Overview
- Australian authorities say 10 major platforms revoked or restricted about 4.7 million accounts identified as belonging to children after the under-16 prohibition took effect on December 10.
- Under the law, services including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X, Snapchat, Reddit, Discord, Twitch and Kick face penalties up to A$49.5 million if they fail to take reasonable steps to keep under-16s off their services, while messaging apps like WhatsApp are exempt.
- Meta reported removing roughly 331,000 Instagram, 173,000 Facebook and 40,000 Threads accounts around the enforcement date, and officials noted attempts by some youths to evade the ban and brief download spikes on smaller apps.
- France’s National Assembly cultural and education commission advanced a bill to bar under-15s from social networks after redrafting it to align with the EU Digital Services Act, reframing underage accounts as illicit content subject to removal and setting a two-tier approach to platforms subject to total bans or parental authorization.
- TikTok began rolling out enhanced age-prediction in the EEA, Switzerland and the UK that flags likely under-13 accounts to human moderators, with appeals via Yoti facial age estimation, credit card authorization or government ID, following consultations with EU privacy regulators.