Meta has begun warning users it suspects are under 16 that their accounts will begin to be deactivated under the teen social media ban, as it investigates why Instagram already won’t let some users create accounts.
On Thursday, Meta was the first tech company to announce its plans for complying with the government’s social media minimum age policy.
These plans include alerting Facebook, Instagram and Threads users by app notification, email and text message that their accounts will be deactivated because they have been identified as belonging to someone aged under 16, starting today. Meta will then begin the process of removing access to these accounts from December 4, a week before the ban’s deadline.
People will be given the option to contest that they are under 16 by either a facial scan or uploading a government ID.
After it was initially set to be included in the ban due to an unintended consequence of the legislation, Messenger will be allowed by Meta to be used by people under 16.
While announcing these efforts to comply with the law, Meta has reiterated its concerns about the impacts of the law and the difficulty of implementing it.
“We’re committed to meeting our compliance obligations and are taking the necessary steps to comply with the law. That said, we hope to continue engaging constructively with the Australian government to find a better way forward,” reads a blog post from the Meta Policy ANZ team.
The error shown when Crikey tried to create an account for a 14-year-old on Instagram (Image: Supplied)
On Wednesday, however, some users who tried to sign up for a new Instagram account with a birthdate after November 19, 2009, were shown a simple prompt: “We couldn’t create an account for you.”
But there was no such problem if you tried to create an account with the birthdate of November 19, 2009 or before.
Crikey was able to replicate the account creation error on Instagram. While logged in from an Australian IP address, this reporter was able to create an account for a 16-year-old, but not a 15-year-old. When logged in from a New Zealand IP address, there was no such issue.
It didn’t happen on Facebook, another one of Meta’s social media platforms.
This cutoff lines up with being 16 years old or older, the minimum age for accounts under the government’s social media minimum age policy. As it stands, Meta’s own rules prohibit users under the age of 13 from creating and having accounts on the platform.
A Meta spokesperson told Crikey that it is investigating this unintended issue: “Though we intend to comply with the law, we are not yet blocking people under 16 from creating accounts and we are not actively testing this capability,” they said.
The government set the deadline of December 10 for companies to start enforcing the teen social media ban.
Guidelines released by the regulator, the eSafety commissioner Julie Inman Grant, laid out expectations that these companies should warn users ahead of time if their accounts were set to be deactivated because they were suspected of being underage.
- This story first appeared on Crikey. You can read the original here.
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