According to Gizmodo, starting December 10, 14-year-olds in Australia will be banned from posting on Reddit entirely, along with livestreaming service Kick, as both platforms join the country’s age-restricted social media list. The eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, announced that platforms themselves must figure out how to keep users under 16 from having accounts or face fines up to 49.5 million Australian dollars. This expansion comes after a preliminary list created about a year ago already included TikTok, X, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube. The government isn’t designing the verification technology but expects companies to self-assess and implement restrictions without direct intervention. Roblox, OpenAI’s Sora, Discord, Steam, and Twitch are also reportedly on the government’s radar for potential future bans.
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Australia’s unique approach
Here’s the thing about Australia’s regulatory landscape – it looks pretty alien to Americans. We’ve got the eSafety Commissioner which combines some functions of the FCC and FTC but with a laser focus on online platforms. Their powers got significantly expanded back in 2022, partly driven by that awful Christchurch mosque shooting footage that spread across social media. Basically, Australia decided they weren’t going to wait around for platforms to self-regulate anymore.
The compliance burden
Now here’s where it gets really interesting. Australia isn’t telling companies how to verify ages – they’re just saying “figure it out.” As Commissioner Grant put it, “the burden goes back onto the platforms themselves.” That means Reddit, which has historically been pretty hands-off about user verification, now has to implement some kind of age-gating for an entire country. And we’re not talking about just preventing access to adult content – we’re talking about blocking the entire platform for anyone under 16. That’s a massive technical and privacy challenge.
What this means for Reddit
So what does Reddit do here? The platform has communities like r/im14andthisisdeep that literally have “14” in the name, but soon actual 14-year-olds in Australia won’t be able to participate. Reddit’s facing the same dilemma every social platform encounters when regulations hit – do they implement robust age verification (expensive, privacy-invasive) or just block entire regions (losing users)? With Australia setting these precedents, other countries might follow suit. And let’s be real – how effective will this actually be when determined teens can use VPNs?
Bigger picture
Looking at the broader trend, Australia’s becoming something of a laboratory for aggressive online regulation. Remember when they passed that law holding platforms responsible for violent content back in 2019? Or when the UK considered similar age verification measures? We’re seeing a global shift toward holding platforms accountable for who accesses them. The question is whether this approach actually protects kids or just pushes them to less-regulated corners of the internet. According to The Guardian’s coverage, this is likely just the beginning of a much broader crackdown.
