Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption • Hacker News Board

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

#531

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 5:59 PM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #458

johnnyanmac wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something being hard shouldn't be a reason to not do it. Put the features in and punish those who abuse the system. That's what regulation should be for. I think in general we need a wider solution to rampant botting as AI makes it even easier to bot.

If the cost exceeds the benefit, that's a reason to not do something.

Somehow I don't think the billion dollar monopoly on video hosting is worried about doing anything more than serving adverts at this point. So let's just enshittify the product until we get broken up or a competitor somehow rises.

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

#532

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

goopypoop wrote: post #501

johnnyanmac wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

depends on the age range. and that's the problem. I don't want Youtube's input aside from being a dumb pipe. I want them to hand me the remote so I can manage my feed.

> depends on the age range. How's that?

The older the kid, the less I'll filter their content. I'll make sure that a 5 year old only has specific channels to access. A 16 year old is more around a point where I'm only worried about scams and propaganda instead of finding a curse word in one video.

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

#533

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

johnisgood wrote: post #519

insane_dreamer wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right but the point is to be able to block the shorts on my teens phone while still allowing him to benefit from all the useful stuff on YT

He literally just told you the solution. Install uBlock Origin on your teens' phone and use the right filter list. Unless of course, they are smart enough.

... to change the browser extension settings, disable the extension, or use another browser, not to mention that uBlock isn't available on iOS

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

#534

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 6:15 PM UTC

owisd wrote: post #345

aspbee555 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this 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"

A 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]

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

#535

Post by stefanwlb » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

[dead]

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

#536

Post by alt227 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 6:41 PM UTC

haizhung wrote: post #528

alt227 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 peop…

The parents putting these videos on autoplay are usually the ones who can’t afford to spend quality time with their kid. Yet their kid demands attention. So they put the phone in front of them to be able to do whatever they needed to do. I don’t really blame them, in today’s economic climate there are a lot of people who have to struggle every waking second to get by.

I would argue that for every person that 'can’t afford' to spend time with their children, there are 2 who are just too lazy. Thats the real sad issue here.

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

#537

Post by the_hoser » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 6:46 PM UTC

leoc wrote: post #360

w10-1 wrote: post #353

Leaving 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 aspect…

Page 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.

This is it 100%. Zuckerberg and Musk aren't doing anything more awful than Page or Brin, but they're smart enough to understand that it's WAY easier to get away with sketchy stuff when you're not someone that the average person knows about. There's a huge amount of value in keeping your mouth shut.

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

#538

Post by alt227 » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 6:51 PM UTC

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #463

alt227 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As usual 'the other side' is exactly what we all knew it was. It is people who dont understand technology getting frothed up by media scares into believing government promises about censorship. > They have said repeatedly they will always ensure a non id method is ensured And you believed them?

Careful I think you might be choking on all that strawman. Terminally online types complain all day about how social media is terrible and needs to be regulated until the moment actual legislation is being passed then they complain about that instead.

You really accuse me of a strawman argument and then literally write this after?

> Terminally online types complain all day about how social media is terrible and needs to be regulated until the moment actual legislation is being passed then they complain about that instead.

'Terminally online types?', 'complain all day?'

You have broad assumptions, exaggerations, and stereotypes in that one sentence. It could be the dictionary definition of strawman.

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

#539

Post by johnisgood » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 7:08 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #533

johnisgood wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally just told you the solution. Install uBlock Origin on your teens' phone and use the right filter list. Unless of course, they are smart enough.

... to change the browser extension settings, disable the extension, or use another browser, not to mention that uBlock isn't available on iOS

Yup. But apparently it seems like it might work for him. I do not know. They are probably smart enough to disable the extension. There are many other, fool-proof ways though.

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

#540

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 7:31 PM UTC

superfish wrote: post #349

Dilettante_ wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's not the same people complaining in both instances I just learned a brand-new term for this: It's called the "Goomba Fallacy"[1] [1] https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Goomba_fallacy

> The term references an Internet meme depicting the fallacy using Goombas, which was first posted to Twitter by @supersylvie_ on January 29, 2024. The history of this term goes back… one year? (from a rather unpopular meme) I’m all for introducing new vocab in english but it feels like there should already be a term for this. Maybe “population fallacy”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy ?

Funny enough, searching "goomba fallacy" in wikipedia's search yields [association fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy) and it appears to be more accurate. (Also, what I assume to be semantic search hitting that article from that search is amusing and more than a little telling.)

The population fallacy is when one infers information about an individual from the group, which wasn't done here as there is no specific individual in question. The population fallacy is seeing that some demographic likes to do a thing more than other demographics and thinking therefore any given subject in that demographic likes to do that thing.