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Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

reuters.com

171–180 of 580 posts

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#171

Its 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.

YT still has the great instructional videos, but teens today (my son included) are mostly just scrolling the shorts just like TikTok. YT is heavily orienting itself as social media.

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#172
post #20

Perhaps this will mean a version of YouTube comes out without YouTube shorts integration. YouTube shorts, imo, legitimises the govts complaint.

I 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 t…

You 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.

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#173
post #31

This is raising a generation of radicalized teens with institutionalized hatred against the older generation. Will end well

Hatred/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.

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#174

I 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…

> I 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 The answer is to this question is always: it is too niche a product feature for a giant corporation to prioritize. This product would require constant work to keep in sync as UIs and features change. It would be one more feature to regression test again…

Your second paragraph is kind of funny as a solution to your first, but was nonetheless what I was going to suggest: since it would require too much work for a multi-trillion dollar company to be cable of building, you can instead rely on hobbyists and use yt-dlp and jellyfin to make your own whitelisted youtube.

The option (or at least documentation) does not seem to be there for computers. Is it only on mobile devices?

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#175
post #85
post #20

Perhaps this will mean a version of YouTube comes out without YouTube shorts integration. YouTube shorts, imo, legitimises the govts complaint.

People would go to TikTok if shorts were removed.

People who want shorts would go to TikTok. People who keep clicking the "don't show me Shorts" button are probably not using TikTok in the first place.

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably 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 part…

Agreed but ElCapitanMarkla is paying for an ad free service so at that point (as far as I can see) there shouldn't be any reason they can't have what they suggest.

[deleted]

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#177

I 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…

For windows / linux I've found the freetube app to provide a lot of sane controls. I can block channels as needed, block shorts, hide profile pictures of commenters, and a lot of other quality of life things. You can even set a password for the settings as needed. Otherwise in the browser (firefox) I've been somewhat succesful in blocking youtube shorts with ublock origin filter rules: www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1) www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2) www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(4) www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-entry-renderer.ytd-guide-section-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2)

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#178

It'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 click…

That 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.

1. 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

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#179

testing 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.

This law was popular with the Liberal & Greens parties sadly - was likely regardless of who won the election.

Re: Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

#180
post #20

Perhaps this will mean a version of YouTube comes out without YouTube shorts integration. YouTube shorts, imo, legitimises the govts complaint.

I 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 t…

As a free YouTube user, I was able to disable the Shorts stuff by disabling watch history on my YouTube account. I can watch shorts from my subscriptions only, on the subscriptions tab, by explicitly clicking on them.
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