Communications Minister Anika Wells says social media companies should prepare for $50 million fines if they haven’t managed to kick children off their platforms within six months, but conceded some children will retain access to their accounts in the meantime, while others go to new apps.
Wells also said she would not hesitate to ban additional tech platforms if trends keep showing a surge in downloads for alternative social media apps, such as Yope and Lemon8.
Anika Wells is setting expectations for day one of the government’s social media ban.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
As the Albanese government readies for scrutiny when its social media ban for under 16s comes into effect on December 10, Wells will on Wednesday give an address to the National Press Club to temper expectations about its first few months.
“The question you’re all desperate to know the answer to – who is getting slapped with the first $50 million fine on 10 December? The bureaucrats in the room will back me up here – but regulation rarely acts fast, and certainly not that fast,” she will say in the speech.
The eSafety Commission will next week send notices to the 10 tech companies on its ban list, asking how many underage accounts they had registered on December 9, before the law started, and how many remained on December 11, the day after the ban’s commencement.
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Snapchat, for example, has flagged to Senate estimates it has 440,000 underage users, while TikTok said it has 200,000. “Those platforms will have time to reply, before the next round of information requests are sent out asking for updated figures every month for six months,” Wells will say.
“The government recognises that age assurance may require several days or even weeks to complete fairly and accurately. However, if eSafety identifies systemic breaches of the law, the platforms will face fines of up to $49.5 million.”
There are about 2.5 million eight- to 15-year-olds in Australia, according to 2021 census data, and the government estimates 86 per cent of people in the age bracket use social media.
