Australia’s eSafety Commissioner is preparing a Federal Court case against Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube over alleged failures to keep under-16s off the services, according to what Communications Minister Anika Wells told Bloomberg. Wells said the decision to sue isn’t hers but that she expects it, because commissioner Julie Inman Grant is now using new powers to demand documents from the platforms and question their current and former employees. eSafety began investigating the five platforms in March, and its own July report found most underage users had kept their accounts or opened new ones, largely because the platforms lacked working age checks. The government has also doubled the maximum fine a platform can face since the ban took effect last December.
