Meta deactivates 544,052 accounts it said belonged to under-16s after Australia ban

Meta has deactivated 544,052 accounts it believed belonged to users under 16 across Facebook, Instagram and Threads in Australia, the company said. The removals took place between 4 December, when Meta began deactivating accounts, and 11 December. Meta said the total included 330,639 accounts on Instagram, 173,497 on Facebook and 39,916 on Threads, and published the figures in a blog post on Monday.

In the post Meta said, "Ongoing compliance with the law will be a multi-layered process that we will continue to refine, though our concerns about determining age online without an industry standard remain." The government-listed 10 platforms covered by the ban — Twitch, Kick, YouTube, Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Snap, X, TikTok and Reddit — had implemented age checks on 10 December 2025.

The office of the eSafety commissioner had asked platforms how many accounts had been deactivated but eSafety had not released those figures; eSafety was approached for comment. Guardian Australia reported a Twitch account set up to test the rules as an under-16 user was permanently banned by the platform, citing the policy.

The federal opposition said implementation had "fallen flat", with the shadow communications minister, Melissa McIntosh, saying many under-16 accounts remained active or had been reactivated and that age-verification tools were "laughably easy to bypass".

Key Topics

Tech, Meta, Instagram, Facebook, Australia, Esafety Commissioner