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Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

reuters.com

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

#231

Post by modeless »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #207
modeless wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube kids has a feature to only show whitelisted channels and videos. It's been there a few years now. You can share videos to your kids directly from the YouTube app.

Hmmm I'll check it out, I last looked into this about a year ago. I'm pretty sure it still allowed a bunch of crap through that I didn't want them to have access to. edit: Oh neat they do have a parental approval mode in there now. Last time I was in here they only let you set an age range for the content that you wanted. It still seems a bit weird though, I can select a channel from the list they are presenting me b…

Yeah the interface in the Kids app sucks. The way to do it is from your own phone. Use the "share" feature and choose "with kids". It takes a lot of taps to share a channel, that could be improved for sure. But if you share good channels as you come across them then over time you'll build up a great library of content for your kids.

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

#232

Post by firecall »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #224
curiousgal wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last 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.

" lest Western parents actually parent their children." I don't understand this argument I keep hearing. What is your understanding of parenting that doesn't involve controlling what they are exposed to? It sounds like you want to say, parents should parent in any way that doesn't burden non-parents. Why would that be in a democracy?

I agree.

This idea that parents should have to be the gatekeepers for everything doesn’t work.

We work better as a community, and we have democracy so we can elect people to take care of things that are good for all of us.

Broadly, as a society we have taken to blaming individuals for not being perfect at everything.

Parenting is traditionally a group activity. The individual consumer capitalist parent is a recent, mid 20th century onwards, construct.

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

#233

Post by modeless »

lstamour wrote: post #229
modeless wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everyone saying this doesn't exist? It's right there on the linked page! It's called "Approved Content Only" and I assure you that it exists, it's a real feature, it works just like you want, I use it myself, my kids watch Primitive Technology and Smarter Every Day and they can't watch videos I don't whitelist. It does have a few issues. It's not reliable in showing everything you allow, sometimes things are m…

Edit: I just noticed the list of supported countries (in my link below) includes Canada but excludes the French-speaking province of Quebec. It seems a bit spiteful to go so far as to ensure a service can be legally delivered in such a long list of countries and then exclude Quebec. Hm, I was about to use Puerto Rico as an example, but it’s not in the list as well, but perhaps it’s considered part of the United State…

An unfiltered web browser has stuff a lot worse than YouTube. That's on you if you give your kids access to that.

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

#234

Post by ryandrake »

giantg2 wrote: post #112

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.

> 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 its mechanics or feasibility.

I predict it won't even matter. This law is unenforceable in practice. There is nothing that a bored and highly-motivated teenager who has hours after school to fuck around, won't be able to circumvent. I think back to my teenage years: None of the half-assed attempts made to keep teenagers away from booze, cigarettes, drugs, or porn even remotely worked. These things were readily available to anyone who wanted them. If there is an "I am an adult" digital token, teenagers will easily figure out how to mint them. If the restrictions can be bypassed with VPNs, that's what they will do.

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

#235

Post by ncruces »

XorNot wrote: post #215
ncruces wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent (who also btw uses Google products every single effin day) I just can't agree. This is entirely Google's issue to fix. Yes, YouTube has amazing educational content. I'd really like to make it available for my kids to see. YouTube, however, makes it completely impossible to permanently filter/hide/disable the bane that is YouTube Shorts. I don't let my kids on TikTok not because it's Chinese, but because i…

Except this is something the government could practically fix. We could actually mandate that certain types of filtering features be implemented and available to users. You can absolutely write laws which are aimed at ensuring user choice and agency are preserved. This legislation and the broader idea of bans are none of that.

I don't disagree.

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

#236

Post by wileydragonfly »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #133

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…

The ability to filter what your kids can access disappeared with the invention of the transistor radio.

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

#237

Post by nojs »

viraptor wrote: post #219
forgotoldacc wrote: post #46

A 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 n…

Requiring photo IDs is not the only solution. Things don't have to be implemented that way. I can be both for privacy in this case and limits on social media. Australia already requires you to register for voting and other things, so the trivial solution here is: give out anonymous time-limited tokens from the gov site, with no logging. Essentially a signed timestamp + random number. > People who asked for social med…

> Australia already requires you to register for voting and other things, so the trivial solution here is: give out anonymous time-limited tokens from the gov site

Which “gov site”? Registering for voting does not give you an electronic log in of any kind.

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

#238

Post by theelous3 »

vineyardmike wrote: post #161
ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #133

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…

You heard it here first folks - children are too niche now.

2ish billion people, well known for their indirect spending power, are not worth figuring out a simple whitelist system for.

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

#239

Post by sien »

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #191

Adding 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 anon…

The case against social media is pretty weak.

https://www.conspicuouscognition.com/p/the-case-against-soci...

Meanwhile Australia has the largest per capita losses on gambling in the world.

https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/gambling

Which the government doesn't care about. This may have something to do that people don't criticise the government when they are just losing their life's savings.

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

#240

Post by [deleted] »

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #226
jbarham wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pushed for anonymous temporary age verification tokens generated through a government app. Cute. Let's see the reviews for an existing Australian government auth app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=au.gov.mygov.m... And the kicker is that the above app doesn't even need to exist since myGov could just use industry standard TOTP two-factor auth like the dozens of other services I use. Aussie politic…

I'm not saying aus government online portals and services aren't top tier dog shit- but doing an age token through mygov is the best approach, hopefully with enough pressure to make it non shit. The alternative is an acceleration of the negative cultural trends and atomisation we have now. You don't get to cry about the negative effects of social media but also cry about censoring it/protecting an impressionable popu…

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