PARLIAMENTARY HEARING ON FRIDAY
Representatives of Meta, TikTok, YouTube owner Google and Snap’s Snapchat are scheduled to give evidence in a parliamentary inquiry about the changes on Friday, as are regulatory and government officials.
“Enforcement is ongoing, and these numbers will continue to grow,” Meta said in a statement.
“We share the Australian Government’s goal of ensuring young people have safe, age-appropriate experiences online, and we are meeting our obligations under the law,” the company added.
A 2025 Australian trial of age assurance technology found products on the market could effectively support a ban.
Most large platforms, including Meta’s, rolled out photo-based age estimation software, although they say they typically first subject users to age inference, or assuming a person’s age based on their online activity.
Meta said it was using AI to analyse user profiles for “contextual clues that an account may belong to someone under 16, such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades” and to analyse reports about suspected underage accounts.
The company added that it had removed the option for a person to make more attempts to set up an account if their previous account was deleted.
