Meta alerts young Aussies to download data before social media ban
Technology giant Meta on Thursday began sending thousands of young Australians a two-week warning to download their digital histories and delete their accounts from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads before a world-first social media ban on accounts of children younger than 16 takes effect.
The Australian government announced two weeks ago that the three Meta platforms, plus Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube, must take reasonable steps to exclude Australian account holders younger than 16, beginning Dec. 10.
California-based Meta on Thursday became the first of the targeted tech companies to outline how it will comply with the law. Meta contacted thousands of young account holders via SMS and email to warn that suspected children will start to be denied access to the platforms from Dec. 4.
âVideo selfieâ
âWe will start notifying impacted teens today to give them the opportunity to save their contacts and memories,â Meta said in a statement.
Meta said young users could also use the notice period to update their contact information âso we can get in touch and help them regain access once they turn 16.â
Meta has estimated there are 350,000 Australians aged 13 to 15 on Instagram and 150,000 in that age bracket on Facebook. Australiaâs population is 28 million.
Account holders 16 years old and older who were mistakenly given notice that they would be excluded can contact Yoti Age Verification and verify their age by providing government-issued identity documents or a âvideo selfie,â Meta said.
Terry Flew, codirector of Sydney Universityâs Center for AI, Trust, and Governance, said such facial-recognition technology had a failure rate of at least 5 percent.
Sufficient data
âIn the absence of a government-mandated ID system, weâre always looking at second-best solutions around these things,â Flew told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The government has warned platforms that demanding that all account holders prove they are older than 15 would be an unreasonable response to the new age restrictions. The government maintains the platforms already had sufficient data about many account holders to ascertain they were not young children.
Failure to take reasonable steps to exclude young children could earn platforms fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($32 million).
Metaâs vice president and global head of safety, Antigone Davis, said she would prefer that app stores including Apple App Store and Google Play collect the age information when a user signs up and verifies they are at least 16 year old for app operators such as Facebook and Instagram.
âWe believe a better approach is required: a standard, more accurate, and privacy-preserving system, such as OS/app store-level age verification,â Davis said in a statement.
âThis combined with our investments in ongoing efforts to assure age … offers a more comprehensive protection for young people online,â she added.
Freed hours
Dany Elachi, founder of the parentsâ group Heaps Up Alliance that lobbied for the social media age restriction, said parents should start helping their children plan on how they will spend the hours currently absorbed by social media.
He was critical of the governmentâs move to announce the complete list of platforms that will become age-restricted only on Nov. 5.
âThere are aspects of the legislation that weâre not entirely supportive of, but the principle that children under the age of 16 are better off in the real world, thatâs something we advocated for and are in favor of,â Elachi said.
âWhen everybody misses out, nobody misses out. Thatâs the theory. Certainly we expect that it would play out that way. We hope parents are going to be very positive about this and try to help their children see all the potential possibilities that are now open to them,â he added.
