Australia’s eSafety to meet Silicon Valley big tech as global reckoning on social media approaches

Australia’s eSafety watchdog will meet with US social media giants and AI firms in Silicon Valley and Los Angeles next week as implementation of the world-first underage social media ban draws closer.

Julie Inman Grant’s itinerary includes meetings with Apple, Discord, OpenAI, Anthropic, Shapchat and Character AI, with efforts also underway to arrange discussions with Google and Meta.

It comes as Australia prepares to mount a full court press in the US next week, with Communications Minister Anika Wells tipped to accompany Anthony Albanese to the UN General Assembly, where he’s expected to urge global action on social media regulation.

Ms Inman Grant and Ms Wells announced their trip during a Sydney press conference on Tuesday as they laid down the law to tech giants through newly published regularly guidance ahead of the December 10 implementation of Australia’s ban.

The guidance tells platforms they will need to comply with the new laws or risk facing fines of up to almost $50 million.

Key expectations include detecting and deactivating the accounts of children aged under 16, preventing children from starting new ones, providing review mechanisms and continuous monitoring.

The platforms have been warned they must take “reasonable steps” to remove under-16s accounts, however, the Commissioner admitted that some accounts could fall through the cracks.

“I do not expect it to be instantaneous and things will magically disappear,” Ms Inman Grant said, adding she hoped the public, parents and teachers would dob in children who are missed or platforms which haven’t acted after December 10.

“That is why we have asked the platforms to make discoverable and responsible reporting tools available because we know people will be missed.

“If we detect that there is really egregious oversight or too much is being missed, then we talk to the companies about the need to retune their technologies.”

Australia won’t prescribe the method or technology for age-assurance but Ms Inman Grant said she would “dig deeper” with firm’s technical engineering and compliance teams to understand “what is in the realm of the possible” and what hurdles might be.

“Every platform will be different and will take a somewhat different approach and that is why we approach this that way,” she said, adding that a lot already had the technical capability to verify a user’s age.

“When I met with the TikTok CEO a couple of years ago, he told me they can identify the age of a child in three seconds — meaning that a lot of companies are using biometrics now.”

Under the ban, platforms can’t have a blanket approach to age verification or compel people to use their government ID to prove their age online. They must offer “reasonable alternatives” to just government ID.

Shadow Communications Minister Melissa McIntosh welcomed further regulation of children on social media but raised concerns whether Ms Wells’ claim that users won’t be compelled to provide their government ID is valid.

“In the report that was released today, it does show that if all other measures fail, we could get to a stage where people do need to show some form of digital ID,” Ms McIntosh told Sky News on Tuesday.

“I have a big question around data storage and the protection of Australians information.”

Ms Wells said all eyes were on Australia as other nations — including New Zealand and France — look to follow in the footsteps of the Albanese Government’s ban.

“I’ll support the Prime Minister in meeting with other world leaders about our world-leading social media laws,” Ms Wells said, saying she’ll cover east coast US events while Ms Inman Grant’s engagements will be on the west coast.

“We’ve had interest from other world leaders. We’ll be taking those meetings and talking about ‘how? and why?’ (we’re pursuing the ban) next week.”

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had last week used her State of the Union address to the European Parliament to announce that she was one of those close observers examining whether Australia’s ban could be emulated.

It comes as popular dating app Tinder this week unveiled a new use the Face Check feature to stamp out bots, scammers and fraudsters, and gaming platform Roblox launched a age-verification and facial recognition through third-party app Persona.

Tech giant Apple also announced it will start providing more detailed age information, allowing platforms to verify whether a user is over 13, 16, or 18-years-old.

Ms Inman Grant said it was a signal that the world’s attitudes around how social media operates was changing and the developments were “creating an ecosystem” for change.

The eSafety commission has also created and published self-assessment tools for tech companies to check ahead of December 10 whether or not they will comply with the new Australian laws.

Ms Inman Grant said would be “very surprised if companies do choose to do nothing” but warned Australia would be ready if any didn’t act and instead opted for a legal fight.

“In most cases, these companies want to operate in Australia and they respect Australian law. There may be a few who completely decide to do nothing, just to test out resolve and if that is what they plan to do, we will meet them with force,” she said.

“I think the Minister said the other week that she had ‘sharp elbows’ so it is good to know that the government is behind us on this.”