‘Very blunt approach’: eSafety Commissioner questions social media ban

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has put herself at odds with the federal government over its under-16s social media ban, saying she was “not really keen on” it, and it was based on legislation drafted “very quickly”.

“It was very thin scaffolding,” she told this masthead. “I don’t have potent powers.”

Inman Grant is the public servant in charge of implementing the controversial under-16s social media ban, but she said she thought it was a “very blunt force approach”.

“If you’re going to take on the biggest technology companies in the world … it’s not like you’re sticking a pink parking ticket on a windshield,” she said.

“What I would say is a regulator is only as good as the tools and the resources that they’re given.”

Inman Grant has been the public face of the ban, drawing extraordinary criticism from big tech companies and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who has called her the “censorship commissar”.

In November last year, Inman Grant was called to testify before US Congress, with prominent US Republican Jim Jordan calling her a “zealot” whose implementation of Australia’s e-safety laws “threatens speech of American citizens”.

Inman Grant, a dual American-Australian citizen, refused to appear and Congress has no power to compel her.

“What you’re effectively asking us to do with this is fence the ocean,” she said.

“We might be able to create some friction and some degree of safety, but it’s a futile exercise if you think you’re totally stemming the ocean.”

Opposition communications spokeswoman Senator Sarah Henderson said the implementation of the ban by Communications Minister Anika Wells had been “flawed and chaotic”.

The Coalition supported the ban and included a social media ban in its own policy platform for the 2025 election.

“Australian children are not safe online because Anika Wells has failed to throw the book at the big tech platforms,” she said.

“It is deeply regrettable that Labor’s poor design and implementation of the social media ban have badly let down so many Australian parents and their children.”

The social media ban for under-16s came into force in December last year. It placed the onus on social media giants, including Meta, TikTok, Google Kick and Snap, to withhold access to accounts for children under 16.

But six months after its commencement, most major platforms are not yet complying with the law, and a substantial share of Australian teenagers remain on apps they were meant to be locked out of.

The eSafety Commissioner is investigating Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube fo