Meta closes half a million accounts of young users

According to a meta message published on the company’s official blog, about 330,000 Instagram accounts, about 173,000 Facebook accounts and about 40,000 accounts on the Threads platform were closed after they were identified as belonging to children under the legal age. This is a direct step taken following the new Australian law, which came into effect on December 10, and prohibits social platforms from allowing use by minors under the age of 16.

The law applies to ten major platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X, Reddit and Twitch. The companies are obliged to block underage users or impose effective restrictions, otherwise they are exposed to fines that can reach up to 49.5 million Australian dollars, an amount equal to about 33 million US dollars for each violation.

One of the main issues raised by the law concerns how the age of users can be verified in a global digital world. Meta stated that the enforcement is carried out through a combination of tools, including analysis of activity patterns, use of artificial intelligence to deduce an approximate age and sometimes also a requirement to upload a selfie or an identification document. The company emphasized that it is a multi-layered process, which is still in constant learning and adjustment.

According to Meta, the lack of a uniform and agreed standard in the industry for identifying age makes it difficult to apply the law fairly and uniformly. Meanwhile, the company claims that there is also opposition from some parents and the youth themselves, who are in no hurry to cooperate with the verification mechanisms. Not all companies accept the Australian move in silence. Reddit, for example, filed a lawsuit against the Australian government, arguing that it is not a classic social network and therefore should not have been included in the law. The company even warned against serious damage to users’ privacy and freedom of political expression, if stricter identification mechanisms were required.

Meta herself does not hide her reservations either. According to her, keeping teenagers away from social networks may actually increase a sense of isolation and disconnect young people from online support communities. On the other hand, she warns that the ban pushes young users to less supervised areas of the Internet, where the level of protection is lower. The removal of almost 550,000 accounts in just one month also illustrates the possible economic impact of the law. Each closed account is also a potential user who is not exposed to advertisements, which raises the concern of harming revenues, especially if other countries adopt similar legislation.

Meanwhile, Meta has a problematic history when it comes to protecting minors. In the past, it was heavily criticized after it was reported that the company reduced or downplayed the severity of possible harm to children and teenagers on its platforms. The Australian regulator, for its part, sees the law as a necessary step to protect the mental health and safety of children in the digital age.

Australia is now serving as a sort of global laboratory for examining the limits of state intervention in social network activity. The law’s success or failure may affect lawmakers in Europe, the United States and other countries, who are facing growing public pressure to increase protection for minors online.