7 ms·

YouTube to be included in Australia's social media ban for children under 16

89 points by _p2zi 1y ago

jalapenos 1y ago
Why is it that every bit of news that comes out of some western country is now some form of shit-headedness? I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? And as if this will make any difference to anything? I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west"
- andersa 1y ago
  What makes you think they're not saying that already?
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    Fair, maybe they are
- krona 1y ago
  > I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west" Conversations with highly educated Chinese nationals I've had on this topic at elite universities will often conspicuously include whataboutery on e.g. the number of security cameras in London using statistics from about 2005. Presumably they learn this in school. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it's pretty common already.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    And so they should. Like Putin remarking about Assange. Yes, Putin may be a despot who's whacked journalists. But that doesn't make him wrong that persecuting Assange was despot-tier scummy behaviour.
- Zealotux 1y ago
  We lost our individual sense of agency long ago, we need a nanny state to take care of us and of our children, hold us by the hand and regulate every single aspect of our lives. We gave the keys to our leaders, now they get to choose what content may be accessed or not.
  - lm28469 1y ago
    Yep, it has absolutely nothing to do with the megacorps hiring behavioural experts to make their platforms as addictive as possible... it's all caused by the big mean GoBeRnMenTs Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop produced in some third world country is not "personal freedom"
    - logicchains 1y ago
      >Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop Is called bad parenting.
      - lm28469 1y ago
        Most kids would be better off being educated by orangutans at that point The problem is that we have to live with these kids eventually and you can't build a nation on kids watching brain rot from the age of 6 months because their parents were too dumb to know better. Some of the people on that forum would call the switch to compulsory education tyrannic and an abuse of governmental power lmao.
        jalapenos 1y ago
        To be fair, orangutans are super chill. If I'd been raised by an orangutan, I wouldn't be upset about it.
    - jalapenos 1y ago
      What is this? How about meth, is that not designed as addictive as possible - now parents can throw their hands up in defeat when little Johnny is a meth addict? "Just so addictive, what could I do?!" This world is demented
- encom 1y ago
  >now This is completely on-brand for Australia. I'm not the slightest bit surprised. To be honest, I don't disagree with the premise: Keep social media away from kids. YouTube is brain rot patient zero. I just don't think it's the governments job.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    YouTube Shorts certainly are - pretty sure that causes actual brain damage. YouTube proper - there is actual good-quality educational content in there too
- RyanHamilton 1y ago
  It's hard for parents to fight against huge corporate interests that hire thousands of phds to grab your child's attention and influence them at every turn. Realistically it's almost impossible for parents to deny their teenager a mobile without ostracising them from their friends.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    What part of parenting is easy again? That's the gig
    - foepys 1y ago
      Try replacing "social media" with "fast food" and think about how hard that would be for parents to control.
      - jalapenos 1y ago
        My dude, the parents literally have to buy the fast food. If they do not, the fast food is literally not there to eat. What is even going on
      - chucksta 1y ago
        "All these kids walking around with fast food in their pockets" ..nah just doesn't sound right, the most you could get in there is a nugget or two
  - msgodel 1y ago
    My parents denied me all kinds of things my friends were doing when I was a kid and looking back they were absolutely right to do that. Don't be afraid of that. Sure they made mistakes here and there. The names of Pokemon aren't actually names of demons. Looking where a lot of my friends ended up though I think they got things right on balance.
    - hopelite 1y ago
      Same here. It was movies and TV for my parents. I have thanked them for it on several occasions when it occurred to me as an adult how affected people are by having not just grown up watching various age inappropriate movies and were trained by TV in general, because their whole world view, their whole mental superstructure is extremely influenced by TV and movies. It has clearly spread across the world to some degree, but I don’t think the average person even realizes just how much the post ~1920 American consciousness is trained on Hollywood, TV, movies. It has become a bit more diffuse lately due to decentralization of TV and movies, but the training on TV also seems to have gotten worse, even if in more covert ways because of the decentralization. You consume your TV drug in isolation and do not even talk about it anymore because everyone is watching different things at different times now. America has gone from the social drinker, the highlight of the party, to the binger I’m downs a bottle of vodka TV a day, alone. Our culture is effectively centered around what is on the real life telescreen, the one that you carry around now, that knows where you are at all times and can listen in on you. Even Orwell could only imagine a world where telescreens were fixed and could be evaded at times, or maybe he just believed that.
- dotancohen 1y ago
  In what sense is Australia in the West? And why specifically mention Western? What Eastern or other non-Western countries do you feel are above such scrutiny?
  - reddalo 1y ago
    Given its close ties to the U.K., Australia has always been considered "the West". Except from a geographical standpoint.
    - jalapenos 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - Intermernet 1y ago
    East and West on a globe are arbitrary and have always defined ideology, racial history and shared ideology. I personally hate the terminology and I think it's becoming less pertinent and popular in the modern age.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    [flagged]
- jedimastert 1y ago
  > I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? When was this? Before or after child labor laws? Before or after we started making it illegal to beat children? Before or after child marriage laws? Age of consent laws? Standards around education, health, abuse and neglect? Whether or not this is a step too far, it's hard to say that society and or governments stepping into protect children is a recent thing.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    Classic western narcissism. Parents were sending their kids down the mines just for the lulz, until "society (represented by more moral types like me) and government stepped in". And because of course, in the minority of cases when parents are abusive, some politicians thousands of miles away make the abuse stop, or the amorphous blob called "society", not locals and relatives, magically we assume, when the kids own parents and extended family keep it all under wraps. Pay no attention to those governments blowing other people's kids to bits or anything of course - the trick is to take observation bias and turn it up to eleven, take a big drawn on our own farts, and feel them we're just so good feels.
- hopelite 1y ago
  Many people are being naive when they assume any of these “protecting the children” efforts happening all around the western world effectively simultaneously are actually about the children. The question is how do you implement “Chinese style censorship and social credit score” without overtly doing it, you do it the same way that all infringements on freedoms and rights have always been implemented all across the West for 100+ years, you invert, reframe it, and implement amidst cheers, and jeers towards anyone who is not also being virtuous through conformance. Some believe the COVID prison-term lockdowns were a test to gauge the reaction and conformity of the actions taken. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t, but it may as well have been, because the warriors apparatchiks and wardens of conformity operated nicely to deprive their own human rights as well as those of others. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” It may as well end with “…tolerate atrocities.”
  - lm28469 1y ago
    So the GoBeRnMeNt is bad but the megacorps printing money shovelling thousands of hours of fully automated brain rot content to your kids are good because .... freedom ? I still fail to see any logic in these conspiracy theories
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    My interpretation has always been that they've looked across the sea at the CCP and North Korean regime, and asked, in a whiney tone, "why do they get all the nice things?"
- echelon_musk 1y ago
  > I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? Parents have been blaming books, music and video games for decades. Raising children with reading comprehension and critical thinking skills is hard. Equally, from a governments point of view, creating citizens with critical thinking skills is hard. There is probably more chance they will frustrate the regime if they're capable of understanding its corruption. Giving into desires and having children is the easy part. The bodies do all the work for you but after that the 2 decades of work really starts. I'd say it's just an example of "never waste a good crisis". Parents want to complain at someone that essentially the society is too free and their children made mistakes they didn't prepare them for. The government feels pressured and uses the opportunity available to increase control.
- subjectsigma 1y ago
  What are you talking about? This kind of censorship and authoritarian control is peanuts compared to what China does to their citizens.
cantor_S_drug 1y ago
Why can't there be publicly curated list of educational channels allowed for children? Just as we have a list of ad domains blocked by adblockers. Why not build on top of platforms?
- dotancohen 1y ago
  Go ahead, curate and publish.
  - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
    We all know there are companies which maintain blocklist for other companies so that the employees are allowed to access only certain sites. Can't a similar mechanism be used by govts around the world.
    - hellojesus 1y ago
      Why would you want this to be done at the government level and not the parents'? Force a proxy through your network to a specific allowlist for dns and direct ip and port requests. Install a root ca on your kids phone so you can decrypt their connections, and send the data to your logstash to monitor to make sure you don't have any blind spots, and run some local models to alert when inappropriate media is categorized. Maybe some of this plan is bad or incomplete, but it wqs what immediately came to mind. I'm sure it could be improved with a few hours of research. Why do we want to normalize government censorship and mass surveillance when we could instead normalize technical education?
      - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
        My point was that this effort could be formalized and need not be individual or group based. Each country could have their own allowed list which can change after responsible additions or deletions. People could vote on which channels should be allowed. etc.
        1y ago
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
This will be a good experiment. What if it turns out to be a good move?
- owlninja 1y ago
  How would you measure "success"?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    A reversal of trends that prompted this change? If Aussies don't change their minds? We should quit blaming parents though. Parents are out of options which is why it's coming to this.
    - anabab 1y ago
      > A reversal of trends that prompted this change? Plenty of terrible changes can achieve the similar effect of trend reversal. Say, banning any form of computer networks or banning having children. And people introducing the changes seem to have enough power to discourage any change of minds as well.
  - kelseyfrog 1y ago
    How would you measure failure?
- reddalo 1y ago
  It's a good people-controlling experiment. Fascists will love it.
pacifika 1y ago
Title: Albanese Government protecting kids from social media harms
nicoburns 1y ago
I would be more sympathetic to YouTube's plight here if they weren't aggressively pushing addictive features like "Shorts" with no option to disable them.
- izacus 1y ago
  Yeah, this seems like a clear FAFO situation.
- lm28469 1y ago
  Disable your yt history, it disables pretty much everything yt wants to push. When I open yt I get an empty page with a search box, even clicking on the Shorts page it just says "Recommendations are off Your watch history is off, and we rely on watch history to tailor your Shorts feed. You can change your setting at any time, or try searching for Shorts instead. Learn more."
  - barkerja 1y ago
    But that is unfortunately a nuclear option that should not need to be taken to perform such a thing. Like the op, I have no interest in Shorts, especially considering the type of content that seems to proliferate that format. However, I feel like YouTube does a genuinely good job — at least for me personally — of curating my feed with videos I have genuine interest in; mostly being tech talks and home DIY. I'd hate to lose the discoverability I currently have for the sake of having to disable a feature like Shorts.
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      I use youtube without an account, only a cookie which I can nuke anytime. My experience with this is as you describe; it does a great job of giving me videos relevant to my interests. If it ever goes off the rails, I nuke the cookie and start over; reseeding the recommendations by watching a few videos from high-brow channels like Applied Science. It recommends no shorts to me.
- flumpcakes 1y ago
morninglight 1y ago
[flagged]
- Funes- 1y ago
  None, I'd bet. Can't you see this is just about tightening their grasp on our liberties, swaying our opinions, and selling our data? Organised religion could be going for that (minus the data, at least not in the current sense) in the past with a certain degree of success, but I don't see how they are even a tad bit as powerful as they once were. It doesn't seem sensible to associate these seemingly coordinated measures around the world to organised religion instead of corporations and the political elite. That's just a tone deaf take.
  - Intermernet 1y ago
    That ideology is closely related to organised religion. The data selling is just a bonus.
msgodel 1y ago
This is going to break yt-dlp. YouTube won't fight it for that reason. It's regulatory capture.
- reddalo 1y ago
  yt-dlp can fetch cookies from your browser, so no, it won't break it. If YouTube really did want to stop yt-dlp, they'd encrypt all the videos with Widevine.
  - echelon_musk 1y ago
    > yt-dlp can fetch cookies from your browser, so no, it won't break it. It probably breaks anonymous access to videos (when not signed in to a Google account). Unless yt-dlp provide shared cookies that its thousands of users can use there will still be account level tracking of video access.
    - reddalo 1y ago
      That's sure. But it's already like that for most NSFW videos on YouTube.
wosined 1y ago
The quality of youtube videos when it comes to content that does not waste your time is so low, that I must oppose this only based on principle and not the merit of the platform.
- Intermernet 1y ago
  The thing about YouTube is that it's so large. Even if only 1% of it is good, it's still more than any other platform by far. I've spent years curating my YouTube experience. I still regard yt premium as the best value subscription I have.
  - ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    seconding this. there's a lot of housekeeping and esp now with content-free AI slop arriving in waves it's difficult to weed out but if you stick to your subscriptions rather than just letting the algo dump stuff on you there's a lot of really good content. YouTube has helped me get fit, helped me learn how to cook, helped me fix my air conditioner, helped me replace the fuel pump in my car, and provided me with fun and insight into a lot of hobbies and communities I'd normally be unable to dive into. I'd guess that your "1%" estimate is several orders of magnitude higher than the real ratio but I still agree with your core point: there's tons of great stuff out there, it's just under gigatons of crap.
- kaoD 1y ago
  It's bimodal. YouTube has both the worst and the best content on the internet. I'm not willing to give up the latter to save the masses from the former.
- progbits 1y ago
  I don't get this view. Yes there is a lot of crap because it's both easier to produce than quality content, and has higher incentives to keep making more of it. But that's the same with eg. books. Aside from small curated book stores, pick up a random book. Most likely it's not worth to cut down the tree it was printed on. It's very easy to watch only quality content and there is an incredible amount of it on youtube. I've learned lots of electronics, CAD work, mechanical engineering, watched tons of lectures from amazing professors...
Funes- 1y ago
We're going to see more and more crackdown on internet access, in the name of making it "safe", or "safe for kids", particularly. All they want is pushing for censorship and control, though, on top of collecting and selling even more data. We'd be wise to make an effort to migrate to censorship resistant overlay networks like Hyphanet (formerly Freenet) or i2p before it's too late.
- lm28469 1y ago
  Lots of people keep mentioning these conspiracy theories but I still don't buy it. The "they" you're all mentioning simply doesn't exist. Who are they ? All the governments of the west somehow working together ? They can't even cooperate more than 6 months on internal matters but they globally agreed on some world wide evil plan ? And the plan is to ban kids from youtube ? Because reasons ? Who is going to collect more data if there are less websites/users ? Who's selling "the" data ? Who's buying "the" data ? What data ? How are governments benefiting from censoring brain rot in a way that doesn't also benefit me exactly ? All the data is already collected by US megacorps and stored on US servers the US gov can already fully access, it doesn't get any worse than that
  - mindcrash 1y ago
    > Lots of people keep mentioning these conspiracy theories but I still don't buy it. EU is actively working on "age verification" through a digital wallet. Once that is in place it is a small step to wall off the entire Internet unless you verify yourself through your digital ID. Since Trump is as borderline fascist as von der Leyen there's no fucking doubt in my mind the United States will follow the EU as soon as there are signs of success or even earlier. Proof: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technical-specification https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic... Especially note "The objective is to develop an EU-wide solution to age verification that reinforces the Digital Services Act (DSA) objective to ensure safe, secure, and trusted digital space and the Louvain-la-Neuve Declaration, which promotes a safer and more trustworthy online environment." Whenever those in power talk about "security", "safety" and "trust" they talk about other things entirely which, for the larger public, have nothing to do with these topics at all.
flumpcakes 1y ago
I'm surprised at the lack of care for children in commentary around social media bans, the UK's online safety act blocking discord/porn/etc without proof of age, and sexually violent video games being removed from stores due to payment processors. If we see a child bullied in school, we don't say the parents of the victim are not doing enough parenting. If an adult flashes or cat calls a child in the street, we don't blame the child's parents for not doing enough parenting. Why is it when it comes to social media/pornography/sexually violent games (that would not have received a rating if sold in stores 10 years ago) everyone is up in arms that things are going too far. All you see is conspiracy theory nonsense at how the state wants to mind control us. Apple tried to fix some of this at the client end with CSAM scanning and automatic dick pic blurring but had to roll some of this back due to the uproar and accusations on spying etc. We no longer live in a high trust society and children are paying the price for it, as well as adults. I don't want my phone scanned or to be denied access to adult discord channels or have to submit an ID to visit "adult" content like home-brewing beer subreddits. But now that's the price I am having to pay because no one wants to be responsible. Especially the companies making money off of children. But what are we supposed to do instead when everything has been shot down previously? The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it.
- logicchains 1y ago
  >The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it. Children are being groomed by high-profile paedophiles and trafficked to powerful people with no consequence, and you want to give those people more control over the internet?
  - PoignardAzur 1y ago
    You're both egregiously wrong. The vast majority of victims of grooming are victimized by people they know and trust, mostly family and authority figures.
    - 1y ago
irusensei 1y ago
Aparently the person who recently started a censorship campaign against games that lead to delisting not only porn titles but also horror and other categories from itch.io is on the board to decide what its defined as adult content. > Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.[1] I have no idea what the hell is going on and it all seems very coordinated but I hope the pendulum swings back so hard next time it takes at least half a century for Tipper Gore to resurrect again. 1- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-visa-backlash-adult-games-removed-online-stores-steam-itchio-ntwnfb https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-vis...
- flumpcakes 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - crtasm 1y ago
    >they themselves admitted they could not police their store front and had no idea how many games would be problematic for the payment processors. I don't think that's true? My takeaway was the demands from the payment processors are frustratingly unspecific and they were up against a deadline, so delisted a huge amount of games being overcautious and are now going through them to see what can be relisted. Not all NSFW games were removed/delisted. They're now looking for new payment processors: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/itchio-are-seeking-out-new-payment-processors-who-are-more-comfortable-with-adult-material https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/itchio-are-seeking-out-new-...
- yupyupyups 1y ago
  Games (and cartoons) is a format children are drawn to. The new avarage age of exposure to porn is 11. The market has not been able to "self-regulate", rather the situation has gotten worse with more non-porn games adding, not just sexually charged, but now purely pornographic content. GOG (!) has proper porn games on their frontpage. So it's time something is done about it. I will try not to recommend any games to any child moving forward, and instead direct them to other hobbies. Because not only are games mostly a waste of time anyway, but they're also turning into an entrypoint to pornography.
miroljub 1y ago
Let's be honest here, it was never about social media, children's rights, porn, drugs, crime, or similar. It was always about introducing government issued digital ID and enforcing it on the internet to tighten the control and, as a side effect, let people censor themselves. It is no coincidence that multiple Western countries are pushing for the same thing at the same time. The UK is another example, with EU-level discussions about the same and chat control. If I were younger, I'd think that's a coincidence and has nothing to do with WEF and similar totalitarian globalist organizations pushing their agendas. But now, as a grown-up cynic, I realize that it's just a plain old conspiracy in practice, not a theory anymore. It's a sad thing that once free societies are rapidly deteriorating and approaching China's level of freedoms. I'm afraid there's not much time left to prevent a dystopian Orwellian (or Zamyatinesque) future of see-through citizen slaves.
reddalo 1y ago
I hate all of this. We're collectively losing freedom (in the name of "protecting the children") and we're doing nothing to stop this. People will realize it when it's too late.
- lm28469 1y ago
  [flagged]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  So a society isn't free to tell big tech to stuff it? Sounds dystopian
elfbargpt 1y ago
I find it weird that people aren't questioning the motives behind these changes a little more. Is it not strange this is coming at the same time as the UK Online Safety Act? There are reports of posts related to the middle eastern conflict being censored. Somehow I don't think this about violence and adult content.
mystraline 1y ago
I see a lot of 'what about the children' (whataboutism). And I look at various laws in the Western countries, and there is a consensus-ish that under majority age can still be treated as an adult. Why does this matter? Why aren't we asking the 17, 16, 15, 14 year olds and down about their situations instead, including opening up the vote to them? The big problem with all these 'butwhataboutthechildren' laws, is they are by definition, disenfranchised, but they are also subject to the whims of the voters. Now people will naturally say 'something something prefrontal cortex'. Even the UNCRC 2019a says that. However, we're not running fMRI on children and adults as a permission to vote - its just a simple age gate. And I would argue, that another commentor's parent who thinks Pokemon were demon names probably wouldn't pass that either. But we end up with garbage laws, and only exist to make those who can vote feel good, while doing damage to those who can't vote. And as an aside, if companies are doing predatory and illegal things, then the companies should be punished appropriately.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  I'm not sure that's the consensus definition of whataboutism, despite it containing the key phrase. Whataboutism is generally of the form "Let's stop talking about X because Y is more important", which become a simple "What about Y?" "What about the children?" is generally used to support restrictions and might be used as a counterargument against things like the general availabilty of youtube but it's not usually used as an attempt to move away from the argument in question entirely. I agree that we're wildly inconsistent about when children are treated as children, when they're treated as adults and when they become adults (16? 18? 21? when their brain development actually finishes somewhere between 20 and 30?). And not only do we end up with garbage laws but we also end up w garbage exceptions like in juvenile criminal law. We acknowledge that young offenders can't be treated the same as adult offenders because our legal system takes into account intent and the offender's ability to reason and know right from wrong, but then we charge children as adults when we're particularly grossed out by the crime or the prosecutor wants to appear tough.
byyll 1y ago
Setting aside the obvious privacy issues with de-anonymizing everyone, it's great to limit kids' access to media for adults.
yrcyrc 1y ago
I hate YouTube, Google, Meta and all their products with a passion. Well deserved.

89 points by _p2zi 1y ago

Why is it that every bit of news that comes out of some western country is now some form of shit-headedness? I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? And as if this will make any difference to anything? I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west"

andersa 1y ago
What makes you think they're not saying that already?
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Fair, maybe they are
krona 1y ago
> I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west" Conversations with highly educated Chinese nationals I've had on this topic at elite universities will often conspicuously include whataboutery on e.g. the number of security cameras in London using statistics from about 2005. Presumably they learn this in school. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it's pretty common already.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  And so they should. Like Putin remarking about Assange. Yes, Putin may be a despot who's whacked journalists. But that doesn't make him wrong that persecuting Assange was despot-tier scummy behaviour.
Zealotux 1y ago
We lost our individual sense of agency long ago, we need a nanny state to take care of us and of our children, hold us by the hand and regulate every single aspect of our lives. We gave the keys to our leaders, now they get to choose what content may be accessed or not.
- lm28469 1y ago
  Yep, it has absolutely nothing to do with the megacorps hiring behavioural experts to make their platforms as addictive as possible... it's all caused by the big mean GoBeRnMenTs Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop produced in some third world country is not "personal freedom"
  - logicchains 1y ago
    >Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop Is called bad parenting.
    - lm28469 1y ago
      Most kids would be better off being educated by orangutans at that point The problem is that we have to live with these kids eventually and you can't build a nation on kids watching brain rot from the age of 6 months because their parents were too dumb to know better. Some of the people on that forum would call the switch to compulsory education tyrannic and an abuse of governmental power lmao.
      - jalapenos 1y ago
        To be fair, orangutans are super chill. If I'd been raised by an orangutan, I wouldn't be upset about it.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    What is this? How about meth, is that not designed as addictive as possible - now parents can throw their hands up in defeat when little Johnny is a meth addict? "Just so addictive, what could I do?!" This world is demented
encom 1y ago
>now This is completely on-brand for Australia. I'm not the slightest bit surprised. To be honest, I don't disagree with the premise: Keep social media away from kids. YouTube is brain rot patient zero. I just don't think it's the governments job.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  YouTube Shorts certainly are - pretty sure that causes actual brain damage. YouTube proper - there is actual good-quality educational content in there too
RyanHamilton 1y ago
It's hard for parents to fight against huge corporate interests that hire thousands of phds to grab your child's attention and influence them at every turn. Realistically it's almost impossible for parents to deny their teenager a mobile without ostracising them from their friends.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  What part of parenting is easy again? That's the gig
  - foepys 1y ago
    Try replacing "social media" with "fast food" and think about how hard that would be for parents to control.
    - jalapenos 1y ago
      My dude, the parents literally have to buy the fast food. If they do not, the fast food is literally not there to eat. What is even going on
    - chucksta 1y ago
      "All these kids walking around with fast food in their pockets" ..nah just doesn't sound right, the most you could get in there is a nugget or two
- msgodel 1y ago
  My parents denied me all kinds of things my friends were doing when I was a kid and looking back they were absolutely right to do that. Don't be afraid of that. Sure they made mistakes here and there. The names of Pokemon aren't actually names of demons. Looking where a lot of my friends ended up though I think they got things right on balance.
  - hopelite 1y ago
    Same here. It was movies and TV for my parents. I have thanked them for it on several occasions when it occurred to me as an adult how affected people are by having not just grown up watching various age inappropriate movies and were trained by TV in general, because their whole world view, their whole mental superstructure is extremely influenced by TV and movies. It has clearly spread across the world to some degree, but I don’t think the average person even realizes just how much the post ~1920 American consciousness is trained on Hollywood, TV, movies. It has become a bit more diffuse lately due to decentralization of TV and movies, but the training on TV also seems to have gotten worse, even if in more covert ways because of the decentralization. You consume your TV drug in isolation and do not even talk about it anymore because everyone is watching different things at different times now. America has gone from the social drinker, the highlight of the party, to the binger I’m downs a bottle of vodka TV a day, alone. Our culture is effectively centered around what is on the real life telescreen, the one that you carry around now, that knows where you are at all times and can listen in on you. Even Orwell could only imagine a world where telescreens were fixed and could be evaded at times, or maybe he just believed that.
dotancohen 1y ago
In what sense is Australia in the West? And why specifically mention Western? What Eastern or other non-Western countries do you feel are above such scrutiny?
- reddalo 1y ago
  Given its close ties to the U.K., Australia has always been considered "the West". Except from a geographical standpoint.
  - jalapenos 1y ago
    [flagged]
- Intermernet 1y ago
  East and West on a globe are arbitrary and have always defined ideology, racial history and shared ideology. I personally hate the terminology and I think it's becoming less pertinent and popular in the modern age.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  [flagged]
jedimastert 1y ago
> I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? When was this? Before or after child labor laws? Before or after we started making it illegal to beat children? Before or after child marriage laws? Age of consent laws? Standards around education, health, abuse and neglect? Whether or not this is a step too far, it's hard to say that society and or governments stepping into protect children is a recent thing.
- jalapenos 1y ago
  Classic western narcissism. Parents were sending their kids down the mines just for the lulz, until "society (represented by more moral types like me) and government stepped in". And because of course, in the minority of cases when parents are abusive, some politicians thousands of miles away make the abuse stop, or the amorphous blob called "society", not locals and relatives, magically we assume, when the kids own parents and extended family keep it all under wraps. Pay no attention to those governments blowing other people's kids to bits or anything of course - the trick is to take observation bias and turn it up to eleven, take a big drawn on our own farts, and feel them we're just so good feels.
hopelite 1y ago
Many people are being naive when they assume any of these “protecting the children” efforts happening all around the western world effectively simultaneously are actually about the children. The question is how do you implement “Chinese style censorship and social credit score” without overtly doing it, you do it the same way that all infringements on freedoms and rights have always been implemented all across the West for 100+ years, you invert, reframe it, and implement amidst cheers, and jeers towards anyone who is not also being virtuous through conformance. Some believe the COVID prison-term lockdowns were a test to gauge the reaction and conformity of the actions taken. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t, but it may as well have been, because the warriors apparatchiks and wardens of conformity operated nicely to deprive their own human rights as well as those of others. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” It may as well end with “…tolerate atrocities.”
- lm28469 1y ago
  So the GoBeRnMeNt is bad but the megacorps printing money shovelling thousands of hours of fully automated brain rot content to your kids are good because .... freedom ? I still fail to see any logic in these conspiracy theories
- jalapenos 1y ago
  My interpretation has always been that they've looked across the sea at the CCP and North Korean regime, and asked, in a whiney tone, "why do they get all the nice things?"
echelon_musk 1y ago
> I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now? Parents have been blaming books, music and video games for decades. Raising children with reading comprehension and critical thinking skills is hard. Equally, from a governments point of view, creating citizens with critical thinking skills is hard. There is probably more chance they will frustrate the regime if they're capable of understanding its corruption. Giving into desires and having children is the easy part. The bodies do all the work for you but after that the 2 decades of work really starts. I'd say it's just an example of "never waste a good crisis". Parents want to complain at someone that essentially the society is too free and their children made mistakes they didn't prepare them for. The government feels pressured and uses the opportunity available to increase control.
subjectsigma 1y ago
What are you talking about? This kind of censorship and authoritarian control is peanuts compared to what China does to their citizens.

cantor_S_drug 1y ago

Why can't there be publicly curated list of educational channels allowed for children? Just as we have a list of ad domains blocked by adblockers. Why not build on top of platforms?

dotancohen 1y ago
Go ahead, curate and publish.
- cantor_S_drug 1y ago
  We all know there are companies which maintain blocklist for other companies so that the employees are allowed to access only certain sites. Can't a similar mechanism be used by govts around the world.
  - hellojesus 1y ago
    Why would you want this to be done at the government level and not the parents'? Force a proxy through your network to a specific allowlist for dns and direct ip and port requests. Install a root ca on your kids phone so you can decrypt their connections, and send the data to your logstash to monitor to make sure you don't have any blind spots, and run some local models to alert when inappropriate media is categorized. Maybe some of this plan is bad or incomplete, but it wqs what immediately came to mind. I'm sure it could be improved with a few hours of research. Why do we want to normalize government censorship and mass surveillance when we could instead normalize technical education?
    - cantor_S_drug 1y ago
      My point was that this effort could be formalized and need not be individual or group based. Each country could have their own allowed list which can change after responsible additions or deletions. People could vote on which channels should be allowed. etc.
      - 1y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago

This will be a good experiment. What if it turns out to be a good move?

owlninja 1y ago
How would you measure "success"?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
  A reversal of trends that prompted this change? If Aussies don't change their minds? We should quit blaming parents though. Parents are out of options which is why it's coming to this.
  - anabab 1y ago
    > A reversal of trends that prompted this change? Plenty of terrible changes can achieve the similar effect of trend reversal. Say, banning any form of computer networks or banning having children. And people introducing the changes seem to have enough power to discourage any change of minds as well.
- kelseyfrog 1y ago
  How would you measure failure?
reddalo 1y ago
It's a good people-controlling experiment. Fascists will love it.

pacifika 1y ago

Title: Albanese Government protecting kids from social media harms

nicoburns 1y ago

I would be more sympathetic to YouTube's plight here if they weren't aggressively pushing addictive features like "Shorts" with no option to disable them.

izacus 1y ago
Yeah, this seems like a clear FAFO situation.
lm28469 1y ago
Disable your yt history, it disables pretty much everything yt wants to push. When I open yt I get an empty page with a search box, even clicking on the Shorts page it just says "Recommendations are off Your watch history is off, and we rely on watch history to tailor your Shorts feed. You can change your setting at any time, or try searching for Shorts instead. Learn more."
- barkerja 1y ago
  But that is unfortunately a nuclear option that should not need to be taken to perform such a thing. Like the op, I have no interest in Shorts, especially considering the type of content that seems to proliferate that format. However, I feel like YouTube does a genuinely good job — at least for me personally — of curating my feed with videos I have genuine interest in; mostly being tech talks and home DIY. I'd hate to lose the discoverability I currently have for the sake of having to disable a feature like Shorts.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    I use youtube without an account, only a cookie which I can nuke anytime. My experience with this is as you describe; it does a great job of giving me videos relevant to my interests. If it ever goes off the rails, I nuke the cookie and start over; reseeding the recommendations by watching a few videos from high-brow channels like Applied Science. It recommends no shorts to me.
flumpcakes 1y ago

morninglight 1y ago

[flagged]

Funes- 1y ago
None, I'd bet. Can't you see this is just about tightening their grasp on our liberties, swaying our opinions, and selling our data? Organised religion could be going for that (minus the data, at least not in the current sense) in the past with a certain degree of success, but I don't see how they are even a tad bit as powerful as they once were. It doesn't seem sensible to associate these seemingly coordinated measures around the world to organised religion instead of corporations and the political elite. That's just a tone deaf take.
- Intermernet 1y ago
  That ideology is closely related to organised religion. The data selling is just a bonus.

msgodel 1y ago

This is going to break yt-dlp. YouTube won't fight it for that reason. It's regulatory capture.

reddalo 1y ago
yt-dlp can fetch cookies from your browser, so no, it won't break it. If YouTube really did want to stop yt-dlp, they'd encrypt all the videos with Widevine.
- echelon_musk 1y ago
  > yt-dlp can fetch cookies from your browser, so no, it won't break it. It probably breaks anonymous access to videos (when not signed in to a Google account). Unless yt-dlp provide shared cookies that its thousands of users can use there will still be account level tracking of video access.
  - reddalo 1y ago
    That's sure. But it's already like that for most NSFW videos on YouTube.

wosined 1y ago

The quality of youtube videos when it comes to content that does not waste your time is so low, that I must oppose this only based on principle and not the merit of the platform.

Intermernet 1y ago
The thing about YouTube is that it's so large. Even if only 1% of it is good, it's still more than any other platform by far. I've spent years curating my YouTube experience. I still regard yt premium as the best value subscription I have.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  seconding this. there's a lot of housekeeping and esp now with content-free AI slop arriving in waves it's difficult to weed out but if you stick to your subscriptions rather than just letting the algo dump stuff on you there's a lot of really good content. YouTube has helped me get fit, helped me learn how to cook, helped me fix my air conditioner, helped me replace the fuel pump in my car, and provided me with fun and insight into a lot of hobbies and communities I'd normally be unable to dive into. I'd guess that your "1%" estimate is several orders of magnitude higher than the real ratio but I still agree with your core point: there's tons of great stuff out there, it's just under gigatons of crap.
kaoD 1y ago
It's bimodal. YouTube has both the worst and the best content on the internet. I'm not willing to give up the latter to save the masses from the former.
progbits 1y ago
I don't get this view. Yes there is a lot of crap because it's both easier to produce than quality content, and has higher incentives to keep making more of it. But that's the same with eg. books. Aside from small curated book stores, pick up a random book. Most likely it's not worth to cut down the tree it was printed on. It's very easy to watch only quality content and there is an incredible amount of it on youtube. I've learned lots of electronics, CAD work, mechanical engineering, watched tons of lectures from amazing professors...

Funes- 1y ago

We're going to see more and more crackdown on internet access, in the name of making it "safe", or "safe for kids", particularly. All they want is pushing for censorship and control, though, on top of collecting and selling even more data. We'd be wise to make an effort to migrate to censorship resistant overlay networks like Hyphanet (formerly Freenet) or i2p before it's too late.

lm28469 1y ago
Lots of people keep mentioning these conspiracy theories but I still don't buy it. The "they" you're all mentioning simply doesn't exist. Who are they ? All the governments of the west somehow working together ? They can't even cooperate more than 6 months on internal matters but they globally agreed on some world wide evil plan ? And the plan is to ban kids from youtube ? Because reasons ? Who is going to collect more data if there are less websites/users ? Who's selling "the" data ? Who's buying "the" data ? What data ? How are governments benefiting from censoring brain rot in a way that doesn't also benefit me exactly ? All the data is already collected by US megacorps and stored on US servers the US gov can already fully access, it doesn't get any worse than that
- mindcrash 1y ago
  > Lots of people keep mentioning these conspiracy theories but I still don't buy it. EU is actively working on "age verification" through a digital wallet. Once that is in place it is a small step to wall off the entire Internet unless you verify yourself through your digital ID. Since Trump is as borderline fascist as von der Leyen there's no fucking doubt in my mind the United States will follow the EU as soon as there are signs of success or even earlier. Proof: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technical-specification https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic... Especially note "The objective is to develop an EU-wide solution to age verification that reinforces the Digital Services Act (DSA) objective to ensure safe, secure, and trusted digital space and the Louvain-la-Neuve Declaration, which promotes a safer and more trustworthy online environment." Whenever those in power talk about "security", "safety" and "trust" they talk about other things entirely which, for the larger public, have nothing to do with these topics at all.

flumpcakes 1y ago

I'm surprised at the lack of care for children in commentary around social media bans, the UK's online safety act blocking discord/porn/etc without proof of age, and sexually violent video games being removed from stores due to payment processors. If we see a child bullied in school, we don't say the parents of the victim are not doing enough parenting. If an adult flashes or cat calls a child in the street, we don't blame the child's parents for not doing enough parenting. Why is it when it comes to social media/pornography/sexually violent games (that would not have received a rating if sold in stores 10 years ago) everyone is up in arms that things are going too far. All you see is conspiracy theory nonsense at how the state wants to mind control us. Apple tried to fix some of this at the client end with CSAM scanning and automatic dick pic blurring but had to roll some of this back due to the uproar and accusations on spying etc. We no longer live in a high trust society and children are paying the price for it, as well as adults. I don't want my phone scanned or to be denied access to adult discord channels or have to submit an ID to visit "adult" content like home-brewing beer subreddits. But now that's the price I am having to pay because no one wants to be responsible. Especially the companies making money off of children. But what are we supposed to do instead when everything has been shot down previously? The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it.

logicchains 1y ago
>The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it. Children are being groomed by high-profile paedophiles and trafficked to powerful people with no consequence, and you want to give those people more control over the internet?
- PoignardAzur 1y ago
  You're both egregiously wrong. The vast majority of victims of grooming are victimized by people they know and trust, mostly family and authority figures.
  - 1y ago

irusensei 1y ago

Aparently the person who recently started a censorship campaign against games that lead to delisting not only porn titles but also horror and other categories from itch.io is on the board to decide what its defined as adult content. > Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.[1] I have no idea what the hell is going on and it all seems very coordinated but I hope the pendulum swings back so hard next time it takes at least half a century for Tipper Gore to resurrect again. 1- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-visa-backlash-adult-games-removed-online-stores-steam-itchio-ntwnfb https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-vis...

flumpcakes 1y ago
[flagged]
- crtasm 1y ago
  >they themselves admitted they could not police their store front and had no idea how many games would be problematic for the payment processors. I don't think that's true? My takeaway was the demands from the payment processors are frustratingly unspecific and they were up against a deadline, so delisted a huge amount of games being overcautious and are now going through them to see what can be relisted. Not all NSFW games were removed/delisted. They're now looking for new payment processors: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/itchio-are-seeking-out-new-payment-processors-who-are-more-comfortable-with-adult-material https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/itchio-are-seeking-out-new-...
yupyupyups 1y ago
Games (and cartoons) is a format children are drawn to. The new avarage age of exposure to porn is 11. The market has not been able to "self-regulate", rather the situation has gotten worse with more non-porn games adding, not just sexually charged, but now purely pornographic content. GOG (!) has proper porn games on their frontpage. So it's time something is done about it. I will try not to recommend any games to any child moving forward, and instead direct them to other hobbies. Because not only are games mostly a waste of time anyway, but they're also turning into an entrypoint to pornography.

miroljub 1y ago

Let's be honest here, it was never about social media, children's rights, porn, drugs, crime, or similar. It was always about introducing government issued digital ID and enforcing it on the internet to tighten the control and, as a side effect, let people censor themselves. It is no coincidence that multiple Western countries are pushing for the same thing at the same time. The UK is another example, with EU-level discussions about the same and chat control. If I were younger, I'd think that's a coincidence and has nothing to do with WEF and similar totalitarian globalist organizations pushing their agendas. But now, as a grown-up cynic, I realize that it's just a plain old conspiracy in practice, not a theory anymore. It's a sad thing that once free societies are rapidly deteriorating and approaching China's level of freedoms. I'm afraid there's not much time left to prevent a dystopian Orwellian (or Zamyatinesque) future of see-through citizen slaves.

reddalo 1y ago

I hate all of this. We're collectively losing freedom (in the name of "protecting the children") and we're doing nothing to stop this. People will realize it when it's too late.

lm28469 1y ago
[flagged]
2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
So a society isn't free to tell big tech to stuff it? Sounds dystopian

elfbargpt 1y ago

I find it weird that people aren't questioning the motives behind these changes a little more. Is it not strange this is coming at the same time as the UK Online Safety Act? There are reports of posts related to the middle eastern conflict being censored. Somehow I don't think this about violence and adult content.

mystraline 1y ago

I see a lot of 'what about the children' (whataboutism). And I look at various laws in the Western countries, and there is a consensus-ish that under majority age can still be treated as an adult. Why does this matter? Why aren't we asking the 17, 16, 15, 14 year olds and down about their situations instead, including opening up the vote to them? The big problem with all these 'butwhataboutthechildren' laws, is they are by definition, disenfranchised, but they are also subject to the whims of the voters. Now people will naturally say 'something something prefrontal cortex'. Even the UNCRC 2019a says that. However, we're not running fMRI on children and adults as a permission to vote - its just a simple age gate. And I would argue, that another commentor's parent who thinks Pokemon were demon names probably wouldn't pass that either. But we end up with garbage laws, and only exist to make those who can vote feel good, while doing damage to those who can't vote. And as an aside, if companies are doing predatory and illegal things, then the companies should be punished appropriately.

ratelimitsteve 1y ago
I'm not sure that's the consensus definition of whataboutism, despite it containing the key phrase. Whataboutism is generally of the form "Let's stop talking about X because Y is more important", which become a simple "What about Y?" "What about the children?" is generally used to support restrictions and might be used as a counterargument against things like the general availabilty of youtube but it's not usually used as an attempt to move away from the argument in question entirely. I agree that we're wildly inconsistent about when children are treated as children, when they're treated as adults and when they become adults (16? 18? 21? when their brain development actually finishes somewhere between 20 and 30?). And not only do we end up with garbage laws but we also end up w garbage exceptions like in juvenile criminal law. We acknowledge that young offenders can't be treated the same as adult offenders because our legal system takes into account intent and the offender's ability to reason and know right from wrong, but then we charge children as adults when we're particularly grossed out by the crime or the prosecutor wants to appear tough.

byyll 1y ago

Setting aside the obvious privacy issues with de-anonymizing everyone, it's great to limit kids' access to media for adults.

yrcyrc 1y ago

I hate YouTube, Google, Meta and all their products with a passion. Well deserved.