SYDNEY — Australian content creators are reporting drops in followers and views a day after the country imposed a sweeping teen social media ban, posing risks for incomes and forcing rethinks of content strategies.

Josh Partington, 29, typically gets 100,000 views on his TikTok, where he makes comedy skits about everyday life in Australia. But his first video since the ban started on Wednesday has barely reached one-tenth of that.

“Both my TikTok and Instagram videos from yesterday underperformed pretty noticeably,” he said. “They both landed under 10,000 views which is very unusual for me.”

Australia has ordered 10 of the biggest platforms including TikTok, Meta’s Instagram and Alphabet’s YouTube to bar around one million users under 16 or face hefty fines.

As many teenagers grapple with a new reality without social media, content creators who spent years cultivating their followings are also feeling the effects of losing their most active audience members.

Follower counts primarily on Instagram have dropped, creators told Reuters, while engagement patterns — likes, comments and views — have also changed.

If the trend continues, that could spell trouble in an industry where metrics are a chief determinant of revenue from brand deals and advertisers.

Others have also created accounts on alternative platforms that are not yet covered by the ban, or set up mailing lists to keep in touch with their young followers.

Mr. Partington, who has a combined 100,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram, said the ban wiped about 1,500 Instagram followers. If TikTok went the same way, “it is definitely a bit scary,” he said.

“A lot of my audience under 16 is incredibly engaged and they’re a big part of why my videos land the way they do.”

He said losing followers could impact the work he does with brands and his income, but he was not panicking yet. “While it’s not ideal, I’m confident I can adjust and still keep building my platforms.”

Comedian Mitch Dale, 30, said that while most of his 200,000 followers were adults, losing his younger fans would reduce his initial engagement levels and make him rethink his content posting schedules.

“I’ve always aimed to post outside of school hours on TikTok, 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon when kids have been getting home and getting on their phones. So that might be something that I’ll reconsider,” he said.

Indie musician Harry Kirby, 18, has more than 180,000 social media followers. He said a “good part” of them were under 16 and he had lost 1,000 on Instagram so far.

“They just vanished,” he said. “It genuinely sucks to lose direct connection with any fans.”

The government has said some 200,000 accounts have been deactivated on TikTok alone since the ban went live.

The internet regulator will be asking all affected platforms to report how many under-16 accounts were still active, Communications Minister Anika Wells said on Thursday.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday took aim at young people parading themselves on social media a day after a world-first ban on under-16s went live, saying the rollout was always going to be bumpy but would ultimately save lives.

A day after the law took effect with bipartisan support from the major political parties and backing by some three-quarters of Australian parents, the country’s social media feeds were flooded with comments from people claim-ing to be under 16, including one on the prime minister’s TikTok account saying “I’m still here, wait until I can vote.”

Under the law, 10 of the biggest platforms including TikTok, Instagram and YouTube must bar underage users or face a fine of up to A$49.5 million ($33 million). The government has said it would take some time for the platforms to set up processes to do this.

“This is the law, this isn’t something that can be flouted,” Mr. Albanese said on News Corp’s Sky News.

“Some young people who haven’t yet been pulled off social media are sending out notices bragging about it. That just tells the platforms who they are, and so it will be taken down.”

Governments around the world have said they would monitor the Australian rollout as they weigh whether to do something similar. US Republican Senator Josh Hawley endorsed the ban as it took effect, Nine newspapers re-ported, while France, Denmark, Malaysia and others have already said they plan to emulate the Australian model.

The Australian internet regulator, the eSafety Commissioner, would ask all affected platforms to report numbers of under-16 accounts on the days before and after the ban went live on Wednesday, Ms. Wells said.

Meta repeated its opposition to the law, saying some experts, advocates and parent groups were concerned it was driving teenagers to less regulated parts of the internet and that there was “little interest in compliance.”

“This will result in inconsistent application of the law and ultimately does not make young people safer,” a spokesperson said.

TikTok and Snap, owner of Snapchat, declined to comment on the implementation, while YouTube, X, Amazon’s Twitch, Reddit and Australian-owned Kick — all of which are covered by the ban — were not immediately available for comment.

HEATED GLOBAL REACTIONS
The ban generated impassioned reactions across the spectrum of global commentators — including from US psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose book The Anxious Generation featured prominently in the Australian debate.

“Bravo Australia,” he wrote on X.

The United Nations children’s agency UNICEF warned in a statement the ban might encourage children to visit less regulated parts of the internet and could not work alone.

“Laws introducing age restrictions are not an alternative to companies improving platform design and content moderation,” the statement said.

Mr. Albanese, visiting a school in Canberra, said the ban would lead to better educational outcomes and behavior” since “you get better social interaction when students aren’t subject to looking at their devices constantly.”

Australian searches for virtual private networks (VPNs), which can mask an internet user’s location, surged to the highest level in about 10 years in the week before the legislation took effect, according to publicly available Google data.

Free VPN provider Windscribe told Reuters it experienced a 400% increase in installations in Australia in the 24 hours after the ban went live. Another free VPN provider, hide.me, said it had a 65% spike in visits from Australia in the days before the ban kicked in, although that had not translated to a rising number of downloads.

All 10 platforms named by the ban opposed it before saying they would comply. As the legislation came into force, some platforms not covered by the ban rose to the top of app download charts, prompting the Australian gov-ernment to say the platform list was “dynamic.”

One app, Lemon8, which is owned by TikTok parent ByteDance, introduced an age minimum of 16. Photo-sharing app Yope told Reuters it had experienced “very fast growth” to about 100,000 Australian users. About half of its users were over 16.

The company told Reuters it had told the Australian internet regulator overseeing the ban that it considered itself a private messaging service, not social media. — Reuters

BANGKOK/PHNOM PENH — Fighting between Thailand and Cambodia entered its fourth day on Thursday as both sides waited for a promised telephone call from US President Donald J. Trump, who says he believes he can again end the conflict between the two Southeast Asian nations.

On Wednesday, clashes at more than a dozen locations along the 817-kilometer (508-mile) Thai-Cambodian border saw some of the most intense fighting since a five-day battle in July, which was the worst conflict in recent history.

In July, Mr. Trump stopped the fighting with calls to both leaders in which he threatened to halt trade talks unless they ended the conflict. Mr. Trump says he expects to speak with the countries’ leaders on Thursday.

“I think I can get them to stop fighting,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “I think I’m scheduled to speak to them tomorrow.”

However, Thailand has reacted more warily this time to overtures from Mr. Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who helped broker the July deal, which resulted in an extended ceasefire signed in October. Thailand insists the matter is for the two countries to resolve.

Mr. Ibrahim said he had spoken with leaders of Thailand and Cambodia on Tuesday and, though no definitive resolution was reached, he appreciated “the openness and willingness of both leaders to continue negotiations in order to ease tensions.”

Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Thursday he would “explain and clarify” the situation if Mr. Trump called.

“He will need to hear the details directly from me if he contacts me,” he told reporters. “I believe the foreign minister will already be providing information at the diplomatic level.”

Thailand and Cambodia have blamed each other for the latest clashes that started this week and have traded accusations that civilians were being targeted in artillery and rocket attacks.

“Right now, no one wants conflict, especially with neighboring countries,” Mr. Anutin said. “But Thailand is very confident that it has been invaded. Therefore, it is necessary to safeguard the country’s independence and sovereignty.”

In a Wednesday evening update, Cambodia’s interior ministry said homes, schools, roads, pagodas and ancient temples had been damaged by “Thailand’s intensified shelling and F-16 air strikes targeting villages and civilian population centers up to 30 kilometers inside Cambodian territory.”

On Thursday, Cambodia’s defense ministry accused Thailand of committing “brutal acts of aggression” against civilian targets, including schools and temples.

Thailand denies that it targets civilian infrastructure.

The clashes have already taken a heavy toll on civilians, with 10 people killed in Cambodia, including an infant, and 60 people wounded, according to its government.

Nine Thai soldiers have been killed in the fighting and more than 120 were wounded, the Thai army said. Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from border areas in both countries. — Reuters

KYIV — Russia’s capture of Pokrovsk appears to be a matter of “when” not “if,” and while its fall will not trigger a collapse in Ukraine’s defenses, it weakens Kyiv at a sensitive juncture in US-led negotiations to end the war.

Moscow said on Dec. 1 it was in full control of Pokrovsk, two days before US President Donald J. Trump’s special envoy and his son-in-law held Kremlin talks with President Vladimir Putin on a plan they say is close to being final-ized.

Ten days on, Ukraine says its troops still hold positions in the north of the city, which was home to 60,000 people before Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion and served as an important logistical hub for the military until the fighting closed in.

“The new round of pressure on Ukraine to settle the conflict on unfavorable terms is happening in parallel with heavy fighting on this front, which helps Russia because it affects Trump’s perception,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Ukrainian charitable foundation Come Back Alive.

Ukraine must try to stay in with the Americans — who supply vital intelligence and weapons — while pushing back on a peace deal that Russia says must involve Kyiv’s forces withdrawing from all the eastern Donbas region where Pokrovsk lies.

Ukraine says that having fought for control of the Donbas since 2014, it has no moral or legal right to cede sovereign territory to an invading power, making control of the industrial area the most contentious issue dividing the warring parties.

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric took a harder tone on Ukraine this week as he told Politico that Russia had the upper hand in the war and that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had to start “accepting things.”

RUSSIA’S SLOW ADVANCE
And yet the pace of the Russian assault on Pokrovsk shows how difficult it has been for Moscow’s forces to advance with front lines saturated with killer drones.

The war turned into an attritional struggle after 2022, with neither side able to take territory easily. Russia launched a new offensive in late 2023 and controls around 19.2% of Ukraine, just over 1 percentage point more than at the end of 2022.

Pokrovsk, which sits on elevated ground in the Donetsk region, would be the first city taken by Russia since Avdiivka to the east in early 2024. Most of it lies in ruins and only 1,200 of its inhabitants remain.

Military experts back up the assessments of Ukrainian officials that Ukraine’s defenses are unlikely to suddenly collapse in the east — citing its frontline fortifications, drones and the piecemeal nature of Russia’s assault on Pokrovsk.

Russian troops have been advancing in groups of six or fewer, Kyiv’s forces have said, relying on one or two soldiers to breach porous defenses and gain a toehold in a building.

“They (the Russians) were accumulating in assault groups, seeping through all around our positions, because, as I say, we have a critical shortage of infantry,” said Lambada, a Ukrainian drone operator who fought in Pokrovsk.

Konrad Muzyka, a military analyst in Poland, said Ukraine rushed in its Skelia Assault Regiment and special forces to shore up Pokrovsk in August, but redeployed them as the front deteriorated in other eastern areas like Lyman and Kupiansk.

Concerns over the depth of Ukraine’s troop reserves have surfaced periodically throughout the war, including from allies like the United States where officials have urged Ukraine to expand the military draft.

The subject is sensitive politically, and the government has declined to lower the draft age from 25 to protect the youngest generations from the bloodshed.

WHAT NEXT?
The US-backed peace plan initially proposed that Ukraine pull out of the Donetsk region, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Ukraine controls 20% of the land. Mr. Zelensky said this week that he and European leaders had drawn up a revised 20-point plan, but that there was no agreement on ceding territory. They are expected to send their plan to Washington soon.

Mr. Putin said earlier this month that Pokrovsk, which Russia calls Krasnoarmeysk after the Soviet-era Red Army, was the ideal platform from which to launch attacks in any direction.

Russia likely plans to try to envelop the “fortress cities” of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to the northeast of Pokrovsk, and use the high ground to launch drones over greater distances, Mr. Muzyka said.

Moscow’s troops have recently made inroads into both Zaporizhzhia region in the south and Dnipropetrovsk region in the east, even though the latter is not one of the five Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Russia.

But rapid gains are unlikely.

“The way they are conducting operations is incredibly slow,” Mr. Muzyka said.

Ukraine is emphasizing its willingness to secure a “just” peace, mindful that Mr. Trump has pledged a quick end to the war and his officials have threatened to curtail support such as intelligence and weapons paid for by Euro-pean allies.

Kyiv is also hoping those same European allies can supply more financial and military assistance themselves.

Since August, Ukrainian forces have targeted Russia’s oil industry to try to reduce revenue and create shortages of fuel. More recently they have gone after ships sailing to pick up Russian oil in the Black Sea.

Russia has conducted wave upon wave of massive missile and drone strikes, causing large-scale blackouts across Ukraine and serious damage to the electricity system.

One senior European defense official who asked not to be named said the war could continue for a few more years unless a “Trump moment” or a “Putin moment” stopped it, but that he did not think Mr. Putin had any inten-tion of giving up. — Reuters