Not really. These bans aren’t about protecting children, they’re about tracking and monitoring adults. You have to prove you’re an adult to get on the site.

Social media is often harmful and a significant problem in the world, but that needs to be addressed by regulating social media itself and outlawing harmful algorithms that serve up content in a manipulative and antagonistic way. Not by compelling social media companies to track people even more.

Most likely the tech companies will hold out until they work out a way they can get paid for it, all the while claiming they’re on the side of user privacy.

Edit: Also, reading between the lines in this article, it seems the expansion of powers they’re talking about is for the eSafety Commissioner to request information from social media companies and third party providers. Presumably this would mean they can access the secure private data users upload to prove their identity. So the government are pretty much explicitly tracking people’s activity at this point - but worse, they’re doing so via private businesses and thereby allowing them to further exploit the data against people’s interests.

The reforms would also give the eSafety commissioner the power to compel social media companies to provide evidence of what they have done to stop under-16s from opening or using an account. The commissioner would be able to demand information and documents, including from third parties, such as age assurance or app store providers.