Australia is preparing a Federal Court case against Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube over their failure to keep under-16s off their platforms. Communications Minister Anika Wells confirmed the plan in an interview with Bloomberg published on October 20, saying the eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, now has the legal tools to build a case against all five companies at once.
A Law With Teeth, But Little Bite So Far
The under-16 ban took effect on December 10, 2025, under the Online Safety Act. Section 63D requires platforms to take "reasonable steps" to prevent age-restricted users from holding accounts - a deliberately flexible standard that leaves much to interpretation, and ultimately to the courts. Penalties for non-compliance were steep from the start, at A$49.5 million, and were doubled to A$109.2 million (roughly $76 million) after six months, when it became clear that enforcement was not translating into fewer underage accounts.
What has shifted recently is not the law itself but the regulator's capacity to investigate. As of September 12, 2026, the eSafety Commissioner can compel any person believed to hold relevant evidence to produce documents, and can summon individuals - including current or former employees of the platforms - to testify under oath. Refusal to cooperate carries a possible twelve-month prison sentence. This is a meaningful escalation: eSafety is no longer limited to requesting information from companies that can stall or shape their responses. It can now reach into the workforce itself.
Compliance on Paper, Circumvention in Practice
The platforms have not been passive. Meta says it removed access to more than 750,000 Facebook and Instagram accounts in Australia, and the government reported in June that over 5 million underage accounts across the major platforms had been removed, deactivated or restricted nationwide. Meta has also described an ongoing process of using artificial intelligence to scan posts, comments, bios and captions for contextual signs of underage use - birthday mentions, references to school grades, and similar clues.
Yet independent research suggests these measures are not closing the gap. A University of Chicago working paper found that roughly 73% of 14- and 15-year-olds nominally covered by the ban were still using the restricted platforms. A study in the British Medical Journal similarly described "limited implementation, incomplete compliance, and substantial circumvention." eSafety's own survey of parents found that about seven in ten believed their child still held an account on one of the major platforms. The regulator has been careful to note that proving a handful of underage users remain is not enough to win in court - it must show that a platform's steps fell short of what was "reasonable," a threshold the law leaves for judges to define.
The Enforcement Dilemma
This is the uncomfortable tension at the center of the case. To meaningfully reduce underage access, platforms would likely need to verify the age of every user far more rigorously - a step that inevitably draws adults into the same scrutiny. The law explicitly bars companies from demanding government ID or Digital ID unless an "alternative means" is offered, which narrows the available tools without eliminating the underlying trade-off between privacy and enforcement.
That tension is already being tested elsewhere. Reddit and the Digital Freedom Project have taken the Online Safety Act to the High Court, arguing it imposes "intrusive and potentially insecure verification processes on adults as well as minors." That case is due to be heard in November, running in parallel with the government's preparations against the five larger platforms.
Wells has framed the coming lawsuit as a matter of accountability rather than a referendum on the law's design. "The law is not failing - platforms are failing to comply with the law," she told the National Press Club on October 15. Whether a Federal Court agrees, or instead exposes the practical limits of mandating age verification at scale, will shape not just this case but the future of similar restrictions being considered in other countries.
