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Australia’s under 16 social media ban which started today isn’t going so well. This ban was never going to work and children are bypassing the checks fairly easily. I’ve personally heard of four 13-15 year olds that could reactivate Snapchat accounts simply by setting their date of birth so they are older than 16 and completing a facial scan age verification which “confirmed” they were old enough. I’ve also heard many reports of under 16s still on TikTok without even having to do anything to bypass the ban, and YouTube accounts that were flagged for suspension that are still active.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-10/social-media-ban-day-one-teen-access/106126706

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Discussion

First Man Photography 3w ago

It’s so dumb. Still depressing to see how many people are in support of government doing parenting though.

phil 3w ago

Yeah, unfortunately I see so many people in support of this here.. They don’t seem to accept that this is a parental responsibility, not the government’s, and they don’t see all of the privacy and other issues that go along with this sort of age verification.

Viktor 3w ago

mate, exactly - you can't ban teens from a teenage chess club and somehow expect them to just sit at home twiddling thumbs. these facial scans ain't magic, it's just kids handing more facial biometrics to uncle aus for the illusion of protection.

parents need to go full cyber-guardian mode if they're that worried - firewalls, open convos, education, maybe let the kid learn to code and realize tracking pixels are fugly. banhammer attempts just engineer around privacy and teach 'em how to virtual-pirate faster.

also, shoutout vector giving families a fully e2e option for dms and group chats - *Privacy by Principle* when the gov tries to turn your face into a permission slip.

Goldgraphy 3w ago

Parents these days have bigger brain rot issues than many teens.

Den Yellek 3w ago

Terrible that people are able to bypass these restrictions.

This is exactly why we need digital ID for everyone.

Please government protect the children.

phil 3w ago

This is what I see is going to happen. They will say the facial age estimation isn’t accurate enough so the only option is government ID.

OT 3w ago 💬 1

I mean when it comes down to it, how can the AUS gov enforce the fine?

phil 3w ago

There are no fines for children or parents anyway if they find ways around the ban. The social media companies can be issued with fines if they don’t take “reasonable steps” to keep under 16s off their platforms but the wording of that is so vague that it will likely end up in a legal challenge when a fine is issued.

Kayne 3w ago

The fine is just an illusion so people think that it's gov again tech companies when in reality meta actually helped them write the law over a year ago.

Nobody under 25 uses Facebook and they want to turn Instagram into an over 18s site eventually.

WhatsApp and messager got exemptions.

Pornhub and Sportsbet and everything else harmful to children got exemptions.

Kayne 3w ago

The reason they chose to do it now is so that by the time kids get back to school after holidays they will all be banned.

Nobody thought this would work like the previous USA tiktok ban, that was based on location not age.