The Australian government has expanded its trial of age assurance technology to look at blocking children from accessing social media platforms as well as porn sites, and is talking to companies including Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, about taking part.
A $6.5m trial of the technology announced in May’s federal budget was originally aimed at testing technologies and methods for keeping under-18s from accessing adult content such as pornography.
But after campaigns from News Corp, the opposition and others to ban under-16s from social media, the government has extended the trial to assess how younger teenagers could be restricted from accessing it.
The trial’s age limit has not been decided but it will now assess the accuracy of technology in determining ages not just 18 and above.
“We want to understand how different technologies work at those younger ages for that social media work,” the communications department acting secretary for online safety, Bridget Gannon, told a hearing of the joint select committee on social media and Australian society on Tuesday.
“We’ll also be consulting with experts, with children, with parents, to understand their concerns and their interests on this issue, and really pulling it together with some policy advice to the government on possible ways forward.”.
Meta has indicated its reluctance to be required to verify the ages of all of its users. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram told the committee last week that age assurance was best left to app stores like Apple and Google.
Gannon said the department had been speaking to Meta and the other social media platforms but noted there was no legal obligation for them to take part.
Opposition members of the committee argued that the companies should be compelled to comply but Gannon said there were no such powers under the Online Safety Act.
Taking part was in their best interest, she said, as the trial would inform how new codes being developed, as announced on Tuesday, would be enforced.
The department will engage an expert to assess the effectiveness of different technologies – whether they work and whether they do what they claim to, according to Gannon.
It will also assess how easy it is to circumvent the technology via virtual private networks.
Guardian Australia reported last month that the UK regulator tasked with bringing in age assurance had said facial recognition technology was less effective at identifying younger teens.
This was disputed by one of the technology providers, Yoti. “That really highlights the importance of getting an independent assessment rather than relying on the word of any one company or another,” said a communications department deputy secretary, James Chisholm.
