Australians Debate Age Verification Strategies as Social Media Ban Looms

Key Takeaways

• Australia is preparing to implement a ban on under-16s accessing social media.
• However, eSafety Commissioner Julie Grant suggested that the government is leaning away from requiring users to show ID.
• Instead, technologies including biometric scanning and zero-knowledge proofs may play a role.

As the Australian government prepares to ban people under the age of 16 from using social media, the question of how platforms will verify users’ age has come into focus. 

Each proposed solution comes with tradeoffs and users, platform operators and privacy advocates have all weighed in on the pros and cons of different approaches.

Options for Age Verification

In recent comments , Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Grant said, “There are really only three ways you can verify someone’s age online.”

The first and most obvious way is through the use of government-issued documents—the digital equivalent of showing ID to enter a club. 

However, platforms could also take a more technological approach, using either biometric or behavioral signals to identify how old a user is, observed Grant, who will lead Australia’s implementation of the new rules. 

Stating that “there was a big concern with providing government ID,” she suggested regulators are leaning toward a technological solution and said she has already met with providers hoping to license such technology.

Collecting Users’ Biometrics

Perhaps the biggest risk posed by Australia’s age verification proposal is that technology companies create vast databases of users’ biometrics. 

This concern was voiced by Evin McMullen, chief strategy officer at Privado ID, one of the firms vying for a role in the emerging social media verification system. 

If Australia doesn’t prioritize user privacy and security, “businesses of all shapes and sizes will be required to collect and maintain their own separate copies of this very sensitive data,” McMullen observed. 

“With each subsequent copy, each subsequent separate storage location, the potential exposure surface for that data increases, and so too does the potential for it to be hacked, released or used in dangerous ways,” she warned.

According to Privado, the solution is to use zero-knowledge proofs to enable identity verification without having to share the underlying personal data. 

Artificial Intelligence

While zero-knowledge solutions have been employed by digital platforms, such as crypto exchanges, to help protect users’ personal data, a growing number of tools are integrating AI to determine people’s age. 

However, Grant warned that “some of these technologies are less accurate depending on the kind of face being scanned,” raising the worrying prospect of AI bias and discrimination, affecting who can access social media platforms.

Moreover, as McMullen noted, increasingly photorealistic AI-generated images also pose a challenge for platforms seeking to prevent fake profiles. Accordingly, she said many of the same technologies being floated as age verification solutions are also being used for proof of personhood. 

With expanded details of Australia’s plan expected in the new year, social media platforms have more reason than ever to integrate verification and authentication procedures more commonly associated with financial services. 

Despite criticism of the proposal from high-profile figures including Elon Musk, platforms will ultimately have to fall in line or face penalties.