Meta slams Australia’s social media ban as it blocks child accounts – 1News

More than half a million accounts have been wiped from Facebook, Instagram and Threads since under-16s in Australia were banned from social media in December. Meta, the tech giant behind the three platforms, said it had removed 544,052 accounts belonging to teens in a compliance update a month after the ban came into force on December 10. Between December 4 and 11, Meta said it took down 330,639 Instagram accounts, 173,497 Facebook accounts, and 39,916 Threads accounts it believed belonged to those under 16. Teenagers are also banned from using other platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, X, Reddit, Kick, and YouTube, with the onus on tech giants to detect and deactivate accounts. Fines of up to $49.5 million (NZ$86.4 million) apply if they fail to take “reasonable steps” to remove under-16 users. Communications Minister Anika Wells said the ban would protect children from online harms and the negative impact of addictive algorithms. “With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms described by the man who created the feature as ‘behavioural cocaine”,” she said in a National Press Club speech before the ban’s launch. In its update, Meta took aim at the ban
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