Meta Platforms, Inc. (META.US) announced that it has deactivated nearly 550,000 accounts in the country to comply with Australia's landmark social media ban for children. The social media giant stated in a blog post that it shut down approximately 330,000 Instagram accounts, 173,000 Facebook accounts, and nearly 40,000 Threads accounts, all identified as belonging to users under the age of 16. The law officially took effect on December 10, mandating that platforms, including ByteDance's TikTok and Instagram, prohibit users under 16 or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (approximately US$33 million). This move establishes Australia as the first democratic nation globally to implement such stringent measures in response to growing concerns about social media harms. Despite its compliance, Meta continues to voice opposition to the ban, advocating for the establishment of a standard age verification mechanism and calling for broader industry-wide protections for young people using any application. Concurrently, Meta highlighted the surge in downloads of alternative social media platforms as a concerning development. In its post, Meta expressed that this approach aims to avoid a "'whack-a-mole' situation, where teens simply migrate to new apps to circumvent the social media ban, leaving regulators scrambling to catch up." Affected services were required to block account holders under the age of majority starting December 10.
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