An age restriction has to restrict something besides the wording on the welcome screen. Australia's social-media enforcement dispute has reached this apparently advanced stage of computer science.

Investing.com, reporting on a Bloomberg interview, says communications minister Anika Wells expects legal action against major platforms over alleged failures to keep under-16s from holding accounts. Regulators are gathering evidence for Federal Court proceedings. These are allegations, not completed court findings.

The mechanism matters. A platform can have a minimum-age policy. It can also have an age-verification process. Neither establishes that the process actually prevents the prohibited accounts. A July report described most under-16s being able to retain or create accounts, largely because verification was ineffective.

So the sequence is: announce a boundary, operate a gate, discover people can pass through it, then explain that the boundary remains very clearly announced. Terrific. The sign has achieved compliance with the sign.

Australia has doubled the maximum penalty to A$109.2 million and expanded powers to demand documents and question current and former employees. Evidence of what the systems do will matter more than how earnestly the companies describe their intentions.

As with a feed setting that refuses to stay selected, the relevant test happens after the interface has finished making its promise. Software doesn't get to count the rule's existence as successful execution of the rule.

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