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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

#161

Post by vineyardmike »

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 against an ever growing list changes, and an ever growing list of client apps that need to work across an endless list of phones, computers, tvs, etc.

This is why it is important that society normalize third party clients to public web services. We should be allowed to create and use whatever UI we want for the public endpoints that are exposed.

PS: this particular feature exists though.

https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172308?hl=en&...

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

#162

Post by __d »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #77

The 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…

The 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?

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

#163

Post by giantg2 »

exasperaited wrote: post #155
giantg2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a happy medium. The big beautiful bill stuff is not normal. There are some states that have single issue clauses where the bill must be a single issue, resulting in more concise bills. Enforcement and rules can be made by agencies too. I think the whiplash is more of a two party thing since the bipartisan ones rarely flip-flop. The other stuff barely passes. We would still have whiplash even if implementatio…

> We would still have whiplash even if implementation were left to another congress because it would still barely pass. Not so, not if it were left to cross-party committees. By and large even the US system seems to have functional committees when you ignore a few grandstanders. Unfortunately the US system seemingly tends towards creating massive legislation, partly because of the absence of this secondary legislatio…

"The primary/secondary legislation approach tends to head off that possibility because secondary legislation that is genuinely unwieldy tends not to get out of committee."

Cause and effect is off here. If the primary legislation we already have makes it out of committee to be loaded down after, then having secondary legislation would also be loaded down after. Splitting into two stages isn't the fix. Fixing the two party issues would still be necessary.

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

#164

Post by j1elo »

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…

> it's needing to submit a selfie and ID photo to be verified, saved, and permanently bound to your every single action online.

And leaked every 6 months, now including your ID photos and real name instead of an internet pseudonym, and lots of other sweet details that make extortion schemes a child's play

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

#165

Post by kristopolous »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #79
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…

> 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. I guess I'm fine with not visiting any of these age-restricted sites. They're not the thing I would miss if the whole internet shut down. (In fact, there's precious little I would miss — maybe just archive.org?)

If "save the children" creates enough friction to bring the demise of social media then I'll go lay a flower on Anita Bryant's grave and tell her I'm sorry.

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

#166

Post by upboundspiral »

ncruces wrote: post #39
simpaticoder wrote: post #8

Completely 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 m…

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…

I have been able to somewhat reasonably block youtube shorts with the following custom filter ublock origin rules (on firefox at least). Note that it might accidentally hide some legitimate stuff but from my experience it should be pretty minimal if any. I think to hide the shorts from the left sidebar it hides one of your subscribed channels but that's all I've noticed so far.

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

#168

Post by jackdawipper »

binary132 wrote: post #95

I 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 ex…

yea 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.

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

#169

Post by __d »

spicyusername wrote: post #134
__d wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you substitute the word “television” for “YouTube” or “social media”, you can almost exactly replay the arguments of the 1970s.

Except in this case the content is basically totally unmoderated and mediated through an algorithm designed to keep the childrens attention permanently, so I would say the circumstances are at least a little different than back then.

Yes. And yet.

It’s like every generation gets fixated on something new which can be perceived as moral decay and societal harm, and then rails against it. Making it even more popular with the younger generation, of course.

I’ve seen the same thing play out with rock music, television, computer games, and now social media. There’s likely examples back throughout history.

I think you can mount an argument against all of these things. In retrospect though, it doesn’t hold up. I wonder if social media is the same?

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