Reddit Adds Global Teen Safety Features Ahead of Australia Ban

Reddit is launching new safety features globally for all under-18s on its popular online forums ahead of Australia’s groundbreaking social media ban.

The new features that are being rolled out now around the world include stricter chat settings and restrictions on personalized advertising, the San Francisco-based company said in a post on Monday. The settings will automatically kick in when the site determines a user is under 18, a company spokesperson said.

Australia will on Wednesday start banning users under the age of 16 from popular services like TikTok and Instagram, becoming the world’s first democracy to carry out such a crackdown in response to growing concerns about social media’s harms. Violations carry possible fines of up to A$49.5 million ($32 million). Other countries are likely to follow suit as an increasing number of governments act to shield young people from toxic content and cyberbullying.

Under Reddit’s new rules, Australian users will be asked to provide their birth dates when signing up, and all account holders will be subject to age-prediction models. Reddit has said it will comply with the new laws, along with Meta Platforms, TikTok owner ByteDance, Snap and other services.

Reddit, known for hosting online discussions on a wide range of topics, said it disagrees with some elements of the new requirements and that the law’s application to its platform is “arbitrary” and “legally erroneous,” adding that most of its users are adults.

Although the ban has yet to be implemented, Australian users are already flocking to platforms that aren’t affected.

Chinese-owned Instagram-like service Rednote, also known as Xiaohongshu, saw weekly active users of its mobile app rise 37% over the week of Dec. 1 compared to the same period last year, according to market intelligence firm SensorTower.

US-based Coverstar, which describes itself as a safe social platform for Generation Alpha, saw its usage in Australia skyrocket 488% over the same period, SensorTower said.

Virtual private networks, or VPNs, which can disguise a user’s location and offer a potential workaround for accessing banned platforms, are also gaining. Demand for VPNs surged 103% on Sunday compared to the daily average for the previous 28 days, according to global VPN monitoring platform Top10VPN.