Reddit Complies, Then Sues: High Court Clash Over Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban

States have been trying to fence children off new media since the 1930 U.S. Hays Code, the 1954 Comics Code Authority, and the 1998 U.S. COPPA; many were later diluted or struck down (e.g., the U.S. Supreme Court voided parts of the 1996 Communications Decency Act in Reno v. ACLU, 1997). Australia’s ban follows that lineage but extends it by criminalising mere account ownership and mandating identity proof at scale—a first for a liberal democracy. Over the last decade governments worldwide have grown comfortable demanding age-verification (UK’s 2023 Online Safety Act, Utah’s 2024 SB152), reflecting a broader shift from laissez-faire internet norms toward state-supervised identity on line. Whether Reddit’s challenge succeeds matters less for its bottom line than for the constitutional precedent: if Canberra can compel routine ID checks for speech platforms today, biometric or real-name regimes could follow tomorrow. Conversely, if the court invalidates the law, it will echo past rulings that prioritised open communication over paternalistic controls—possibly slowing a global trend toward gated, age-segmented internets. In a 100-year lens, this is one skirmish in the long negotiation between technological anonymity and the modern state’s impulse to know, rank and ultimately protect (or police) its citizens.