Australia Plans to Sue Meta, TikTok, Snap, and YouTube Over Under-16 Ban

Australia’s government expects to file Federal Court lawsuits against five major social media platforms for alleged non-compliance with its nationwide ban on accounts for users under 16, Communications Minister Anika Wells said in an interview on Monday. The country's online safety regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, opened investigations in March into Meta $META platforms Facebook and Instagram, ByteDance's TikTok, Snap's $SNAP Snapchat, and Google's $GOOGL YouTube over whether they took reasonable steps to block underage account holders. An eSafety report in July found that most underage users managed to keep existing accounts or register new ones, attributing the gap largely to ineffective age-verification checks across the platforms. Since the ban took effect nearly a year ago, Australia has doubled the maximum penalty for violations to A$109.2M ($76M) and granted eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant expanded authority to compel internal corporate documents and summon current or former employees for questioning. "Now she has more powers to be able to gather the evidence that she needs to take those five companies to the Federal Court," — Anika Wells, Australian Communications Minister.