No, and the claim deserves a precise answer because it is now common in litigation and lobbying. The trial findings above still stand and has not been retracted. Since the law took effect in December 2025, millions of underage accounts have been removed. Where children kept or regained access, the regulator’s compliance reviews traced this mainly to implementation choices by platforms, such as allowing unlimited retries of age checks or letting users simply correct their declared age, rather than to the underlying technology. The response has been tightening enforcement, including a proposal to double maximum fines and giving the regulator powers to inspect the systems put in place to determine if they constitute reasonable steps to deliver the legal objective.
No safety measure eliminates a harm completely, and that has never been the test. Seat belts do not prevent every road death, yet no one calls them a failure. Bars sometimes serve underage drinkers but minimum ages for buying alcohol are not abandoned. Some deployments were poor, and the regulator is dealing with them. That is regulation working, not technology failing.