The Australian government didn’t do this because of any concern about children; it’s to punish (mainly) Meta for backing out of the Australian Social Media Bargaining Agreement [1]. Other social media companies are collateral damage.

News Corp wanted Meta et al to pay for the privilege of sharing links to News Corp articles (imo, ridiculous). Meta played along for a short period, but has now refused to engage, which has clearly upset News Corp (and their shrinking top line). It’s slowly changing, but it’s an unfortunate truth that News Corp still has incredible influence over Australian politicians, hence this had bipartisan support.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/12/meta-coul...

Just in case anyone is sceptical, is quite literally paying for sharing links - the legslation [1] says in part 52B that

    For the purposes of this Part, a service makes content available if:
         (a) the content is reproduced on the service, or is otherwise placed on the service; or
         (b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or
         (c) an extract of the content is provided on the service.
     (2) Subsection (1) does not limit, for the purposes of this Part, the ways in which a service makes content available.

The supporters of the bill then went around pretending that social media sites were ripping off whole articles and showing them on their sites with their own ads, when they are actually just linking and showing the title, thumbnail and sentence summary that the news site provides in its meta info!

In the end, the news media bargaining code is effectively just a shakedown to extract money for nothing from tech companies. Part 52B makes the whole thing indefensible.

1. https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2021A00021/latest/text