Australia's online safety watchdog is considering court action against Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube for allegedly not doing enough to keep children under 16 off their platforms.
Experts say the Australian courts will decide what steps the platforms can reasonably be expected to take under the laws that took effect on Dec 10 banning young children from holding accounts.
According to the eSafety Commissioner's first compliance report since those laws took effect, 5 million Australian accounts had been deactivated, but a substantial number of Australian children continued to retain accounts, create new accounts, and pass platforms' age assurance systems.
The report said that the eSafety office had 'significant concerns about the compliance' of half of the 10 platforms, and was gathering evidence against the five that they had not taken 'reasonable steps' to prevent young children holding accounts.
Courts could order fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to comply.
