It’s been one month since the social media ban came into effect in Australia and Meta has announced it has complied with the new law and removed more than 540,000 accounts in that period.
But Meta says that while it abides by the law it doesn’t agree with it and the initial impact of the law suggests it’s not meeting its objectives or making young Australians any safer.
As of December 11, Meta had removed 544,052 accounts from users on its platforms understood to be under 16 years of age.
This included 330,639 from Instagram, 173,497 from Facebook and 39,916 from Threads.
Meta says it is still refining the process of determining age online and they will comply with the law even though an industry standard has not yet been established.
Meta announced it has become a founding partner of the OpenAge Initiative – a non-profit focused on age assurance.
OpenAge has launched a range of verification tools called age keys – the first interoperable, privacy-preserving global age signals.
People can set up a verified age key which is then stored securely on their device and allows users to share these with other participating platforms while maintaining their privacy.
Meta says users can verify their age key in several ways including with a government-issued ID, financial information, face estimation or national digital wallets.
Meta will integrate this tool into its apps in Australia and other markets around the world this year.
But Meta says there have been several concerns raised by experts, youth groups and many parents since the implementation of the Australian social media ban.
These include isolating vulnerable teens from connecting to online communities for support and driving teens to less regulated apps and other parts of the internet.
Another concern is inconsistent age verification methods across the industry while many teens and parents are showing little or no interest in compliance.
Meta also says one premise of the new law that teens are not exposed to an algorithm experience is false.
The law states that a person under 16 years of age can’t hold a social media account yet there are still platforms that allow users to browse them in a logged out state.
This still uses algorithms to decide on the content that is served to them albeit less personalised.
Meta says this is the reason it created Teen Accounts to ensure teens and their parents can be protected while still enjoying what they love about their apps – friendship, community, learning new skills and just expressing themselves.
But the social media ban restricts teens from these benefits, Meta says, which will result in inconsistent protection across the various apps they use including those they are not required to log into.
Meta says it is committed to meeting its obligations and taking the necessary steps to follow the law.
But it is calling on the Australian government to engage with the industry constructively to find a better way forward to achieve its objectives including incentivizing the entire industry to come up with ways in providing safe, private and age appropriate experiences online rather than just upholding a blanket ban.
