The Australian government is poised to enact one of the toughest restrictions on YouTube in the world by enforcing a minimum age requirement on its account holders in the country.

The measure is rooted in a law passed two years ago that covers social media and video sharing platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, which must ensure their users are at least 16 years old before allowing them to create accounts for their apps.

YouTube was initially exempt from the measure on the idea that the platform included a wealth of educational and informational content. But Communications Minister Anika Wells said at a press conference this week that the platform will be included in the law starting in December, pointing to reports that children are being harmed by material on the service.

“The evidence cannot be ignored that four out of 10 Australian kids report that their most recent harm was on YouTube,” Wells told reporters on Wednesday.

Alphabet, the parent company of YouTube, has threatened to take the matter to court. In a statement released this week, executives said they shared a common goal with the Australian government of ensuring young users of its platform are not exposed to harmful materials, but said the law was a step in the wrong direction.

“Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens. It’s not social media,” executives at Alphabet said.

Wells affirmed the Australian government would “not be intimidated by legal threats when this is a genuine fight for the wellbeing of Australian kids.” YouTube is expected to comply with the law by December, she said.

Services covered by the law are allowed to determine, on their own, how they can prove users meet the minimum age requirement when opening accounts. Lawmakers say the easiest way to do this is to require uploading documentation like driver’s licenses or other government-issued IDs that prove a person’s birthday.

“Platforms have to provide an alternative to providing your own personal identification documents to satisfy themselves of age,” Wells said. “These platforms know with deadly accuracy who we are, what we do and when we do it. And they know that you’ve had a Facebook account since 2009, so they know that you are over 16.”

Crucially, nothing in the law prevents someone under the age of 16 from using YouTube or any other publicly-available service — it only restricts them from opening accounts. But lawmakers believe the law is still effective because the algorithms used by most apps and services are less-effective without the collection of certain personal data, which is usually provided by a user after they sign up for and start using an account.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia would push for global consensus on age restrictions when leaders meet at a United Nations forum in New York in September.

“know from the discussions I’ve had with other leaders that they are looking at this, and they are considering what impact social media is having on young people in their respective nations,” Albanese said. “It is a common experience. This is not an Australian experience.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, YouTube is already working on technology that aims to identify young users without requiring all of their account holders to hand over personal documents to prove their age.

Earlier this week, YouTube said it was deploying age-estimation technology in the United States to help the company gauge the possible age of a user based on their activity. The goal is to see if a user’s declared age when they sign up for an account is different from what it appears to be based on the content they watch.

The technology will be used to limit repetitive viewing of certain content and activate wellness tools like screen time reports. It will also limit certain types of advertising when it suspects a user is underage, even if they self-identify as over the age of 18, YouTube said.

If the age-estimation technology flags someone as underage, they’ll be able to prove otherwise through a number of different techniques, the company affirmed. Possible options include uploading a government ID, linking a credit card to their account or taking a selfie.