Online Safety (Age Restricted Social Media Platforms) Amendment Rules 2026

Question

On 25 March 2026, the Online Safety (Age-Restricted Social Media Platforms) Amendment Rules 2026 were registered. 1. When did work on these amendments begin? 2. What influence did the current High Court actions relating to the social media ban have on the making of these amendments? 3. What is the policy basis for the amendments? 4. Which services are excluded as a consequence of these amendments? 5. What stakeholder consultation occurred? List all groups and individuals who were consulted on these amendments before they were made. 6. These amendments introduce new requirements for age-restricted social media platforms to have certain 'dark patterns'. Why was this not included in the original act? 7. Why was this not included in the original rules? 8. When was the idea to include these dark patterns conceived? 9. Given there are only 10 age-restricted social media platforms, why were these rules made instead of simply exempting whichever service the Minister wished to exempt? 10. For each age-restricted social media platforms, please identify whether and, if so, how, in eSafety's view, the platform has a: a. recommender feature b. an endless feed feature which can only be accessed by logged in accounts (as set out in paragraph 4A(3)(b)) c. an feedback feature which can only be accessed by logged in accounts (as set out in paragraph 4A(3)(b)) d. an time-limited feature which can only be accessed by logged in accounts (as set out in paragraph 4A(3)(b)) 11. Does eSafety (or the Minister) have access to the algorithms of any of the 10 age-restricted social media platforms in order to determine whether they have a recommender feature? If so, which ones? If not, how can the government determine whether a platform has a recommender feature? 12. One definition of an endless feed feature is a feed of material that has no end-point. As no social media service has an infinite amount of content, how could any service meet this threshold? Why is this in the rules? 13. Does subparagraph 4A(4)(b)(iii) include, for example, navigating a website using hyperlinks, even when that website's content is plainly finite? 14. Is paragraph 4A(5)(b), defining a feedback feature, intended to capture followers/subscribers? If so, wouldn't all 10 age-restricted social media platforms meet this threshold? 15. Would 'read receipts' constitute a feedback feature? 16. Does a time-limited feature include a 'story' or similar feature? 17. Why not just ban the harmful features, rather than banning kids from a select few social media platforms that have the harmful features? 18. Do these harmful features only affect kids under 16? 19. What is the point of the social media ban?

Answer

Please see the attached answer.

Documents

• Question with answer (PDF) (opens in a new tab)
• SQ26-000689.pdf (opens in a new tab)