The social media ban for youngsters beneath 16 slogan “Let Them Be Kids” is projected onto the pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2025
Mick Tsikas/AAP Image by way of AP
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Mick Tsikas/AAP Image by way of AP
Global on-line discussion board Reddit on Friday filed a court docket problem to Australia’s world-first legislation that bans Australian youngsters youthful than 16 from holding accounts on the world’s hottest social media platforms.
California-based Reddit Inc.’s swimsuit filed within the High Court follows a case filed final month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project.
Both fits declare the legislation is unconstitutional as a result of it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication.
“We imagine there are more practical methods for the Australian authorities to perform our shared objective of defending youth, and the SMMA (Social Media Minimum Age) legislation carries some critical privateness and political expression points for everybody on the web,” Reddit stated in an announcement.
“While we agree with the significance of defending individuals beneath 16, this legislation has the unlucky impact of forcing intrusive and doubtlessly insecure verification processes on adults in addition to minors, isolating teenagers from the flexibility to interact in age-appropriate neighborhood experiences (together with political discussions), and creating an illogical patchwork of which platforms are included and which are not,” Reddit added.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s authorities declined to touch upon the deserves of Reddit’s problem.
“The Albanese authorities is on the facet of Australian mother and father and children, not platforms,” a authorities assertion stated.
“We will stand agency to guard younger Australians from experiencing hurt on social media. The matter is earlier than the courts so it isn’t applicable to remark additional,” the assertion added.
Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch face fines of as much as 49.5 million Australian {dollars} ($32.9 million) from Wednesday in the event that they fail to take cheap steps to take away the accounts of Australian youngsters youthful than 16.
Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, the legislation’s enforcer, despatched obligatory info notices to the ten age-restricted platforms on Thursday demanding information on what number of accounts of younger youngsters they’d deactivated for the reason that legislation took impact on Wednesday.
Inman Grant had predicted that some platforms may need been ready to obtain their first discover or their first fantastic for noncompliance earlier than mounting a authorized problem.
ESafety will ship six month-to-month notices to gauge how successfully the platforms are complying.
Despite the court docket problem, Reddit stated it might adjust to the legislation and would proceed to interact with eSafety.
Australian youngsters are trying to find options to the age-restricted platforms. Downloads of Yope, an app for sharing pictures inside good friend teams, elevated by 251% since Monday, in response to Apptopia, an intelligence platform analyzing cell apps.
Downloads of Lemon8 — a photo- and video-sharing app which, like TikTok, was created by ByteDance — elevated by 88%.
ESafety stated it has written to Yope, Lemon8 and different smaller apps to ask them to self-assess whether or not they meet the definition of an age-restricted platform. If they do, in addition they face fines if they do not exclude younger youngsters.
Experts say policing age restrictions within the quickly evolving social media panorama is sort of a sport of Whack-a-Mole. But authorities authorities count on a extra fragmented social media market wouldn’t attraction as strongly to younger youngsters who worry exclusion from their friends and lacking out.
The platforms’ age-verification choices have been to ask for copies of identification paperwork, use a 3rd get together to use age-estimation expertise to research an account holder’s face, or make inferences from information already obtainable, such has how lengthy an account has been held.
The authorities hasn’t advised the platforms how you can test ages, however has stated requesting all account holders confirm their ages could be unnecessarily intrusive, given the tech giants have already got ample private information on most individuals to carry out that job.
For privateness causes, the platforms additionally can not compel customers to offer government-issued identification.
Documents filed with the court docket registry present Reddit will ask the seven High Court judges to rule the legislation is invalid.
Alternatively, the corporate desires the court docket to stop the federal government from itemizing Reddit among the many age-restricted platforms.
The High Court will maintain a preliminary listening to in late February to set a date for Digital Freedom Project’s problem on behalf of two 15-year-olds. It is just not but clear whether or not the 2 challenges could be heard collectively.
