Nearly 5 Million Accounts Removed Under Australia's New Social Media Ban (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0180604180
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/01/17/0440228/nearly-5-million-accounts-removed-under-australias-new-social-media-ban
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/world/australia/social-media-ban-australia.html
> Nearly five million social media accounts belonging to Australian teenagers [1]have been deactivated or removed , a month after a landmark law barring those younger than 16 from using the services [2]took effect , the government said on Thursday. The announcement was the first reported metric reflecting the rollout of the law, which is being closely watched by several other countries weighing whether the regulation can be a blueprint for protecting children from the harms of social media, or a cautionary tale highlighting the challenges of such attempts.
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> The law required 10 social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and Reddit, to prevent users under 16 from accessing their services. Under the law, which came into force in December, failure by the companies to take "reasonable steps" to remove underage users could lead to fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars, about $33 million. [...] The number of removed accounts offered only a limited picture of the ban's impact. Many teenagers have said in the weeks since the law took effect that they were able to get around the ban by lying about their age, or that they could easily bypass verification systems.
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> The regulator tasked with enforcing and tracking the law, the eSafety Commissioner, did not release a detailed breakdown beyond announcing that the companies had "removed access" to about 4.7 million accounts belonging to children under 16. Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, said this week that it had removed almost 550,000 accounts of users younger than 16 before the ban came into effect.
"Change doesn't happen overnight," said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. "But these early signs show it's important we've acted to make this change."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/15/world/australia/social-media-ban-australia.html
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/09/2112230/millions-of-australian-teens-lose-access-to-social-media-as-ban-takes-effect
Australia has 28 million inhabitants (Score:3)
5 million accounts is significant in a country of 28 Million inhabitants. There aren't that many social media networks.
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I guess Australian teenagers haven't learned to lie about their age yet when they open an account. I for one always lie about my birth date when I open an account.
The goal isn't true to protect kids (Score:2)
It is never to protect kids. If it was people would listen to childhood development experts and implement dozens and dozens of policies they have been calling for since the 70s.
This is probably just about control. For one thing foreign governments are going to gradually force Facebook and Twitter out of their markets. The United States is threatening to invade greenland. You cannot have a huge media presence from a potentially hostile foreign Nation in your country. Billionaires and the wealthy elite in
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Oh, no! What will these corporations do if they can reach young consumers with product placements?
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This could ultimately lead to new types of social media like peer to peer solutions or going back to things like the old SMS text messages for interactions between teenagers.
I suspect that the cure of not having access to social media is not a cure at all but a curse and cause some kids to get even more isolated. There are kids that even though they have a lot of neighbors don't fit in with them while they can find similarly minded online.
Meanwhile... (Score:3)
Sources seem to indicate that Tor usage has increased exponentially in Australia, as well as many United States states, predominately southern ones and Utah. VPN services not located in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia are also expecting windfall profits in 2026. Torrent-based media piracy through Tor and VPNs is already spiking.
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In America, they're trying to add legislation to limit what VPN providers can do in order to prevent spoofing. I bet Australia will too. So... VPNs are probably going to be a lot less useful in the future as well.
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> In America, they're trying to add legislation to limit what VPN providers can do in order to prevent spoofing. I bet Australia will too. So... VPNs are probably going to be a lot less useful in the future as well.
The problem with that is that it isn't practical at all. It breaks every kind of business I can think of, and will never pass nationally because of it. Any state that manages to cram it through their legislature and signed into law will see a mass exodus of business because you wouldn't even be able to run a bank in that state. Or do telehealth, or much of anything else. Then there are practical ways to "stealth" the VPN, such as just opening an SSH tunnel to a server in Switzerland and running the totality
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> It breaks every kind of business I can think of, and will never pass nationally because of it.
Most businesses won't be affected, because the wording on VPN ban legislation I've seen include something to the effect of banning services that are "designed to evade" the Taliban-like restrictions these states are imposing. Most business VPN's don't fall into that category.
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>> In America, they're trying to add legislation to limit what VPN providers can do in order to prevent spoofing. I bet Australia will too. So... VPNs are probably going to be a lot less useful in the future as well.
> The problem with that is that it isn't practical at all. It breaks every kind of business I can think of, and will never pass nationally because of it.
Nah. Businesses don't generally use commercial VPN services (NetVPN, et al), they run their own servers. So if they can regulate commercial VPN offerings it will mostly shut down consumer use for region-shifting, but won't affect businesses. Actually restricting commercial VPN offerings is non-trivial, of course, and will always be somewhat leaky, but they can probably prevent VPNs from being usable by most consumers if they try.
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>>> In America, they're trying to add legislation to limit what VPN providers can do in order to prevent spoofing. I bet Australia will too. So... VPNs are probably going to be a lot less useful in the future as well.
>> The problem with that is that it isn't practical at all. It breaks every kind of business I can think of, and will never pass nationally because of it.
> Nah. Businesses don't generally use commercial VPN services (NetVPN, et al), they run their own servers. So if they can regulate commercial VPN offerings it will mostly shut down consumer use for region-shifting, but won't affect businesses. Actually restricting commercial VPN offerings is non-trivial, of course, and will always be somewhat leaky, but they can probably prevent VPNs from being usable by most consumers if they try.
Also, businesses really should wise up and stop using VPNs. Their requirement is a symbol of a fundamentally broken security model, one that assumes that corporate LANs are trustworthy.
IBM had the right of this 30 years ago: when visitors came to the IBM offices they were shocked to find that the conference rooms all had Ethernet (and Token Ring -- this was IBM 30 years ago) ports in the tables that anyone could use and dropped them right onto IBM's corporate LAN. IBM corporate security realized that no
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> Sources seem to indicate that Tor usage has increased exponentially in Australia, as well as many United States states, predominately southern ones and Utah. VPN services not located in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia are also expecting windfall profits in 2026. Torrent-based media piracy through Tor and VPNs is already spiking.
Cite?
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You're cruising for under-13 and not posting anon?
A very serious step (Score:2)
Many people and especially young people have *real* online friends and removing those social connections could produce feelings of isolation and likely depression. I think it would have been far better to regulate the sort of content that young people could access without isolating them socially. Its easy to say that they should "go out and make real friends" but that is very difficult for some people.
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Living sober is very difficult for some people, that doesn't mean the solution is to start pouring shots for the rest of the kids. Regardless of the fact that they might make friends while taking those shots.
We fucked up a generation or two. The best time to stop was yesterday, the second-best time is today.
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> We fucked up a generation or two. The best time to stop was yesterday, the second-best time is today.
QFT
No Cars Over 70 (Score:2)
Next...I hope they ban people over the age of 70 from driving.
I don't give a shit what condition they're in. Once they hit seventy...off the roads.
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Install radials and disc brakes and you make up a lot of the safety gap between a 70 year old car and a modern one.
I didn't need the government to tell me this (Score:2)
My kids, now 20 and nearly 18, were/are 100% banned from all social media platforms until age 18. There were a few limited exceptions for club/interest-oriented forums, but NO "social media" accounts at all. Nothing with a screen and an internet connection was/is permitted in their rooms, and the KGB/Stasi/CIA level of parental spyware running on their devices nearly rendered them useless. As a result, they got something like a childhood.
They never complained about it when they were younger, and both say
Re: Confiscating accounts - Communism = Fascism. L (Score:3)
This is your brain on drugs.
Any questions?
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Um, nearly all US American's like freedom and are generally anti-facists regardless of political affiliation. So what are MAGA's?
I mean, people who are called "MAGA" in America actually WANT to limit social media for children and WANT to force ID verification for some websites. Sounds like the opposite of what the OP is referring to?
Re: LOL take your meds or up your dosage (Score:1)
Hmm, fascism and responsible parenting are not the same thing.
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So what about not allowing kids to drink or smoke or drive? Is that fascist as well?
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We only ban kids from purchasing the products. What they do in the privacy of their homes isn't controlled in most states.
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> Someone who legally purchases those products and then provides them to a minor is guilty of a crime just about anywhere in the USA.
Bzzzt, no. Even North Carolina, probably the most pro-tobacco state of all, has this to say in G.S. 14313:
> (c) If any person under the age of 18 years purchases or accepts receipt, or attempts to purchase or accept receipt, of tobacco products or cigarette wrapping papers [...] shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor;
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> (d) ... or if any person shall aid or abet a person who is less than 18 years of age in purchasing, acquiring, or receiving or attempting to purchase, acquire, or receive tobacco products or cigarette wrapping papers, the person shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor;
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I b0rked the formatting, derp. Leading quote is me, obviously, and should not be quoted.
Caffeine is a hell of a drug, and I haven't had quite enough yet.
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That's because it is impossible to enforce in homes. They can't gamble on an online site even if they are at home.
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I'm pretty sure it's a crime anywhere in the USA for a minor to possess tobacco products, let alone use them. Grandparent is wrong.
Re: Confiscating accounts - Communism = Fascism. L (Score:2)
According to copilot, that is the case in 32 states. It is technically legal for them to possess at home in 18 states. I'm sure a good portion of those are red. Conservatives even hate laws when they prevent children from poisoning their bodies.
Re:Confiscating accounts - Communism = Fascism. LE (Score:4, Insightful)
With so many in power acting in bad faith, it's easy to forget that there actually are children, people are taking advantage of them, and that they should be protected.
Tech is deathly afraid at the thought they might not be able to hook kids before they hit puberty anymore. They may actually learn to live and think independently of the tech platforms. This strikes at the very core of their power in society.
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Sounds like a win, the kids will have more time to do shit kids should do - like swim with the crocodiles, box with the kangaroos, kill feral cats, save koalas from the fires and milk spider venom.
No Mad Max is coming from behind the computer or the fondle slab, and his time is almost here.