Australia Plans to Sue Five Platforms Over Under-16 Ban

According to Bloomberg, as reported by Reclaim The Net, Communications Minister Anika Wells said on October 20th that the government is preparing to sue Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube for failing to comply with the ban on under-16s using social media. The lawsuit hasn't been filed. Wells said the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, "now has more powers to be able to gather the evidence that she needs to take those five companies to the Federal Court."

Those powers took effect on September 12th, 2026. They let the Commissioner demand information and documents from anyone she believes holds them, and summon people, including current or former employees of the companies under investigation, to be examined on oath. Refusing to answer carries a penalty of up to 12 months' imprisonment, according to Reclaim The Net's summary of the law.

The ban took effect on December 10th, 2025, under the Online Safety Act, which says platforms "must take reasonable steps to prevent age-restricted users having accounts." The maximum penalty started at 49.5 million Australian dollars and was increased to 192.2 million Australian dollars, once the ban had been in force for six months. In a speech to the National Press Club on October 15th, Wells said: "The law is not failing – platforms are failing to comply with the law."

What the Evidence Says About Compliance

That claim is hard to square with the independent numbers in the report. A survey of parents found that around 7 in 10 said their child still had an account on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok. A University of Chicago working paper found that about 73% of 14- and 15-year-olds covered by the ban were still using the banned platforms. A study published in the BMJ described "limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention of social media restrictions."

The platforms say they've done a lot. By June, the government said more than 5 million accounts held by under-16s had been removed, deactivated, or restricted. Meta says it removed access to more than 750,000 accounts on Facebook and Instagram in Australia. Part of how it finds them is using AI to analyze profiles, including posts, comments, bios, and captions, for contextual clues such as birthday celebrations or mentions of school grades.

That detail matters. To find the under-16 accounts, a platform has to examine accounts that turn out to belong to adults too. It's the same dynamic we covered when Discord began inferring every user's age from account signals: compliance already means more monitoring of everyone, not just of children.

Enforcement Pulls Toward Checking Everyone

Reclaim The Net, an outlet that campaigns against age verification, argues that the logic of enforcement points one way: "To better enforce the law, the platforms would have to start checking every Australian user more closely – including adults."

The law does bar platforms from requiring government ID or Digital ID unless they offer "alternative means" that are "reasonable in the circumstances." But if a court decides current efforts fall short of "reasonable steps," platforms will have a strong incentive to tighten their checks to avoid a penalty that now exceeds 100 million Australian dollars. That's our read, not a finding in the law, and it's the part to watch.

The eSafety Commissioner said in March that taking enforcement action requires evidence "more than simply showing that a platform still has some children aged under 16," and that what counts as "reasonable" is "ultimately a question for the courts to determine." The Federal Court case, if it's filed, will be where that definition gets set.

The Cato Institute paper we covered this week drew on early evidence from Australia and the UK to conclude that the benefits of age verification are "at best, uncertain." The compliance figures above are consistent with that conclusion, and with what Ofcom's investigation into Pornhub's age checks suggested in the UK: checks at the compliant door, with the traffic going somewhere else.

Two court cases will shape the outcome. The Federal Court action would test whether the platforms took "reasonable steps." The High Court challenge, brought by Reddit and the Digital Freedom Project, will test whether the law should stand at all. They argue it imposes "intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors." That hearing is due in November.