MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) 鈥� Technology giant on Thursday began sending thousands of young Australians a two-week warning to downland their digital histories and delete their accounts from Facebook, Instagram and Threads before a world-first on accounts of children younger than 16 takes effect.
The Australian government 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.
鈥淲e will start notifying impacted teens today to give them the opportunity to save their contacts and memories,鈥� Meta said in a statement.
Meta said young users could also use the notice period to update their contact information 鈥渟o we can get in touch and help them regain access once they turn 16.鈥�
Meta has estimated there are 350,000 Australians aged 13-to-15 on Instagram and 150,000 in that age bracket on Facebook. Australia鈥檚 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 鈥渧ideo selfie,鈥� Meta said.
Terry Flew, co-director of Sydney University鈥檚 Center for AI, Trust and Governance, said such facial-recognition technology had a failure rate of at least 5%.
鈥淚n the absence of a government-mandated ID system, we鈥檙e always looking at second-best solutions around these things,鈥� Flew told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
The government has warned platforms that 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).
Meta’s 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.
鈥淲e believe a better approach is required: a standard, more accurate, and privacy-preserving system, such as OS/app store-level age verification,鈥� Davis said in a statement.
鈥淭his combined with our investments in ongoing efforts to assure age 鈥� offers a more comprehensive protection for young people online,鈥� she added.
Dany Elachi, founder of the parents鈥� group Heaps Up Alliance that lobbied for the , 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 government’s only announcing on the complete list of platforms that will become age-restricted on Nov. 5.
鈥淭here are aspects of the legislation that we鈥檙e not entirely supportive of, but the principle that children under the age of 16 are better off in the real world, that鈥檚 something we advocated for and are in favor of,鈥� Elachi said.
鈥淲hen everybody misses out, nobody misses out. That鈥檚 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,鈥� he added.
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