I thought the same thing, but the trick mentioned on the esafety site is:
eSafety expects that all service providers with Australian end-users assess whether their services are age-restricted social media platforms and therefore required to comply with the SMMA obligation.
Now whether they can enforce (or care to enforce) is another thing. But they certainly seem to be pushing the obligation down to anyone running a service that could run afoul of the legislation.
zero_gravitas@aussie.zone 5 weeks ago
I had previously got a similar impression from the eSafety Commissioner’s publication of those lists of platforms, but it does not seem to be the case they are actually defining regulation there. The lists seem to be, essentially, only statements of intent about which platforms that eSafety will seek enforcement of compliance on.
See here: …gov.au/…/which-platforms-are-age-restricted