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

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

#331

Post by goopypoop » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:34 AM UTC

frereubu wrote: post #185

vineyardmike wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

That feature isn't what I think the parent comment is asking for. What you've linked to is specifically YouTube Kids, and it's groups of channels whitelisted by the YouTube team. What I think the parent comment is asking for, and I want too, is full availability of all YouTube channels, but the ability to block everything except whitelisted channels. I agree, it's too niche a product. But I often think that people wh…

"parent your kids" doesn't mean "ask youtube to be better", it means "teach your kids to choose better"

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

#332

Post by squigz » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:34 AM UTC

zippo_the_zippo wrote: post #255

YouTube 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 chil…

Aren't parents like that going to ignore the development of their child anyway?

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

#333

Post by eviks » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:35 AM UTC

toofy wrote: post #265

this 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…

This 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

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

#334

Post by jackvalentine » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:51 AM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #187

jemmyw wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't banning viewing videos, they're banning kids having an account I believe. I'm sure their approach to enforcement will be something along the lines of relying on the websites to sort it out and fining them if they don't. The govt doesn't need to enforce the age check themselves or even provide or suggest a mechanism. I imagine any smaller players in this market will just stay away from having an official p…

This 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. "The govt doesn't need to enforce the age check themselves or even provide or suggest a mechanism.…

> This ban includes watching videos. The law says they must take action to prevent underage persons from accessing their services.

The law, as written:

> There are age restrictions for certain social media platforms. A provider of such a platform must take reasonable steps to prevent children who have not reached a minimum age from having accounts.

No commentary I have seen supports your interpretation.

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

#335

Post by modeless » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:52 AM UTC

shakna wrote: post #319

abduhl wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are, in fact, in charge of your teenager as a parent. They are, in fact, still a kid. Controlling your kid’s access to things which you deem harmful is, in fact, not abusive. Setting appropriate boundaries does not, in fact, mean you are not treating your kid as a person who has their own sense of self. Most kids will not, in fact, hate you for setting boundaries and being their parent. It is quite impressive tha…

They're no longer a child. That is why they have a different nomenclature - teenager. They are not "a kid". Treating an adolescent as a child is damaging to their mental state [0]. I already said boundaries are a thing: You are there to guide them. But you are not there... To control them. Because doing so, is damaging. And as a parent, damaging your family is both heinous, and a crime. To put it another way: The law…

This is an argument for not applying parental controls to YouTube for teenagers, while the guy I was replying to is explicitly asking for parental controls for YouTube for teenagers. I think "teenager" is too broad to have a productive discussion here. Maybe we can agree that sometime between 13 and 19 you should definitely stop trying to impose parental controls on your kids.

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

#336

Post by dankwizard » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:55 AM UTC

blast wrote: post #66

asyx wrote: post #3

I 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.

> I owe my career to YouTube That's interesting. How so?

I have an n8n work flow that pumps out AI slop to the very demographic being targetted by this bill!!!!!!!!! HOW DARE THEY

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

#337

Post by BrenBarn » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:59 AM UTC

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…

> The answer is to this question is always: it is too niche a product feature for a giant corporation to prioritize.

The answer is even shorter: money. Our society prioritizes "giant corporation makes money" over good things happening.

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

#338

Post by thombles » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 4:59 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #228

hollerith wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most people abandon views like yours when they become a parent. Are you a parent?

Very recently actually yes. Not that it mattered if I wasn't, because I was a kid and I know how important freedom was to my development, as does everyone who had it, that's sufficient to be inoculated against this safetyism. And yes most people now have abandoned it, that's exactly what I'm complaining about. Not just with their kids mind you but even with themselves, that's why we have people in their late 20s and…

Have a look at Jon Haidt's book The Anxious Generation. He makes the case rather well that we need to cut out the safetyism in the physical world while getting serious about it in the online world. It's not some abstract matter of the morality of kids' digital freedom, it's the tanking of mental health and increase in self-harm and attempted suicide since smartphones came along.

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

#339

Post by stephen_g » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 5:01 AM UTC

eviks wrote: post #322

stephen_g wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From here in Australia, nobody was really asking for this here. Best I can tell it came from a single but sustained pressure campaign by one of the Murdoch newspapers. Then the Government gamed some survey polling to make it look like there was support for it (asking questions that assumed an impossible perfect system that could magically block under-16s with no age verification for adults). Still, over 40% of parent…

> From here in Australia, nobody was really asking for this here. > Still, over 40% of parents said that 15s and under should be able to access Facebook and Instagram So a whopping 60% were asking for it!!!

They weren't asking for it - the small sample of parents (not a random sample of voters) agreed in principle with the impossible-in-real-life blocking with no age verification for adults system, but nobody actually really cared enough to push for it except one newspaper pressure campaign...

Yet, as I said the Government was making out like that this gamed survey meant it was basically unanimous support for a system that will require full identity/age verification for everybody (yet they’re still really trying hard to keep the ‘everybody’ bit quiet)

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

#340

Post by sadleqabd » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 5:01 AM UTC

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #183

SilverElfin wrote: post #62

Why 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?

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. 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 posi…

Social media is undermining the fabric of our societies. So are authoritarian governments, perhaps even more so.