Social media platforms could soon know if children under the age of 16 try to use their iPhone applications, because Apple brings new technology that could play a role in the application Australia’s social media ban.
This year Apple plans to introduce a declared age API (application programming interface) on iOS for its iPhone and iPad devices, which developers will be able to use to request information on the age group of a child user, with parental consent.
Thanks to this process, Apple will then indicate to an application if a user was under 18 years of age, under 16 or under 13 years old, then decides the content of this application to allow the user to see or completely block access to the application.
Parents would have the child’s declared age control on the Apple apparatus and would be able to correct the date of birth if it were incorrectly.
The child’s real date of birth would not be shared with applications as part of this model.
Apple will also update the age notes of applications in the App Store from the two current notes, 12+ and 17+, to four: 4+, 13+, 16+ and 18+.
The highest note would be for applications that include play, intense alcohol references, tobacco or drug use, sexual or nudity or realistic violence.
Under the ban on social media for the Under 16s of the Australian government Past in DecemberThe platforms included in the ban – including Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, at least initially – would be required to take reasonable measures to ensure the age of their users.
Before the legislation was adopted, Meta and Tiktok pushed the government to make Apple and Google while the manufacturers of aircraft are responsible for age insurance, but the federal government has decided that the burden should be based on application manufacturers.
As part of the Apple model, it will ultimately be the application itself which checks the age of a user. But it will be up to the government to determine whether it is a “reasonable step” for social media societies to hold the under 16s of their platform.
The explanatory memorandum for the bill on age prohibition indicates that the test of “reasonable steps” will be applied “objectively, considering the continuation of available methods, their relative efficiency, the costs associated with their implementation and data and the implications of confidentiality on users”.
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It will be up to platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok to determine the opportunity to adopt the Apple option, in the context of the follow-up of measures likely to be necessary to also cover non-applical users.
Google announced this month He would start to test an “model of age-based age-based age-based learning” this year in the United States, to assess whether a user is under or over 18 years old and deploy technology in more countries over time.
Parental certification and controls are part of The current age insurance technology testwhich should provide a preliminary report to the government at the end of April.
The prohibition of social media is to come into force in December, after the Minister of Communications decided which platforms the prohibition will apply and what technology could be used to ensure the age of users.