With the ban going into effect, I thought it might be helpful to allow people to share their experiences about the Australian teen social media ban and how it has affected them.
Note: For the Aussie Zone lemmy requirements, see here. Please use that thread for an Aussie Zone specific discussions or questions.
Good luck, everyone!
This morning I have opened: Lemmy (aussie.zone), Discord, WhatsApp, Bluesky, Messenger, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube.
None of them have asked me to verify my age, neither the ones that said they would nor the ones explicitly exempt nor the ones about which we know nothing.
My Facebook and Google accounts are probably old enough that they don’t need to verify. All the other accounts are too young for that to work.
Bluesky asked me to enter my date of birth, but did not require anything to substantiate the date I entered.
I’m a Millennial, so my age isn’t an issue. But I don’t want to give anything identifying to any platform. (I like the approach aussie.zone is taking.) So I am relieved that thus far my accounts are unaffected.
But I’m also feeling a healthy dose of “where’s the boogeyman we were promised?” and wondering when the shoe is going to drop.
Discord will if you try to open a channel that’s been marked age restricted. Though maybe if you have a newer account they had already done age verification on signup
Yep looks like many sites haven’t actually implemented the age verification at all.
https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/we-tried-to-break-australia-s-social-media-ban-it-wasn-t-hard-20251210-p5nmcx
Social media platforms are still allowing users who declare themselves to be under 16 to sign up for new accounts, despite Australia’s world-first social media ban coming into effect today.
…
testing by The Australian Financial Review found Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, as well as Snapchat, TikTok and X were the only platforms to prohibit users signing up if they listed their age as under 16. As of 6am AEDT, the Financial Review created accounts on video streaming platforms Kick and Twitch despite listing the user age as below 16. Several hours after establishing the account, Kick prompted the user to verify their age, but the app remains fully accessible at this stage without verification.
Likewise, online forum Reddit – which said it would comply with law but is preparing a potential legal challenge to the new regulations – did not require users to input their age at all while setting up an account, with adult “18+ content” on the platform filtered using a toggle in the app’s settings without any age verification. On YouTube, owned by Google parent Alphabet, users can set up an account while listing their age as under 16 and comment and watch videos. Viewers can watch YouTube and TikTok without logging on, but even the under-16 account created by the Financial Review was able to easily access explicit content. While Facebook, Instagram and Threads, Snapchat, TikTok and X prevented people under 16 from signing up, all 10 social platforms let the Financial Review create accounts that listed an age of 18 without any further age verification.
Agree. It’s frustrating.
How do we know if they’ve done their verification and we have ‘passed’?
If it were me, I’d be doing phased rollouts. You don’t want to piss off everyone all at once. You just drip feed it out.
Reasonable, though the law requires it be in full force as of today. If they wanted to phase it in, they should have started that a month or more ago.
And besides, you’d think the very first phase would be…banning new under-age signups. Which they don’t even seem to have done.
aussie.zone, forums.whirlpool.net.au, youtube and reddit
unfortunately no replacement for youtube and not enough content on fedi to replace reddit… yet
At worst, YouTube will still be browsable without an account. So you’ll only miss out on videos with more adult content.