YouTube to be included in Australia's social media ban for children under 16
pm.gov.au
pm.gov.au
> Collective Shout, a small but vocal lobby group, has long called for a mandatory internet filter that would prevent access to adult content for everyone in Australia. Its director, Melinda Tankard Reist, was recently appointed to the stakeholder advisory board for the government’s age assurance technology trial before the under-16s social media ban comes into effect in Australia in December.[1]
I have no idea what the hell is going on and it all seems very coordinated but I hope the pendulum swings back so hard next time it takes at least half a century for Tipper Gore to resurrect again.
1- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/29/mastercard-vis...
So it's time something is done about it.
I will try not to recommend any games to any child moving forward, and instead direct them to other hobbies. Because not only are games mostly a waste of time anyway, but they're also turning into an entrypoint to pornography.
One of the things I've learned as an adult is that moral busybodies like this are, on average, horrible parents who would rather tell the powers-thay-be how the government should raise their kid (and everyone else's), than raise their kid themselves.
Because, ultimately, this whole reaction and performance isn't about the kid. It's about the parent.
It's parents that don't want to put in the effort to actually monitor what their kid is doing they want to hand a kid an ipad and let the ipad only let them see things they feel are good, but not actually have to monitor what the kid is doing because government ipad content is babysitting/raising their kid for them.
I think this has always been the correct approach, from the very inception of video games. In the absolute best case scenario, playing video games is a sedentary activity that is educational or facilitates creative expression, but that's the absolute best case and educational games have proven to be a borderline farcical concept and relatively few games allow for any sort of real creative expression at all. What's left is a kid sitting on his ass staring at a screen, and that's without getting into any of the potentially harmful influences.
Restricting access to video games used to be more normal I think. When I was a kid my mom had an egg timer that she'd use to meter me and my brothers. 30 minutes of Sim City a day, then I had to go outside. A lot of my friends, the ones with responsible and engaged parents, had similar arrangements. Somehow our culture seems to have lost this, as it also lost the premise of cellphones not being permitted in schools. At some point our culture seems to have simply surrendered to the commercial interests of tech corps and forgotten about what's best for kids.
I'm not trying to get you to change your mind about what you recommend to children but it's worth saying that gaming as a hobby is only a waste of time as much as any hobby.
No, no, I'm crazy. Because some have kissing, we should ban TV and movies. They're a waste of time (because it doesn't promote me as a source of labor) and are a gateway to video pornography - the horror!
I'll go with a popular one with this crowd: chess. What "skills, abilities, knowledge or muscles" does playing chess improve other than things directly related to playing chess? I can think of game theory but that also seems like it could be improved by playing other games. I think you'd agree that chess is a game and a waste of time but you'd probably not agree that it's bad that it's a waste of time; wasting time is rather the point. Time flies when you're having fun, as it goes.
Saying "its a hobby like any hobby" glosses over the obvious fact that not all hobbies are made equal.
I didn't write that. I wrote it's "only a waste of time as much as any hobby" because the person I replied to wrote that they don't want to recommend video games as a hobby to children due in part to it being a waste of time. It's moot that the hobby is a waste of time because the point of it is to be a waste of time. They might not want to recommend games as a hobby to children for similar reasons as to what you detailed but that's different from not wanting to recommend the hobby because it's a waste of time.
Every generation has its own freak out about it and ends up making things worse.
Making porn harder to access for kids will just make them sneakier. This is all just a cover to add more surveillance into the life of adults.
Your comment about sexualization of normal content is also wrong. If you compare remakes of classics like Dragon quest 3 you'll notice the new versions are way more prude than the originals. There was even recent drama about it.
Go on steam, not signed in and go to new releases. I promise you there are porn games right there on the first page of results. Often of a very degenerate nature. I don’t even need to be authenticated to see that. But I do need to go out of my way to verify my age, if I click on a call of duty game or something.
BTW your use of "degenerate" word suggests you have a bias.
If a platform doesn’t curate then governments or the legal system, or lobbyists targeting payment providers will step in.
This push for governments to restrict EVERYONE's kids because a group of parents dislike something is insane, if you don't want your kid to play/watch something, the enforce some damn rules on your own kid.
Thou dost protest too much?
Well, they did. They do rotate games from time to time.
https://i.postimg.cc/rmx7Tyz5/GOG-selling-porn-2024-10-19-21...
This was taken in October last year.
It's getting quite overt.
The "they" you're all mentioning simply doesn't exist. Who are they ? All the governments of the west somehow working together ? They can't even cooperate more than 6 months on internal matters but they globally agreed on some world wide evil plan ? And the plan is to ban kids from youtube ? Because reasons ?
Who is going to collect more data if there are less websites/users ? Who's selling "the" data ? Who's buying "the" data ? What data ? How are governments benefiting from censoring brain rot in a way that doesn't also benefit me exactly ?
All the data is already collected by US megacorps and stored on US servers the US gov can already fully access, it doesn't get any worse than that
EU is actively working on "age verification" through a digital wallet.
Once that is in place it is a small step to wall off the entire Internet unless you verify yourself through your digital ID.
Since Trump is as borderline fascist as von der Leyen there's no fucking doubt in my mind the United States will follow the EU as soon as there are signs of success or even earlier.
Proof: https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic...
Especially note "The objective is to develop an EU-wide solution to age verification that reinforces the Digital Services Act (DSA) objective to ensure safe, secure, and trusted digital space and the Louvain-la-Neuve Declaration, which promotes a safer and more trustworthy online environment."
Whenever those in power talk about "security", "safety" and "trust" they talk about other things entirely which, for the larger public, have nothing to do with these topics at all.
If you think any democrat president wouldn't do the exact same, I don't know what to tell you...
But Trump is the current US president isn't he?
Except that it's real and happening, it does not magically become non-existence just because that you don't see it or refuse to understand.
Right now it looks like "something bad happens it 100% has to be a world wide conspiracy against our FrEeDoM", which is like the least likely reason in the list of causes according to occam's razor.
It IS a matter of national security if your nations children grow up and witness all the horrors it's government does abroad and heavens forbid grow anti government sentiment or opinions.
When I open yt I get an empty page with a search box, even clicking on the Shorts page it just says "Recommendations are off Your watch history is off, and we rely on watch history to tailor your Shorts feed. You can change your setting at any time, or try searching for Shorts instead. Learn more."
However, I feel like YouTube does a genuinely good job — at least for me personally — of curating my feed with videos I have genuine interest in; mostly being tech talks and home DIY.
I'd hate to lose the discoverability I currently have for the sake of having to disable a feature like Shorts.
But ultimately I can't see how a blanket law banning kids makes sense instead of a law banning the platform from targeting kids.
Give a 5 years old unlimited access to youtube and witness the cesspool it is. Nobody is saying youtube is 100% bad, but people who don't know better (kids for example) are easily manipulated in watching the most brain rot content you can imagine, for hours and hours. It's an ocean of shit within which you might find a few gems if you know what you want or if you get extremely lucky.
Content wise they used to be until very recently, what did I have access to as a kid before internet ? Some books from my parents, some booked from school, whatever was allowed on public TV when my parents allowed me to watch it, maybe the odd porn mag from the older brother of a friend of a friend. That's very tame compared to what you have access to from even heavily censored search engines like google
Every time I hear some AI video my kids watching, it's a short.
99% of it seems to be AI voiceover slop. Probably all stolen videos with faked context. Ban it for everybody, nothing of value will be lost.
People will realize it when it's too late.
There are reports of posts related to the middle eastern conflict being censored. Somehow I don't think this about violence and adult content.
It is no coincidence that multiple Western countries are pushing for the same thing at the same time. The UK is another example, with EU-level discussions about the same and chat control.
If I were younger, I'd think that's a coincidence and has nothing to do with WEF and similar totalitarian globalist organizations pushing their agendas. But now, as a grown-up cynic, I realize that it's just a plain old conspiracy in practice, not a theory anymore.
It's a sad thing that once free societies are rapidly deteriorating and approaching China's level of freedoms. I'm afraid there's not much time left to prevent a dystopian Orwellian (or Zamyatinesque) future of see-through citizen slaves.
YouTube won't fight it for that reason. It's regulatory capture.
If YouTube really did want to stop yt-dlp, they'd encrypt all the videos with Widevine.
It probably breaks anonymous access to videos (when not signed in to a Google account). Unless yt-dlp provide shared cookies that its thousands of users can use there will still be account level tracking of video access.
I'm not willing to give up the latter to save the masses from the former.
Yes there is a lot of crap because it's both easier to produce than quality content, and has higher incentives to keep making more of it.
But that's the same with eg. books. Aside from small curated book stores, pick up a random book. Most likely it's not worth to cut down the tree it was printed on.
It's very easy to watch only quality content and there is an incredible amount of it on youtube. I've learned lots of electronics, CAD work, mechanical engineering, watched tons of lectures from amazing professors...
That advice is for adults BTW. Kids don't have the requisite developed tastes and self control, so YouTube's algorithm will almost always send them into a death spiral of brain rot. Kids shouldn't have unsupervised access to this kind of system.
Unfortunately, this simply isn't true. YouTube doesn't recognize "clickbait slop" as a topic of its own; it's a type of content which can be associated with many different topics. For instance, let's say that a child is interested in cats. They will probably be recommended a lot of horrible AI slop videos about kittens, even if they never click on any of them.
Why does this matter? Why aren't we asking the 17, 16, 15, 14 year olds and down about their situations instead, including opening up the vote to them?
The big problem with all these 'butwhataboutthechildren' laws, is they are by definition, disenfranchised, but they are also subject to the whims of the voters.
Now people will naturally say 'something something prefrontal cortex'. Even the UNCRC 2019a says that. However, we're not running fMRI on children and adults as a permission to vote - its just a simple age gate. And I would argue, that another commentor's parent who thinks Pokemon were demon names probably wouldn't pass that either.
But we end up with garbage laws, and only exist to make those who can vote feel good, while doing damage to those who can't vote.
And as an aside, if companies are doing predatory and illegal things, then the companies should be punished appropriately.
I agree that we're wildly inconsistent about when children are treated as children, when they're treated as adults and when they become adults (16? 18? 21? when their brain development actually finishes somewhere between 20 and 30?). And not only do we end up with garbage laws but we also end up w garbage exceptions like in juvenile criminal law. We acknowledge that young offenders can't be treated the same as adult offenders because our legal system takes into account intent and the offender's ability to reason and know right from wrong, but then we charge children as adults when we're particularly grossed out by the crime or the prosecutor wants to appear tough.
If we see a child bullied in school, we don't say the parents of the victim are not doing enough parenting. If an adult flashes or cat calls a child in the street, we don't blame the child's parents for not doing enough parenting.
Why is it when it comes to social media/pornography/sexually violent games (that would not have received a rating if sold in stores 10 years ago) everyone is up in arms that things are going too far. All you see is conspiracy theory nonsense at how the state wants to mind control us.
Apple tried to fix some of this at the client end with CSAM scanning and automatic dick pic blurring but had to roll some of this back due to the uproar and accusations on spying etc.
We no longer live in a high trust society and children are paying the price for it, as well as adults.
I don't want my phone scanned or to be denied access to adult discord channels or have to submit an ID to visit "adult" content like home-brewing beer subreddits. But now that's the price I am having to pay because no one wants to be responsible. Especially the companies making money off of children.
But what are we supposed to do instead when everything has been shot down previously? The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it.
Children are being groomed by high-profile paedophiles and trafficked to powerful people with no consequence, and you want to give those people more control over the internet?
> But what are we supposed to do instead when everything has been shot down previously?
What would "being responsible" have looked like, prior to these pushes?
> If we see a child bullied in school, we don't say the parents of the victim are not doing enough parenting. If an adult flashes or cat calls a child in the street, we don't blame the child's parents for not doing enough parenting.
Perhaps not, but we also don't abolish schools or ban kids from going outside, do we?
> The amount of children being groomed is probably the highest it has ever been, but because it's done in their own bedrooms over the internet everyone ignores it.
What does this mean, exactly? And what sort of source do you have?
> I'm surprised at the lack of care for children in commentary around social media bans
I think you're misunderstanding the pushback. I think most people are perfectly agreed that yeah, children shouldn't be exposed to some things until a certain age. The problem is the question of how we do that without utterly destroying privacy for everyone else too? If the answer is "we can't", then it might be we have to look at ways to deal with our children being exposed to those things - either, you know, don't let your kids on the parts of the Internet you don't agree with, or teach them the right morals and ethics so they learn to recognize and avoid those areas themselves.
No but we heavily regulate schools and the behaviour of people at them. Which is more akin to what we are doing with these laws rather than just saying it's the parents fault their child is groomed or exposed to adult content without their consent.
> What does this mean, exactly? And what sort of source do you have?
It means more children are victims of sexual abuse than before, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.
> The problem is the question of how we do that without utterly destroying privacy for everyone else too? If the answer is "we can't", then it might be we have to look at ways to deal with our children being exposed to those things - either, you know, don't let your kids on the parts of the Internet you don't agree with, or teach them the right morals and ethics so they learn to recognize and avoid those areas themselves.
"It's the parents fault". My entire point here is that clearly parents are not equipped to police their own children's use of the Internet 24x7. Social media companies are doing a a bad job of it, because they want engagement and clicks not reducing usage and blocking content.
Companies have tried implementing this on the client, for example Apple and CSAM scanning, and had to roll it back because of 'privacy' concerns.
And now this is what we have to deal with. No one wants to do anything about it because of 'privacy' and yet children are still being exposed to harm.
To be clear: I don't want these laws, I don't want my life scanned, I don't want to have to submit IDs, but as a society we have obviously dropped the ball on this and now we're screwed. There are implementations that retain privacy like buying single use codes from shops in person that can be used to prove you are 18+ for online services.
Or having tokens that you can get attested/signed from a government portal that you can give back to services to prove you are 18+. That can also be designed to retain 100% privacy. (Assuming the government doesn't have access to these services through a back channel, and assuming these one use tokens are not saved by the service provider you are wanting to use.)
Personally I think blocking all kids from social media is probably one solution that doesn't get adults complaining about privacy. Unfortunately social media companies make an absolute fortune from content aimed at children so they are obviously unhappy with this.
This is not how I see it. These laws are more like what I suggested. The equivalent of that regulation in the case of the Internet would be simply not allowing whatever behavior you disagree with from social media companies and the like.
> It means more children are victims of sexual abuse than before, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.
Can you link some source on this?
> My entire point here is that clearly parents are not equipped to police their own children's use of the Internet 24x7
Neither can they "police" their child's life 24/7. Nor do have to to prevent their kids from falling into various holes out there. Take, for example, drugs and alcohol. We've, more or less, arrived at a reasonable system for keeping these out of the hands of children (most of the time) - but we also accept that, due to this system not being 100% fool-proof (and indeed that such a system could not possibly exist), sometimes kids are going to get access to drugs and alcohol. And yet, most parents (at least, that I know) would agree that that doesn't mean your kid is going to turn out to be an addict or whatnot.
My point is, that with sane regulation - that doesn't inherently erode privacy for everyone all over the world, and gives even more control to (Western) governments and companies - and parents doing their jobs, we can minimize the harm done by social media. We can't eliminate it entirely, but that's the price we pay.
(I question how much actual harm is done by social media, but that's another discussion)
In terms of YouTube all I want as a parent is (a) to ban Shorts from my kids accounts (b) be able to see a list of what they're watching. I want this respected on the app and website.
Good platforms have decent parental controls. Bad platforms don't. YouTube is just awful in that regard. Which is a shame, because there's a tone of good stuff to watch on YouTube. But it's on them to fix their platform.
The online safety act is much more than a porn ID law. Look at this stuff about controlling public discourse. Even if you trust a Labour government with this power you might not trust a future Reform one.
"This clause enables the Secretary of State to give OFCOM directions in circumstances where they consider there is a threat to the health or safety of the public, or to national security.
This includes directing OFCOM to prioritise action to respond to a specific threat when exercising its media literacy functions and to require specified service providers, or providers of regulated services generally, to publicly report on what steps it is taking to respond to that threat.
For example, the Secretary of State could issue a direction during a pandemic to require OFCOM to: give priority to ensuring that health misinformation and disinformation is effectively tackled when exercising its media literacy function; and to require service providers to report on the action they are taking to address this issue." - Explanatory Notes relate to the Online Safety Bill as brought from the House of Commons on 18 January 2023; Clause 156 - Section (8), available https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/49377/documents/273...
This manifested in the final bill as section 44 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/50/section/44
I thought it used to be that parents were responsible for their kids - that's not even a thing now?
And as if this will make any difference to anything?
I think one day the Chinese will be saying "at least we're not living in the west"
Conversations with highly educated Chinese nationals I've had on this topic at elite universities will often conspicuously include whataboutery on e.g. the number of security cameras in London using statistics from about 2005. Presumably they learn this in school.
I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that it's pretty common already.
We gave the keys to our leaders, now they get to choose what content may be accessed or not.
Letting kids consume 10 hours straight of AI generated bottom of the barrel 3d animated slop produced in some third world country is not "personal freedom"
Is called bad parenting.
The problem is that we have to live with these kids eventually and you can't build a nation on kids watching brain rot from the age of 6 months because their parents were too dumb to know better.
Some of the people on that forum would call the switch to compulsory education tyrannic and an abuse of governmental power lmao.
This world is demented
Height of infantilism it is, thinking that strangers will take care of you because they say so, instead of growing up into the responsibility of an adult
> Height of infantilism it is, thinking that strangers will take care of you because they say so, instead of growing up into the responsibility of an adult
That's like the entire purpose of living in organised societies... you know, the law, the police, insurances, the greater good, controlling yourself because your actions have consequences on other people, &c.
Drugs have existed since the dawn of time. They are one among many dangers, specifically: vices, that is the responsibility of parents to guide their children away from as they develop. Along with don't touch strange dogs, look both ways before crossing the street, don't watch YouTube Shorts.
The question is, who is responsible for defending against a danger.
The state is not a magical thing. People pretend like it is, because they buy its self-serving stories, and because most people will go their whole lives without ever needing the police to do anything for them - and learning how impotent they are.
The state is just a collection of average, mediocre actually, individuals, who like power. They are human, nothing special, and they make no resources of their own - they get them only by taking other people's resources by force.
Who is better placed to stop a child pickling their brain with YouTube Shorts? Is it: (a) Their parents, located in the same house, who can install software to block that crap, turn off the WiFi after a certain time, etc. Or is it (b), some politicians who don't even know the kid, with no actual responsibility for them and their life outcomes, thousands of miles away, concerned only with their own egos, making some law (that others equally far away need to enforce).
The problem is that the attitude that others are responsible for taking care of one's kids, an extension of not wanting to accept that responsibility oneself, is so profoundly immoral, vile, and damaging to them, that it makes all claimed (false) benefits look like spending a hundred dollars to buy a dollar.
The state is the least well placed to defend children from predators (and in extreme cases, see what the Khmer rouge did to children), and parents are the most well placed - and responsible, and anything that runs contrary to this is in furtherance of child abuse, even if it's called the "No Child Abuse Act".
This is completely on-brand for Australia. I'm not the slightest bit surprised. To be honest, I don't disagree with the premise: Keep social media away from kids. YouTube is brain rot patient zero. I just don't think it's the governments job.
YouTube proper - there is actual good-quality educational content in there too
What is even going on
Sure they made mistakes here and there. The names of Pokemon aren't actually names of demons. Looking where a lot of my friends ended up though I think they got things right on balance.
It has clearly spread across the world to some degree, but I don’t think the average person even realizes just how much the post ~1920 American consciousness is trained on Hollywood, TV, movies. It has become a bit more diffuse lately due to decentralization of TV and movies, but the training on TV also seems to have gotten worse, even if in more covert ways because of the decentralization. You consume your TV drug in isolation and do not even talk about it anymore because everyone is watching different things at different times now. America has gone from the social drinker, the highlight of the party, to the binger I’m downs a bottle of vodka TV a day, alone.
Our culture is effectively centered around what is on the real life telescreen, the one that you carry around now, that knows where you are at all times and can listen in on you. Even Orwell could only imagine a world where telescreens were fixed and could be evaded at times, or maybe he just believed that.
How does this sound to you?
> I don't think one needs to deny their kids access to alcohol in order to teach them about the dangers of it.
Anyway, it's a bit silly to compare having a cellphone (what GP was talking about) to regularly consuming alcohol. Sure, maybe social media is the equivalent, but then, those might be the "dangers" I talked about.
You may not recognize it as alcohol and you make make the laissez-faire argument, but it is really kind of irresponsible even if you do it. Permissiveness should not be the response to detrimental things, especially with what all else happens in environments related to and gateway by alcohol permissiveness.
Nor is it a question of unqualified permission. My point was that strictly disallowing some things tends not to work, while the opposite - not permission, per se, but reluctant acceptance that it's going to happen anyway - will at least allow children to come to their parents for help, as opposed to hiding it.
And why specifically mention Western? What Eastern or other non-Western countries do you feel are above such scrutiny?
When was this? Before or after child labor laws? Before or after we started making it illegal to beat children? Before or after child marriage laws? Age of consent laws? Standards around education, health, abuse and neglect?
Whether or not this is a step too far, it's hard to say that society and or governments stepping into protect children is a recent thing.
And because of course, in the minority of cases when parents are abusive, some politicians thousands of miles away make the abuse stop, or the amorphous blob called "society", not locals and relatives, magically we assume, when the kids own parents and extended family keep it all under wraps.
Pay no attention to those governments blowing other people's kids to bits or anything of course - the trick is to take observation bias and turn it up to eleven, take a big drawn on our own farts, and feel them we're just so good feels.
The question is how do you implement “Chinese style censorship and social credit score” without overtly doing it, you do it the same way that all infringements on freedoms and rights have always been implemented all across the West for 100+ years, you invert, reframe it, and implement amidst cheers, and jeers towards anyone who is not also being virtuous through conformance.
Some believe the COVID prison-term lockdowns were a test to gauge the reaction and conformity of the actions taken. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t, but it may as well have been, because the warriors apparatchiks and wardens of conformity operated nicely to deprive their own human rights as well as those of others.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” It may as well end with “…tolerate atrocities.”
I still fail to see any logic in these conspiracy theories
Parents have been blaming books, music and video games for decades.
Raising children with reading comprehension and critical thinking skills is hard.
Equally, from a governments point of view, creating citizens with critical thinking skills is hard. There is probably more chance they will frustrate the regime if they're capable of understanding its corruption.
Giving into desires and having children is the easy part. The bodies do all the work for you but after that the 2 decades of work really starts.
I'd say it's just an example of "never waste a good crisis". Parents want to complain at someone that essentially the society is too free and their children made mistakes they didn't prepare them for. The government feels pressured and uses the opportunity available to increase control.
We should quit blaming parents though. Parents are out of options which is why it's coming to this.
Plenty of terrible changes can achieve the similar effect of trend reversal. Say, banning any form of computer networks or banning having children. And people introducing the changes seem to have enough power to discourage any change of minds as well.
Just as we have a list of ad domains blocked by adblockers.
Why not build on top of platforms?
Force a proxy through your network to a specific allowlist for dns and direct ip and port requests.
Install a root ca on your kids phone so you can decrypt their connections, and send the data to your logstash to monitor to make sure you don't have any blind spots, and run some local models to alert when inappropriate media is categorized.
Maybe some of this plan is bad or incomplete, but it wqs what immediately came to mind. I'm sure it could be improved with a few hours of research.
Why do we want to normalize government censorship and mass surveillance when we could instead normalize technical education?
“Curated list of educational channels”:
PBS App Maybe Disney+ with a profile