(Bloomberg) -- Global social media firms could face fines of as much as A$50 million ($32.5 million) if they fail to enforce the Australian government’s new social media ban on children under the age of 16, according to legislation set to be introduced on Thursday.
Under the bill, big tech will be required to take reasonable steps to prevent children from having an account, with fines to be levied on firms that systematically breach the legislation.
There will be exceptions embedded into the legislation for certain types of online services, including messaging applications, online gaming platforms and health and education.
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“The legislation places the onus on social media platforms, not parents or children, to ensure protections are in place,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement. “Ultimately, this is about supporting a safer and healthier online environment for young Australians.”
Australia is following a number of other countries that have attempted to restrict access to social media for children, with mixed success.
Norway imposed a minimum age of 13 on social media use, yet surveys found more than 70% of 11-year-olds there were still using the popular platforms.
There are no details yet on how the ban will be enforced, although the government said new privacy provisions would be included in the legislation to underpin the ban. Rowland told colleagues in the Labor caucus this week that Australians wouldn’t be required to upload identification.
She also said there would be no exemptions for children who obtained parental consent to use social media.
So far there has been a muted response from social media companies. Both Meta and Elon Musk’s social media platform X have said they would like to see application stores such as those run by Google and Apple be responsible for enforcing age verification, rather than the platforms themselves.
Musk said on X that the bill appeared to be “a backdoor way” to control access to the Internet by all Australians.”
In an an interview with Australian Broadcasting Corp., Meta Regional Policy Director for Australia Mia Garlick said that if every single app is required to implement its own age-appropriate controls, “then the burden is really going to fall on young people and parents for each of the different apps that a young person wants to use.”
--With assistance from Swati Pandey.
(Updates with a tweet from Elon Musk in the 10th paragraph)
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