social media companies made such a poisonous rate maze of it all that it's easy to shrug at Australia's crackdown here, whatever the deeper political incentives are. A big problem with it seems to be (as Facebook contends) that the law is a mish-mash of unlawyered and unengineered political consultant gibberish and is fit only to be a tool of arbitrary prosecution rather than policy-making. A good response to it might be to create new media that ("Phase 2: ?????") won't end up monetizing harm to children and isn't so vulnerable to surveillance and censorship.
