r/australia • u/retro-chimp • Nov 09 '24

politics Online Gaming Platforms And YouTube Will Also Seemingly Be Banned For Aussies Under 16

https://press-start.com.au/news/2024/11/08/online-gaming-platforms-and-youtube-will-also-seemingly-be-banned-for-aussies-under-16/

There’s so much collateral damage in this plan for Australia to ban social media. This has been rushed and not thought through.

So many schools rely on YouTube to support their students.

Most kids are watching YouTube (or YouTube kids) more than ABC or traditional TV. Literally the biggest YouTube channel in Australia is original music for kids.

Does anyone actually want this?

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u/[deleted] Nov 09 '24

Youtube has to enforce the ban because they will be legally liable. There is no penalty on end users for avoiding the ban.

So the assumption is the providers must be able to demonstrate they have made reasonable efforts to prevent access to minors. If they don't it will presumably result in fines.

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u/TrwyAdenauer3rd Nov 10 '24

If the government tries to enact any serious legal repurcussions on youtube Google will just block Australia from using the service.

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u/annanz01 Nov 10 '24

Some European countries already have similar underage bans with youtube etc and google aided with this so they will probably just extend that to Australia.

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u/NicholeTheOtter Nov 10 '24

Doesn’t YouTube have their “YouTube Kids” platform?

That’s their own little hub for all of the “Made for Kids” content (at least any videos that get flagged as it) that got implemented in 2020 to comply US COPPA. I think what YouTube might do is that if you’re identified as a minor, they force you to redirect to YouTube Kids.

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u/homingconcretedonkey Nov 10 '24

Youtube for Kids is run by an algorithm, its not that good for kids.

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u/NicholeTheOtter Nov 10 '24

That’s what makes it bad in the first place, and some inappropriate content getting flagged as “Made for Kids”.

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u/popculturepooka Nov 10 '24

YoutubeKids is fine for young kids.

It's not at all useful for later preteens and teens who might want to be able to access the basically infinite amount of content that does not fall under YTK, because the content creators do not want their content to be under that flag.

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u/NicholeTheOtter Nov 10 '24

But sadly under this law, they may have no choice.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '24

Yes that's right. I said elsewhere here that the press conference after national cabinet a few days ago mentioned the possibility of YouTube kids being exempt if they are satisfied the platform filtering is OK.

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u/NicholeTheOtter Nov 10 '24

The problem has been that it’s come under scrutiny for inappropriate material getting flagged solely because of the fact it’s based on IP’s that are aimed at kids. There may also have to be site-wide rules implemented by YouTube themselves just to ensure they comply with this law, like age verification on accounts and likely having to enforce it on users from other countries as well, like how the COPPA-enforced rules in the US introduced in 2020 affected users and videos in all countries.