Out of interest are these Australian laws global like the UK ones attempt to be? As in might all of us may have to block <16 Australians, or does it only apply to sites based out of Australia? (along presumably with the big social media players). Can't say I'm looking forward to wading through another 10,000 pages of government guidance!
It applies to anyone who can access the site from Australia.
Page 9, section 1.2: What is an 'age-restricted social media platform'? (emphasis mine):
An electronic service is not an ‘age-restricted social media platform’ if:
- None of the material on the service is accessible to, or delivered to, one or more end-users in Australia, or
- The service is excluded in any legislative rules made by the Minister forCommunications.
Page 9-10, section 1.3 Approaches to determining location:
Providers will need to consider and employ methods to determine whether an end-user isordinarily resident in Australia to ensure that only children under the age of 16 who are ordinarily resident in Australia are prevented from having an account on their service. There are several ways this can be done by providers, including the use of locationinformation.
(Notes: eSafety would not expect providers to take action on accounts holders who are not ordinarily resident in Australia, such as those temporarily visiting Australia.)
Page 16, section 1.5 Other related measures
Age gates and self-declaration are generally not seen as sufficient for regulated contexts when used in isolation. Accordingly, eSafety does not consider the use of self-declaration, on its own without supporting validation mechanisms, to be reasonable for purposes of complying with the SMMA obligation
Page 20, section 2.1 Reasonable steps guidelines - Oveview
eSafety considers the following would not constitute reasonable steps as their effect would be inconsistent with the objectives of the SMMA:
- Implementation that relies entirely on self-declaration to determine the age of existing or prospective account holders
- Implementation where measures rely on age-restricted users holding an account for an unreasonable period of time before detection. Measures that require end-users to engage with a platform for an extended period of time, including to collect sufficient data to assess their age, would allow age-restricted users to be exposed to the harms that the SMMA seeks to address. What is reasonable will depend on the nature of the platform and other verification measures the platform has implemented as part of any layering approach
- Implementation where measures do not reasonably prevent age-restricted users who have accounts deactivated or removed from immediately reactivating or creating a new account and regaining access to the age-restricted social media platform
Page 27, section 2.3.5 Proportionate
Proportionality and consideration of risk and harm are key components of determining what constitutes reasonable steps. Providers should consider the balance of the measures they implement having regard to their purpose, the risk of harm they mitigate and the impact they have on end-users
Risk
What constitutes reasonable steps will depend on the risk profile of the service. Services may have a higher risk profile where they have comparatively higher:
- existing numbers of children and young people holding accounts
- prevalence of features associated with harm to children and young people (such as algorithmic content recommendation, ‘likes’, persistent notifications and endless scroll)
- prevalence of content associated with harm to children and young people (such as violent material and material that promotes unsafe eating habits.)
... I've summarised a few of the more important points from that document here. The eSafety Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) Regulatory Guidance document seems to be the most comprehensive description of the expectations that I can find.
The key messages I've read are that it is intended to be proportinate - so a small forum with low or no budget will certainly not be held to the same standards as a large for-profit social media platform. How that will be enforced in practice is impossible to know at this point - the legislation hasn't even come into force yet (next month).
