Australia forces Meta to block more than half a million accounts: Who got hit
Children in Australia left without social media (Illustrative photo: Getty Images)
Meta has blocked nearly 550,000 accounts in Australia due to a ban on social media use for children under 16, according to Bloomberg.
Meta Platforms Inc. removed about 550,000 accounts in Australia across Instagram, Facebook, and Threads.
The move followed the law that came into force on December 10, 2025, banning children under 16 from using social media. Violations of the rule are punishable by fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (approximately 33 million US dollars).
Australia has become the first country in the world to introduce such strict legislative age restrictions.
According to Meta, the company’s algorithms identified users’ ages and deactivated accounts belonging to those under 16.
Instagram users were affected the most, with around 330,000 accounts removed. About 173,000 accounts were deleted on Facebook, and nearly 40,000 on Threads.
Children can download their data before their accounts are deleted, but access can only be restored after they turn 16.
Despite complying with the law, Meta continues to criticize the Australian ban, the outlet reports. The company believes that age verification should be handled at the operating system level (App Store or Google Play), rather than by individual apps.
Meta also warns that a targeted ban could trigger a mass shift of teenagers to less regulated platforms or increased use of VPNs.
What Meta shut down in 2025
Earlier, RBC-Ukraine reported that Meta permanently ended support for Facebook Messenger on Mac and Windows computers. The company has now officially redirected all users to the web version of the service.
The Messenger app for PC and Mac was launched at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but failed to compete with business-oriented video communication services such as Zoom.
We also previously reported that the developers of ChatGPT announced the shutdown of the service on WhatsApp, citing changes in the messaging app’s policies and terms of use, as WhatsApp is owned by Meta.
