How will age verification work in Australia's new social media ban?

Australia's Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill passed the Senate today, starting a one year clock on social media companies to perform age verification checks on their users or face fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million US dollars). The bill is the first of its kind in the social media space, but online age verification requirements for viewing pornography have proliferated rapidly in recent years. Such bills have been passed by 19 US states over the last two years while similar bills like S-210 and C-412 are on track to pass eventually in Canada. These legislative shifts have made age verification an emerging industry and companies in the space have been actively involved in lobbying for these laws around the world.

What makes Australia's ban novel isn't that it requires age verification, but rather that it heavily restricts the mechanisms by which it can be performed. A common criticism of laws of this nature is that collecting ID from users carries significant privacy risks and potential for misuse and government surveillance. This was a sticking point for the conservative Liberal and National party members in the Senate, and an amendment was added literally yesterday in order to get it to pass. In the words of Senator Kovavic of the Liberal Party:

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