The social media ban for those under the age of 16 in Australia has come into effect.
The divisive new law has seen any people under 16 blocked from a slew of social media platforms, such as Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, YouTube, Instagram and more.
These platforms will be responsible for ejecting those under 16 from their platforms, rather than the individual or parent, and will face fines of up to A$49.5 million for serious or repeated breaches.
The government says firms must take "reasonable steps" to keep kids off their platforms and should use multiple age assurance technologies.
These could include government IDs, face or voice recognition, or so-called "age inference", which analyses online behaviour and interactions to estimate a person's age.
While some parents and teachers are celebrating the move, hoping it will deliver lower rates of distraction in classrooms and cyberbullying, others have concerns, especially about how age verification will work moving forward.
Some cybersecurity experts have already flagged concerns about privacy and safety, as ID verification becomes required to prove that an account holder is over the age of 16.
Platforms can also use age interference technology, which looks at patterns of activity on the platform and estimates the account holder's age.
These technologies are not only raising concerns about privacy and security around data, but it seems they are already not working as intended, with a report from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport earlier this year finding that the facial assessment technology, now being used by social media platforms to enforce the rule, was the least effective on teenagers.
In the last 24 hours, the first full day of the ban, dozens of comments have flooded Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's Instagram post celebrating the start of the ban, proclaiming that they were under 16 and still there.
Through incorrect age estimates, VPN's or fooling age verification scans, dozens of under-16s are still using their social media accounts with no problems.
