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Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption
- WantonQuantum 1y agoIt's important to note that this ban is for having an account - it does not ban people under 16 from watching youtube videos.
- general1726 1y agoSo you can just log off to bypass it? That seems short sighted.
- azemetre 1y agoNot really. It means it's no longer profitable to advertise to teens on most corporate social media. Anything that moves the needle toward dismantling the advertising and marketing industries will always be a worthwhile endeavor.
- Gud 1y agoWhy would it no longer be profitable to advertise to teens on YouTube just because they can’t have accounts?
- mathiaspoint 1y agoRight they'll still have a persistent session that accumulates data for them. Just without the ability to persistent settings, subscriptions etc.
- azemetre 1y agoPutting YouTube in the social media ban also removes personalized ads for teenagers. Personalized ad buys are very profitable for companies like Google and Meta. Hurting their ability to make money would only be a net positive for humanity.
- soulofmischief 1y agoAnything? Including preventing teens from having an online life?
- azemetre 1y agoI had no issue with using the noncorpotized social media as a teen (livejournal, myspace before the buyout, forums, etc). Anything that ruins the might of Meta, Google would be a net positive for society. Let's not act like the only way to communicate with each other or use the internet is through corporate controlled software. It would do teenagers good to be forced to use other forms of social media that aren't controlled by companies that don't care about their mental health.
- soulofmischief 1y agoYou put these laws in place, and they will be used indiscriminately as needed. Anything can become "social media", and if not, it's easy to add a new category to the list since the Overton window has already been allowed to shift. We the people are vanguards of our own freedom. Always assume a government organization is lying to you about their intentions. We're taught about slippery slopes in civics and history class for a reason. The true intent here is to control the ability for teens to freely congregate online and contribute to discussion around unsanctioned topics. To prevent teenagers from being exposed to or distributing material that challenges the incumbent authorities.
- azemetre 1y agoNo, the true intent is to curtail big tech. Let's not get lost in the weeds, the law specifically targets certain companies that have proven to be harmful toward society. Social media that is not harmful is still perfectly legal and allowed. No one has twisted Mark Zuckerberg to make something that profits off of misery, he's more than capable in making something less harmful and not getting banned. If you don't like Zuckerberg replace him with who you do like, it's the same story. I also trust democracy and democratic institutions. The ability to destroy something is completely democratic and should happen by the people with things prove harmful. What I don't trust are actors who engage in advocacy that is always anti-democratic in nature.
- Aurornis 1y ago> It means it's no longer profitable to advertise to teens on most corporate social media. Advertisements are targeted on a number of factors. It’s not a simple checkbox that says “market this to teens”
- azemetre 1y agoIt is when they're personalized ads, which is what gets banned under Australia's social media ban for teens.
- yreg 1y agoMaybe they target content production, not content consumption?
- tartoran 1y ago> Maybe they target content production, not content consumption? How can you do that on the internet? What Australia did may be a bit shortsighted but it's a step in the right direction together. Other countries did all sorts of measures such banning smartphone use in classrooms and such. We will figure out what works and what does not, but at least something is being done.
- yreg 1y ago>How can you do that on the internet? Well to upload YouTube videos you obviously need to log in.
- giantg2 1y ago"So you can just log off to bypass it?" Nobody knows. The government hasn't determined how the age verification will work. A good guess will be that it will require age verified accounts for anyone in that country to access content on those platforms... or a VPN.
- hofrogs 1y agoYouTube doesn't let me watch videos without logging in to some account. If I try to watch any video from an incognito tab, I get a "Sign in to protect our community" stop-screen. This doesn't happen to everyone, of course, but for people like me who have a "haunted" IP4 address logging out will not be an option.
- jay_kyburz 1y agoAlso note: just being logged out won't stop the algo choosing content based on past watches.
- giantg2 1y agoThis ban includes watching videos. The law says they must take action to prevent underage persons from accessing their services. This means they will likely have to require login and age verify any accounts. The carve out in the article is talking about teachers and parents being allowed to show the content to the kids.
- asyx 1y agoI think that’s a really bad idea. I owe my career to YouTube and I think especially these days it’s much more useful for learning than it was back then. The whole internet moved to bite sized content but on YouTube you can find hour long videos of people doing really cool and sometimes super niche stuff.
- blahlabs 1y agoThey are not being banned from watching YouTube.
- 404mm 1y agoAsyx, you have an opinion on the ban before reaching the 3rd paragraph of the article. I recommend reading it first.
- blast 1y ago> I owe my career to YouTube That's interesting. How so?
- dankwizard 1y agoI have an n8n work flow that pumps out AI slop to the very demographic being targetted by this bill!!!!!!!!! HOW DARE THEY
- imtringued 1y agoI'm not asyx, but I was about to say that I got into programming from playing video games but it appears authoritarian nutjobs like you have beat me to it.
- worthless-trash 1y agoPlease ban comments. Please...
- simpaticoder 1y agoCompletely banning all of YouTube feels like throwing out the baby—valuable educational content—with the bathwater—everything else. It seems more effective for YouTube to offer a dedicated educational platform, like education.youtube.com, with content filters built in. That way, students could access channels like 3blue1brown without exposure to unrelated or less appropriate content like MrBeast or Jubilee. Heck, I might personally prefer to use that version of YT myself.
- JJMcJ 1y agoDo you want mere children exposed to David Attenborough and Mister Rogers?
- Arubis 1y agoCan’t speak for the Aussies, but if you’re a US-inflected conservative today, probably not!
- CoastalCoder 1y agoI wish people wouldn't conflate conservatives per se with the Republican/MAGA definition of that term. I consider myself somewhat conservative in the traditional sense, and yet the Republican platform is almost diametrically opposed to my values.
- mc32 1y agoOh, is that the majority of their content, traditional educational content? I must be mistaken in thinking they were funneling their audience into “shorts” and that kids obviously naturally recoil from “shorts” as much as they do green veggies and chores…
- OJFord 1y agoBut this is basically the way for Australian government to try to make YouTube do that isn't it? There's already YouTube Kids, so maybe this makes YouTube think ok we need YouTube Teenz, or YouTube Educational or whatever.
- Jalad 1y agoInteresting, I find that youtube is a great resource for educational content and was very useful in highschool etc. This seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but to be fair AI and really toxic context wasn't as big of a thing when I was in highschool
- bananapub 1y agoadding more laws that will be universally ignored by anyone with a small amount of thought and effort feels like a stupid way to solve anything, but it is absolutely the Australian Way. to quote[0] a noted philosopher: > weird how a foundational myth of australia is that we’re a nation of subversive larrikins, when in actuality everyone here is an ultracop 0: https://nitter.net/tfswebb/status/976299234491121665?lang=en https://nitter.net/tfswebb/status/976299234491121665?lang=en
- trallnag 1y agoWhere does this myth come from? It's quite the opposite. For example, around 30 years ago hundreds of thousands of Australians willingly handed in their guns. And they accepted new laws that mostly prevented them from owning guns, and by that using them for self-defense.
- viktorcode 1y agoI think that was a buyout. Government offered money for the guns.
- psunavy03 1y agoThat's irrelevant to the argument that was being made. Confiscation for payment is still confiscation; see also "eminent domain."
- incone123 1y agoAbout that time my then boss handed in his guns, 'willingly' only in that he wasn't daft enough to think he could beat the police in a firefight.
- SoftTalker 1y agoThe only entities that can possibly control Facebook and Google are nation-states. If there is to be any regulation of them (or the content they push) at all, that's where it has to happen. These giant tech companies have demonstrated that they don't care to do it themselves. Of course individuals can decide to use these platforms or not, but if that was good enough to achieve the society most of us want to live in, we wouldn't need 90% of the laws we currently have.
- spicyusername 1y agoUnder, say, 10-12 or so, I can understand a blanket ban. In general, the YouTube content aimed at children is pretty vapid and encourages too many parents to use it as parenting auto-pilot. But so much YouTube content is educational or otherwise has significant utility for older children or adults. Seems like a pretty big misstep to outright ban it. And that doesn't even get to the thorny question of how this is supposed to even be enforced... Then again, it may be better to do SOMETHING to start making these tech companies take solving these problems themselves seriously. Hard problem to solve, for sure.
- soulofmischief 1y agoRidiculous. Would we have had a similar ban against flash video and game websites growing up if it were today? Against AOL Instant Messenger? I already had a local net nanny software to contend with, if the government had also tried preventing me from participating in online culture, assuming I didn't kill myself because of a lack of escape from my abusive situation, I would 100% have ended up being an absolute menace to the government in defiance and retaliation. I would have opened myself up to fraud charges creating accounts with private information from adults. And once I was over the wall of censorship, I'd only find adults and other criminally-minded children. I'd be on a conveyor belt to more serious crimes. Is that what we want the next generation of computer enthusiasts to grow up with?
- spicyusername 1y agoWe're talking about 8-year-olds here not 15-year-olds, and a website intended for passive consumption, not active participation. I would say the circumstances are pretty different.
- soulofmischief 1y agoWhen I was 8, I was already hacking around net nanny software and involved in several online communities operated by other children, I was learning how to program and hack and generally use the internet as a gateway into culture that I otherwise never would have experienced. I tried involving myself in a lot of communities related to my interests, but some sites were just for entertainment and not active participation, or I simply didn't participate in the community. That doesn't change anything. Now a software engineer and artist, my entire life was shaped by that time, and as I said, I likely would have committed suicide due to my abusive situation if it wasn't for these communities. I will always fight to provide that kind of environment for others and not pull up the ladder now that I've climbed up.
- ccppurcell 1y agoIt's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't know what the right metaphor is. Throwing the scrap of edible meat out with the ton of rotten flesh? YouTube has got really bad in recent years. There are channels deliberately trying to get through to kids with horrific content. And of course the tobacco, gambling and sugar industries trying to turn our kids into addicts. They are often only one or two clicks away from extremely inappropriate content.
- sirwhinesalot 1y agoThat edible meat is close to being the only edible thing around though. Can you really name anything on the level of 3Blue1Brown available for free? Hopefully this forces Youtube to set up a limited educational version that the Australian government would be ok with.
- somenameforme 1y agoMost (all?) top universities have free educational content, often including entire courses, available. For instance here [1] is MIT's open courseware site where you can download all the required media, including lecture video/notes/problem sets/exams/etc, for courses - completely for free. Things like this are generally going to be orders of magnitude better than any YouTube video. [1] - https://ocw.mit.edu/ https://ocw.mit.edu/
- sirwhinesalot 1y agoSadly I disagree. Those resources are great but they don't come close to the visualization work 3Blue1Brown makes. Many subjects only clicked for me after watching his videos.
- rhdunn 1y ago1. Welch Labs (Complex Numbers, AI) 2. Mathologer (Various maths-related theorems and properties) 3. Simon Roper, Colin Gorrie (Old English) 4. Jackson Crawford (Norse) 5. Doctor Mix (Synthesizers; Recreating classic songs) 6. Numberphile / Computerphile / Sixty Symbols / etc. 7. NativLang 8. Artifexian, Biblaridion, etc. -- ConLang and Speculative Biology, but also cover linguistic, geographical, and biological topics where relevant
- nottorp 1y agoIt bans accounts on youtube not watching, I think?
- m101 1y agoPerhaps this will mean a version of YouTube comes out without YouTube shorts integration. YouTube shorts, imo, legitimises the govts complaint.
- ivanmontillam 1y agoI really wish there was a version of YT in Android that did not come with YT Shorts. As a YT Premium user, I should be able to disable it, or at least not make it the first thing it opens when I tap on the app icon. I mean, a legit app, not a 3rd party one that'll get my Google account banned eventually. I had to delete it, using: $ adb shell pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.youtube It lasted a month for me that way; then I installed it, and after a week or two I fell into the old habit of Doomscrolling and had to nuke it again. TikTok/Reels/Shorts format is really, really exploitative on the mind.
- simmerup 1y agoI've recently started watching shorts. I blink and an hour has passed! Ridiculous. Adding insult to injury, a significant portion of them seem to be AI generated
- Avamander 1y agoAs a premium user I should be able to add content "made for kids" to playlists and see comments as well. It's absolutely idiotic how "save the children" is just an excuse to fuck over everyone else.
- j1elo 1y agoYou know, the current best option is not exactly a 3rd party app but an original app with some patches applied to it. Of course in the end you're trusting someone out there, but hey the patches are FOSS so they can be downloaded, reviewed, and applied locally. The feeling of a cleaned-up front page without addictive shorts or clickbait thumbnails is refreshing... and, ironically (as it usually happens), a much better experience, not to speak mentally healthier for anyone, especially a kid.
- Kwpolska 1y ago
- ChrisArchitect 1y ago[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732683
- jconnolly200 1y ago[dead]
- 9rx 1y ago> "YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content [...] It's not social media." Aren't "sharing platforms" and "social media" the same thing? I understand a long time ago there was a dream that people would produce and share as much content as they consume, and that is what social media was supposed to be in reference to, but that imagined world never happened. Social media, as used to refer to any practical service in the real world, has always been about one-sided content being shared to a mostly consumer-only audience. > increasingly viewed on TV screens Are people digging old Trinitrons out of the trash, or what? If you try to buy a new "TV", you are going to get a computer with a large monitor instead.
- lvass 1y ago>Aren't "sharing platforms" and "social media" the same thing? Meta claimed in FTC v. Meta that they are indeed the same.
- non- 1y agoTeens are old enough to find their way around any content bans. This seems like a good way to introduce teens to VPN's and skirting content regulations early. It's also dumb because YouTube can teach you almost anything, I'd say it's the "best of the worst" when it comes to social media on the internet.
- 28304283409234 1y agoMy teens, and each one I have encountered through them, cannot discern a pixel from a wallsocket. They are tech consumers. Not tech savvy. My dad (82) is more tech savvy.
- the_snooze 1y agoExactly, teens have tons of access to tech. But that tech is just a straw through which to consume an endless stream of content. It's not a tool to master and manipulate.
- jay_kyburz 1y agoMy 13yo wanted to install some dotnet disassembly or injection tool so he could download mods and inject new code into existing games on steam. All his friends were doing it and I'm the mean dad because I won't let him download any random code from the internet and run it. They don't know what they are doing, but they know how to follow instructions on github.
- foobarian 1y agoIf this were my kid I would rejoice and thank my lucky stars
- SlowTao 1y agoFor now. Maybe this will be the incentive to get them to dig into how these things work.
- standardUser 1y agoYour kids don't need to be savvy, just a small number of kids will create the culture and technology to circumvent these laws and other kids will consume it. And the sharpest kids will always outflank the adults because their perspectives are fresher and their motivations are far more personal and urgent.
- seydor 1y agoThis is raising a generation of radicalized teens with institutionalized hatred against the older generation. Will end well
- lanfeust6 1y agoThat was already the case.
- simmerup 1y agoYou mean YouTube (and social media in general)? If so, you can expand it to hating those younger than themselves, hating the opposite gender, and hating each other
- jjangkke 1y agoMore likely this will force them to be right wing as they get older. Young ppl arent digging left wing stuff as trends show many are shifting to conservatism.
- __d 1y agoThat’s not universally true. In Australia, young people skew significantly progressive, and young woman even more so.
- neilv 1y agoHatred/resentment, maybe. What could be great is a revolutionary generation. But I don't see that happening. We've already been dumbed-down, and indoctrinated into a selfish and therefore neutered culture.
- forgotoldacc 1y agoA couple months ago, I saw people everywhere online (including HN) saying they love the idea of social media bans for kids. They love the idea of keeping people under 18 safe from the dangers of porn and mature games and other unclean things as well. Now governments around the world are acting in unison to happily give those people what they want, and people are suddenly confused and pissed that these laws mean you need to submit proof that you're over 18. And instead of being an annoying checkbox that says "I'm 18. Leave me alone", it's needing to submit a selfie and ID photo to be verified, saved, and permanently bound to your every single action online. People who asked for social media bans for kids got what they wanted. They'll have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives. We all will.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- RankingMember 1y agoI think the concern about how this will be implemented (e.g. selfie and ID submission) is well-founded. I also think that letting tech companies make billions by feeding our youth mental junk food is a problem. I'm not sure where the middle path is, but I think it'll need some real thought to figure out.
- Bukhmanizer 1y agoIf you didn’t realize that making teens verify their age online meant that everyone had to verify their age and identity online, that’s just a dangerous level of stupidity. The issue is everyone wants some quick and easy solution when the truth is we’re going to need to get much more intentional as a society about this. Take phone bans. Everyone wants to ban phones from schools/classrooms, but the truth is in a lot of places phones are already banned from school. But we’ve spent the last 3 decades taking away any power from teachers to enforce their rules so kids just do it anyway.
- Tadpole9181 1y agoThere are zero knowledge proof systems that nobody would have a problem with because nobody ever knows who is accessing the content, only that they are allowed or not. Ironic to call people aware of this stupid.
- SilverElfin 1y agoWhy are so many countries like Australia, UK, EU, etc suddenly pro censorship. Aren’t these all liberal democracies? I would think these policies would be very unpopular. Is there some analysis of how this came to be normalized?
- aspbee555 1y agothis is why "think of the children" is always used in these instances, it gets right past peoples defenses and if you try to argue against privacy invasive/life invasive/completely useless regulations/regulations ripe for abuse (by design) then you are somehow the "bad guy"
- owisd 1y agoA majority of adult GenZs who've grown up with this stuff agree it was bad for their childhood and most older adults use social media and feel the negative effects too. Using some sophistry to argue it's all made up by the government is like Democrats arguing Biden was fit to run a second term when everyone can see with their own eyes he was not.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jay_kyburz 1y agoI'm an everyday Australian, I'll take a few guesses. (I don't support these new laws) 1. we don't have as an antagonistic relationship with our government and we trust that most of what will be banned will be gross stuff we don't want weirdos watching. 2. I think most people feel social media really is breaking young people, and its easier if all kids are banned than just trying to ban your own kids. It's really hard to explain to a kid why they are not allowed to watch you tube when every other kid is. Update: Also, the only thing this law is going to do is to force every parent in Australia to create accounts for their kids.
- protocolture 1y ago
- general1726 1y agoSo they will start using YouTube Revanced. What now?
- Avamander 1y agoRevanced will unfortunately not last long. Ten years maximum. The moment YouTube can, they'll jump on the WideVine ship. They've already tested it. It won't be long until it's all DRM-ed, no mainstream custom client is going to work.
- dang 1y agoRelated ongoing thread: YouTube to be included in Australia's social media ban for children under 16 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732683 - July 2025 (117 comments) (I haven't merged that one hither because it's quite a bit more generic than this one.)
- wewewedxfgdf 1y agoThe Australian Prime Minister - Anthony Albanese - was once asked by a radio host what he would do if he was dictator - he said he would ban all social media. And lets note that the ALP government is very fast and snappy to ban social media, very slow to do important things like: - ban money laundering in real estate - ban gambling advertising And very quick to: - approve massive new coal mines - approve massive new natural gas projects The Australian government hates social media because that's where the people get to say what they think of the governmnent - in real time. The social media companies have missed a crucial point about doing business in Australia - you must be paying your dues to the political parties and you must be paying big taxes. This is what the mining and gambling and fosil fuel companies do, and the Australian government does backflips to give them what they want.
- netsharc 1y agoAh yes, because it's the teenage vote and social media voice they're very very worried about...
- soulofmischief 1y agoUh, yea, it is. Teenagers grow up. In just a few short years. Then they become members of the voting group most vulnerable to propaganda and political manipulation. It's the same reason tobacco and alcohol companies love advertising to teens. You're creating a target that can be identified, manipulated and controlled through social reinforcement. Teens also have more time to connect with others and develop unsanctioned philosophies than adults who work and take care of the household full-time.
- __d 1y agoThe social media ban is broadly popular. The clear majority of voters support it. It’s a political win for the government to push this through, over the objections from Google, Meta, etc. The fact that social media makes a stack of money in Australia but manages to pay almost no tax absolutely impacts their fate: both with the government and the voters. Some of the popularity of this legislation might even come from it being seen as sticking it to “techbros”. Banning eg coal mining, online gambling, etc, is vastly less popular. And they contribute to employment, revenue (via taxes), and they lobby/donate effectively. Social media could easily have avoided this, as other industries have, but they decided not to. They might yet be able to leverage US tariffs though?
- like_any_other 1y agoIf only there was some kind of parental control software available, there would be no need to further expand state surveillance and repression. Unfortunately, this is the only way, that the government only reluctantly resorted to, after much public outcry, and after having tried many other non-invasive, freedom- and privacy-respecting measures, that have all failed...
- SlowTao 1y agoYep, it seems like a failure on all parties. Government, civil and corporate. Hyper optimization of attention to drive up profits for the sake of share holders while ignoring the externalities was a terrible idea but in a capitalist system, they are the winners.
- binary132 1y agoI don’t see what the big deal is. Nobody has ground to stand on in asserting that minors have a moral right to an “online life”. On the other hand, there are tons of good reasons to disallow minors from participating in the free online commons. I’m not saying I necessarily support it in all cases, but I definitely don’t think it’s necessarily a bad or immoral thing either, and it’s a bit surprising that a bunch of extremely online tech jockeys seem to.
- Avamander 1y agoThe deal is that everyone shouldn't be subjected to invasive identity verification just to not be considered children. Not only is this process generally vaguely specified in depth, it's a massive (financial) burden for most online platforms. The effect this kind of legislation has, has not been properly thought out. Large corporations' eagerness to implement this legislation should be a MASSIVE red flag alone. How do they benefit from this? I can think of a few ways. Track record also shows that we can't properly do biometric data collection like this. This will end up in massive data leaks, if not people's IDs then at least faces. Congrats, you've given some scammers a full dataset for impersonating people. Not only that, most noninvasive methods for age verification are dumb and ineffective with the AI options available today. Not to mention five or ten years. So now you've got a vague unspecified and relatively nanny-state goal combined with ineffective and invasive methods and malicious compliance with immensely negative side effects. It is not worth it. It's akin to wanting every restaurant that sells beer to card everyone at the entrance and store it in a database. Do we perhaps also want lists of minorities to better "protect" them? "Oh, you bought lava cake? That's children's favourite, please show us your ID to see that you're not a child or we'll take the cake away."
- jackdawipper 1y agoyea but that isnt why they are doing it. they dont gaf about kids, they want total control of the populace online behaviour and this is steps in that direction. what fascinates me most, is when people dont realise this.
- Barrin92 1y ago> there are tons of good reasons to disallow minors from participating in the free online commons. there isn't unless you're a neurotic helicopter parent who wants to infantilize people up until they're adults. I'm only in my early thirties but I thank god that I have a dad who bought me Doom when the store owner didn't want to sell it to me, we shocked the crap out of each other with gore sites in school and when our parents caught us looking at boobs they didn't have a moral panic because unlike now teenagers being hormonal was still considered normal I literally pity the kids who are raised by people who give Victorian Englanders a run for their money. Forget this argument that the adults are the ones suffering under "legitimate concerns for kids", the kids are the actual losers here
- giantg2 1y agoIts a little bit of a stretch to call YouTube social media. There are tons of great instructional videos. The real kicker to me is that the government has passed a law restricting access yet they haven't determined how they're going to enforce an age check. It's wild that they passed a law without consideration to it's mechanics or feasibility.
- jeffybefffy519 1y agoIs mechanics of enforcement really a government thing tho?
- coolestguy 1y agoNo you're right, thinking about laws & second order effects isn't a government thing
- sophacles 1y agoUm... its a law. And yes, law enforcement is widely considered a government thing. See also: police.
- observationist 1y agoGood thing the internet police will be there to ensure those laws are enforced. Great job, Australia!
- y1426i 1y agoIt should at least be possible to ban YouTube shorts. I wish those were served from a separate domain to make it easier to block just those.
- exasperaited 1y agoI would love to see more scrutiny of short content because it is without doubt the most manipulative.
- 1y ago
- standardUser 1y agoMaybe if the age limit was lower, and maybe if the law was less strict. But the delta between this law and the society its being imposed on is way too big to not cause serious unintended consequences. The younger kids will find ways to achieve many of the same interactions, only totally unregulated, and in doing so will be forced to create distance between themselves and 'adult' society.
- ElCapitanMarkla 1y agoI don't really understand why Youtube won't let me create a profile, on my paid family account that I'm paying $29 NZD a month for, which lets me whitelist channels. I'm happy for my kids to have free access to certain channels on youtube, but the mind numbing shorts, and shit they find on random channels just does my head in. And it seems to be getting worse, I'm not sure if its that they are getting older and able to search for more content or if the content is just getting worse, maybe both, but I'm probably just going to cancel the sub so they at least have to put up with terrible ads if they try to access it.
- Ancalagon 1y agoAds as effective parental controls is wild, hilarious, and somewhat dystopian to me.
- jasonfarnon 1y agoWhy? Back when I was a kid and TV/radio were the only options, it's the ads that often got me to shut it off and do something else as often as not having anything to watch. I would wager advertiser data reflects this. Conversely I noticed a trend sometime in the 2010s my grandkids would watch shows that didnt break to commercial after rolling the end credits but instead segue to a new episode in a mini-view, and they would never leave.
- ACow_Adonis 1y agoPresumably for the same reason Google doesn't let you block or filter shit sites. If you genuinely let user's preferences be taken into account, it's incredibly hard to make money from ads if the user's true preferences are not to be shown them. The entire point of ads is to manipulate and change user preferences and behaviours. So any preferences or customisation has to be minimal enough that their use can only partially implement user preferences. White listing is a step too far against the purpose of YouTube. Thus Google will always be biased to not letting you implement full customisability and user control.
- kingnothing 1y ago
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- jackdawipper 1y agotesting ground for whats coming out of Europe. the most annoying part of all of this is that the people voted for it by voting Labor again. we are fkd.
- pfych 1y agoThis law was popular with the Liberal & Greens parties sadly - was likely regardless of who won the election.
- scubadude 1y agoIt is absolutely not supported by the Greens [1]. "The Greens have also called for: A ban on the targeting, harvesting and selling of young people's data A Digital Duty of Care on tech platforms EU-style guardrails to limit the toxicity of algorithms and extreme content The ability for users to turn down and opt-out of unwanted content The full release of the Online Safety Act review. Investment in education for young people and their families to help develop digital literacy and online safety skills, and equip them with the tools and resources they need for positive and responsible online use. " [2] [1] https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-condemn-passage-boomers-social-media-ban-bill https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-condemn-pass... [2] https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/blunt-social-media-ban-rushed-reckless-greens https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/blunt-social-media-...
- OhioMan2943 1y agoAdding some context which is sorely missing: Our government intends to spruik this at the UN and get other countries on board. Our government has said there will always be a non id method Youtube will still be accessible it is just the account making/usership which will be banned Posting my threaded comment higher up: I'm an australian who completed the esafety survey which helped guide this policy. I pushed for anonymous temporary age verification tokens generated through a government app. Social media is undermining the fabric of our societies and destroying a whole generations emotional development and institutionalising a culture of infectious insecurity. I support this- in part because I know those who want to get around enough or be private will always find a way, but it has a positive, reality affirming effect on the public. Watch the press conference from our PM and comms minister from yesterday to make up your mind on if this is coming from a place of compassion or control. They have said repeatedly they will always ensure a non id method is ensured. I know there are flaws in that though. https://youtu.be/SCSMQUmrh38?feature=shared https://youtu.be/SCSMQUmrh38?feature=shared It's interesting to see that the press conference felt so uniquely grounded in reality and authentically emotional- maybe that's because they are directly challenging the delegitimising impermanent reality of social media- Yes they did bring families with children who had passed from social media abuse on stage but it felt genuine. Doesn't mean your privacy concerns aren't real but they don't always trump protecting a childs emotional development.
- curiousgal 1y agoLast I checked it was the parents' primary job to protect a child's emotional development. And yes some kids might not be fortunate enough to have caring parents but I'm pretty sure that alone would fuck them up more than social media. But hey let us continue to make the world a safe space lest Western parents actually parent their children.
- OhioMan2943 1y agoI wish it wasn't the case but have you seen how emotionally retarded (correct use of the word) this generation of children is? Compare it to even 20 years before. We wouldn't need to do this if more parents actually did their job. By the nature of the social media monoculture it's harder than ever to shield kids from anti intellectualism. Each school basically has the same culture- good and the bad.
- andsoitis 1y ago> "Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens. It's not social media," a YouTube spokesperson said by email. That’s disingenuous. YouTube about page exclaims: ” Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world. We believe that everyone deserves to have a voice, and that the world is a better place when we listen, share and build community through our stories.” If that isn’t social media, I don’t know what is. https://about.youtube/ https://about.youtube/
- zippo_the_zippo 1y agoYouTube Kids is exempt from the ban, this one should have been banned first because the sheer amount of smoothbrain content. Channels like cocomelon and AI-generated songs with weird visuals are played on infinite loop with a mobile stand holding the phone in front of the child's pram while the parents pay no attention- and the children are hooked onto it as if they are hypnotized. These videos in early stage of childhood has a very strong impact on environmental awareness and vocabulary of the children.
- squigz 1y agoAren't parents like that going to ignore the development of their child anyway?
- dvdkon 1y agoYes, and I agree that bad parenting is the real issue, but I also have to acknowledge that leaving children unsupervised will have better results if they don't have the option of just watching a screen. That said, I don't see any bans changing this, parents will just give young children access to their own "adult" YouTube account.
- squigz 1y ago> Yes, and I agree that bad parenting is the real issue, but I also have to acknowledge that leaving children unsupervised will have better results if they don't have the option of just watching a screen. ...Would it? I'm not advocating for this by any means, but at least they'd then be sat in one spot and not, say, roaming around the house, getting into things that might hurt them even more than the screen.
- alt227 1y ago> These videos in early stage of childhood has a very strong impact on environmental awareness and vocabulary of the children. I just managed to navigate the entire preschool age range without my children seeing a single cocomelon video on youtube. Its surprisingly easy, and makes me really wonder why people are complaining. Its as if they feel like they have to show these videos to their kids or something. Dont people have a slop filter? Or are they just opening the youtube kids app and blindly handing their phone to a preschool child to watch whatever they want?
- toofy 1y agothis really sucks. but (and i know this is gonna sting some people) but this has always been coming. this is the absolute inevitable result of these companies refusal to meaningfully self-regulate. anyone who has been online for more than 5 years and didn’t see this coming from a mile away weren’t putting much thought into it. we’ve heard nothing but laughable excuses from these companies for years ‘oh, we can’t, it would cost money…’ well, you’re some of the richest companies in history… if these companies had done even a mediocre amount all of us wouldn’t be getting screwed.
- eviks 1y agoThis is just victim blaming. There is no amount of (self-)regulation that could ever stop extreme ideologues from trying to push further, so you're right on the always coming but, but dead wrong on the cause
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tymelord 1y ago[flagged]
- fn-mote 1y agoAlmost a good comment, just get rid of the unnecessary violence at the end to make your point without being flagged.
- jaimex2 1y agoGovernment over-reach aside. The social media bans are going to make the problem they are aiming to solve sooo much worse. Kids will flock to darker places like 4chan.
- Henchman21 1y agoAt what point do we consider the internet too dangerous to exist?
- southernplaces7 1y agoIdiocy beyond reason. The Australian population seems to have fallen to the same mental illness of their UK cousins, of letting the nannying state pry into every facet to their lives and treat them like stupid little children, even in very basic elements of giving teenagers and kids some modicum of autonomy (with a nice mass potential surveillance cherry on top). For one thing, among all its garbage content, like the rest of the internet, YouTube is also full of absolutely excellent videos for children of all ages, which can range from outright entertaining to deeply educative to a standard that you'll be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. That any rational, mentally functional human being believes the state should have a hand in controlling all of this because of some nebulous bullshit about "misinformation" and other moronic scare words is incredible. Controls of this sort are too stupid for rational support even on a practical level, never mind the poisonous philosophy of state control over expression and opinions that underlies them.
- isaacremuant 1y agoIt's not idiocy. It's malice and it's lobbied hard transnationally. It's coming to the EU as well: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-verification https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver... People who complained about political speech being too scary to tolerate (see the typical discourse around Republicans on sites like these) have been pushing for this all along.
- quintes 1y agoYouTube is actually useful. How to X, doing x making y learn to play x on the piano/ guitar Keep knowledge away from the children. For their “safety”
- Perenti 1y agoYep, keep how to make PCP in a bathtub away from kids. Keep holocaust deniers away from kids. Keep race-hate videos away from kids. Keep Hancock and Joe Rogan away from kids. Keep lies and conspiracy theories away from kids. You seem to think kids are good at risk analysis and critical thinking. There are exceptions, but most people don't develop these things until their late teens when the pre-frontal cortex is developed.
- sbrkYourMmap 1y agoI don't get, why governments all of the world suddenly decided to protect all the children from horrors of Internet. This should be done by parents. This is just stupid.
- Psoodu1313 1y ago"Dystopia by iced earth starts playing" Yep, there seems to be a lot of dissenting thoughts here. Give it about 2 years before ID is required to even view the comments
- OfficeChad 1y ago[dead]
- w10-1 1y agoLeaving aside the merits of the ban for a moment... This is politically beneficial because Google and Facebook squandered historically broad and strong goodwill, and they made themselves a target in the culture wars. Google would have survived just fine with its historically light touch on ads. Both would have been ok without monetizing data collected from users. Both would be successful allowing users to pick aspects they wanted (e.g., shorts or not), rather than coercing them. Unfortunately, there's no market feedback for missed future opportunities, and weak positive benefits from PR that dampens and side-steps negative sentiment, so there's no correction. Had Google taken the privacy tack that Apple did, we might all be storing our most critical data on their servers (given their high data center standards), and thus inclined to do most business on Google cloud. Both companies have founders still directing a majority of shares. There's no excuse of corruption by short-sighted shareholders.
- 7bit 1y agoI think there's a lot of wishful thinking in your post. Alphabet is the 5th biggest and richest company in the world. From a capitalistic perspective, they made everything right and the point you bring are negligible.
- w10-1 1y agoPerhaps. A hypothesis that their business would be bigger could be seen as a wish. But Alphabet's stock multiples are below comparable companies. From a capitalist perspective, that means they're being poorly run. So I think you can do more than minimize ("wishful", "negligible"). Also, what you seem to be saying is that being among the biggest makes everything they did right, so one should just accept that. If I were a Google principal hiring any leader, I'd want to select candidates who had concrete plans for improvement -- opportunities to grow the business or to correct mistakes. Isn't that a better approach? If instead Google principals and managers were hiring for those who accept their decisions - loyalty -- I'd run in the opposite direction.
- leoc 1y agoPage and Brin have consistently escaped blame for things that Zuckerberg and Musk are excoriated for. It turns out that you just have to lie low, instead of jumping up and down for attention in the press or on social media, and people will obligingly forget that you exist and have effectively full control over your giant, society-dominating company.
- geoffbp 1y agoMy first thought when I saw the age checking in the UK was it’s more of a social monitoring tool than what they say it is
- isaacremuant 1y ago> Artificial intelligence has supercharged the spread of misinformation on social media platforms such as YouTube, said Adam Marre, chief information security officer at cyber security firm Arctic Wolf. There's no bigger purveyor of "misinformation" than the Australian government. An authoritarian disgusting pool of corruption and hypocritical righteousness. But people get what they deserve, having pushed for authoritarianism all along to combat speech that scared them on covid policies and more
- Ylpertnodi 1y agoThe Juice Media on youtube, is always a fun watch.
- lesuorac 1y agoI'm kinda surprised that the rightsholders don't try to push the accountability onto the ISPs. The ISPs are giving the individuals their licence plates (IP Addresses) so are in a good spot to say this IP is allowed to access X content. For devices being a NAT then the local router can provide that information to the ISP to forward to the service.
- defrost 1y agoThere's already Australian High Court precedent establishing that Australian ISP's are blind providers of data with no obligation to spy on their users for the benefit of third parties wanting user intel to connect the dots. That was WRT torrenting, but it's a case that'd serve as a foundation for any push back in other related claims. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadshow_Films_Pty_Ltd_v_iiNet_Ltd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadshow_Films_Pty_Ltd_v_iiNet... This case is important in copyright law of Australia because it tests copyright law changes required in the Australia–United States Free Trade Agreement, and set a precedent for future law suits about the responsibility of Australian Internet service providers with regards to copyright infringement via their services. The managing director of iiNet, Michael Malone, claimed that "iiNet cannot disconnect a customer's phone line based on an allegation. The alleged offence needs to be pursued by the police and proven in the courts. iiNet would then be able to disconnect the service as it had been proven that the customer had breached our Customer Relations Agreement," In general it established that Australian ISP's are not obligated to act as a nanny wrt their customers. ISP's can, of course, choose to do all manner of MiTM behaviour and monitoring but they are not obligated* to do so. * save via five eyes related unspoken mandatory duties nobody talks about
- tamrix 1y agoWhich raises the question. If the government really cared about kids why couldn't they fund the ISPs to have an opt in service to ban social media or implement these controls?
- skeezyboy 1y agoparents worrying about cocomelon is modern day hysteria. parents worried because its new and their brains have past a critical point of plasticity
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- aggamo 1y agoThe objective should not be banning. Not even mentioning, needing to input your identity as basis for your personal profile. The problem is not the free-sharing, there is an enormous potential for social media platforms but, that comes from what it is allowed to develop in the platform, i.e. the predatory design and content. We should restrict these predatory techniques and type of features to be developed as well as, promote good use among children. I don't mean, kids you should only look at educational content as entertainment is as important to the development as the learning.
- jongjong 1y agoI'm starting to think that banning major platforms is fine, necessary even. These platforms have gained enormous power and they need to be reigned in by whatever means necessary or else countries like Australia will forever remain vassal states of whoever controls the platforms. With US tariffs being imposed on Australia, the economy will go belly up if it cannot have its own independent media. I'm starting to think that some of the narratives around censorship are a PsyOp to prevent the government from doing what must be done to protect the economy. Banning specific platforms is not the same as preventing people from posting what they want online. So long as the latter is maintained, it's fine. People can find new platforms. Ideally smaller platforms. The government of any country should be allowed to shut down any large corporation it wants if it does not align with the interests of the people who live there. The only thing the government cannot do is block people's free speech online. A government can demolish a public square if it wants; sure people won't be able to go there to talk anymore, but people can still go talk elsewhere. We shouldn't conflate banning of platforms with censorship. It's not the same. It's kind of ridiculous how these things have been bunched up together.
- bodhi_mind 1y agoThis reminds me of Amazon fire’s kids program. It’s absolutely worthless to whitelist content when the default “age appropriate” filters have thousands of content that need to be blacklisted one by one and then new ones are added all the time. I even built a chrome extension that loops over them to disable but they just keep coming.
- pembrook 1y agoOutsourcing more and more of our parenting responsibilities to politicians...what could possibly go wrong? But hey, I guess the elites in developed countries always know what's best for the children. What would we, the stupid unwashed masses do without them! I would think the Australian government should instead focus on fixing its batshit insane housing policy and leave the Big Brother stuff to each individual family. But I'm weird I guess.
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoThe problem is that if you are not logged in, you get the lowliest, bottom-feeding trash from the YouTube shorts.
- stefanwlb 1y ago[dead]