Australia readies social media court action citing teen ban breaches

SYDNEY, March 31 (Reuters) - Australia threatened on Tuesday to sue social media giants for allegedly flouting a ban on under-16s, as its internet regulator disclosed it is investigating some of the biggest platforms for suspected non-compliance with the world-first measure. Three months after the ban came into effect, the eSafety Commissioner said it was probing Meta's Instagram and Facebook, Google's YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok for possible breaches of the law. Communications Minister Anika Wells said the government was gathering evidence "so that the eSafety Commissioner can go to the Federal Court and win". "We have spent the summer building that evidence base of all the stories that no doubt you have all heard ... about how kids are getting around that," Wells told reporters in Canberra. Governments around the world are watching Australia's moves to rein in the tech giants, with many considering similar regulation to protect children from harms including bullying and body-shaming associated with social media. The legal threat is a striking change of tone from a government which had hailed tech giants' shows of cooperation when the ban went live in December. After an early claim the companies had deactivated 4.7 million suspected underage accounts, the government has faced daily headlines of teenagers evading restrictions or simply keeping their accounts without being asked their age. Meta and Snap said they were committed to complying with the ban, and a Meta spokesperson added the government's own trial of age-assurance technology found "natural error margins" around the 16 age cutoff. TikTok declined to comment while a Google spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. Under the Australian law, platforms must show they are taking reasonable steps to keep out underage users or face fines of up to A$49.5 million ($34 million) per breach, something eSafety would need to pursue in a civil court. ENFORCEMENT STANCE The regulator previously said it would only take enforcement action in cases of systemic noncompliance. But in its first comprehensive compliance report since the ban took effect, eSafety said measures taken by the platforms were substandard and it would make a decision about next steps by mid-year. "We are now moving into an enforcement stance," said commissioner Julie Inman Grant in a statement. The regulator reported major compliance gaps, including platforms prompting children who had previously declared ages under 16 to do fresh age checks, allowing repeated attempts at age-assurance tests until a child got a result over 16 and poor pathways for people to report underage accounts. Some platforms did not use age-inference, which estimates age based on someone's online activity, and some only used age-assurance measures like photo-based checks after a user tried to change their age, rather than at sign-up. That made it "likely many Australian children aged under 16 have been able to create accounts on age-restricted social media platforms by simply declaring they are 16 or older", the regulator said. Nearly one-third of parents reported their under-16 child had at least one social media account after the ban took effect, of which two-thirds said the platform had not asked the child's age, it added. ($1 = 1.4592 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Stephen Coates)