Australia won't force social media users to share their personal details when child ban takes effect

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia's communications minister said Wednesday the government won't force social media users to hand over their personal information to tech companies, as children younger than 16 are set to be banned from the platforms.

Michelle Rowland plans to introduce into Parliament on Thursday world-first legislation that would make X, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram responsible for excluding Australian children younger than 16 from the platforms.

After the bill becomes law, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the ban on younger children before they face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic breaches.

How the platforms will be able to determine the ages of account holders is not yet known.

Rowland told Parliament on Wednesday the legislation will contain “robust provisions” to protect social media users’ privacy.

“This is not about government mandating any form of technology or demanding any personal information be handed over to social media companies,” Rowland said.

The government announced last week that a consortium led by British company Age Check Certification Scheme has been contracted to examine various technologies to estimate and verify ages.

In addition to removing children under 16 from social media, Australia is also looking for ways to prevent children under 18 from accessing online pornography, a government statement said.

Age Check Certification Scheme's chief executive Tony Allen said Monday the technologies being considered included age estimation and age inference. Inference involves establishing a series of facts about individuals that point to them being at least a certain age.

“None of these methods is 100% accurate,” Allen told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Allen’s company will report back to the Australian government by the end of June next year.

“I think if people understand the risk and the check is carried out close to that risk, then I think people generally are OK ... We don’t want our children to be exposed to extreme violent video games or to pornography or to suicide material or to things that are going to cause them problems with their mental development such as body dysmorphia and weight loss and stuff like that,” Allen said.

“What people are less keen on is having to go through ID check and verifications to access the internet generally or to do things online generally,” Allen added.

Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia, described the age limit as a “20th century response to 21st century challenges.”