3 months ago
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The Albanese government has leapt upon new research showing an array of tools can effectively verify or estimate the age of internet users to justify its world-first move to ban people under 16 from having social media accounts.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, X and YouTube will have to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians aged under 16 from creating or keeping accounts from December under legislation passed last year.
Companies could be fined up to $49.5 million if they fail to take sufficient steps to stop under-16s from holding accounts on their platforms.
Australian children aged under 16 will be banned from having social media accounts under new rules.Credit: AP
Tech giants say the rules will be difficult to put into effect and that they could be easily circumvented by tech-savvy teenagers through the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) and other workarounds.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he will use a visit to the UN General Assembly in New York next month to rally international support for efforts to prevent children from gaining access to social media.
The government on Sunday released the 1100-page final report of an independent age assurance technology trial that had examined the effectiveness of more than 60 age verification estimation technologies offered by 48 providers.
As well as checking passports, driver licences and identity cards, the report found online tools can effectively use credit reference agency databases, utility account records, schools or education records and telecommunications data for age verification.
“Age verification can be done in Australia privately, efficiently and effectively,” the report, which was commissioned by the government, found.
It found there were “no substantial technological limitations preventing its implementation in the Australian context”.
The report says some tech companies are exposing users to privacy breaches by storing sensitive document and biometric data, even when this has not been requested by authorities.
“While these practices may be motivated by a desire to assist regulators or coroners in rare and serious circumstances, they carry significant privacy risks and require clearer regulatory guidance to ensure proportionality,” the report says.
Hand movements, voice analysis and image capture technology can all be used to help estimate the age of an internet user without requiring sensitive documents to be stored by tech companies, the report found.
Electoral roll details and past alcohol purchases can also be used to effectively infer the age of an internet user, according to the trial.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said the government was forging ahead with its new social media rules. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The release of the report comes ahead of a meeting this week in which officials from the eSafety Commission will meet with global safety executives from Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, to demand answers over revelations that its chatbots were allowed to flirt with children.
The report says: “There is a plethora of choice available for providers of age-restricted goods, content, services, venues or spaces to select the most appropriate systems for their use case with reference to emerging international standards for age assurance.
“Our evaluation did not reveal any substantial technological limitations that would prevent age assurance systems being used in response to age-related eligibility requirements established by policy makers.”
The report examines a series of tools used to verify, estimate and infer the age of internet users.
The report says the trial found “a plethora of approaches that fit different use cases in different ways, but we did not find a single ubiquitous solution that would suit all use cases, nor did we find solutions that were guaranteed to be effective in all deployments”.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said: “The Albanese government is on the side of families and we’re pushing forward with our mission to keep kids safer online through world-leading reforms.
“This report is the latest piece of evidence showing digital platforms have access to technology to better protect young people from inappropriate content and harm.
“While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to age assurance, this trial shows there are many effective options and importantly that user privacy can be safeguarded.”
The eSafety commissioner will use the report to provide advice to industry about how to comply with the new rules.
The report found that, while not foolproof, tools exist that can address circumvention of the rules, such as document forgeries and the use of VPNs.
Albanese has said the fact that young people could get around the rules did not mean they should be enacted.
“That’s not a reason to stop the other laws that we’ve put in place about alcohol consumption, or about purchasing of tobacco, or other areas where governments act to identify clearly what are the community’s expectations,” he said last month.
The trial was conducted by the Age Check Certification Scheme, a British third-party testing and certification body that evaluates the accuracy, performance and effectiveness of age estimation solutions.
The report says the trial was conducted independently of the government and was not designed to make policy recommendations.
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