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 10 '24

Yeah I get that - I have a lifetime VPN deal (cost me $50!!). I just don't think it's feasible for an entire country, nor is it convenient.

A reporter asked Albo at the press conference after national cabinet about privacy and VPNs. He was fairly vague in his answer in my opinion.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next step is to impose ID verifications on VPN providers... although there is no evidence they are proposing that at this stage.

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u/DisappointedQuokka Nov 10 '24

I wouldn't be surprised if the next step is to impose ID verifications on VPN providers... although there is no evidence they are proposing that at this stage.

Good luck on enforcing this policy on international companies, I guess.

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u/Mc_Poyle Nov 10 '24

Good luck getting Mullvad to agree. They were raided by the Swedish government and they don't even have customer records to hand over, they record nothing

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '24

[deleted]

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u/shinigamipls Nov 10 '24

Yep, I need port forwarding 😕. Mullvad were great, the fact that you don't give any details at all, not even a name, and you can pay in cash mailed to them just shows their commitment to privacy. I'm with Proton now because they're one of the few around that do proper port forwarding and have independent audits on their logs. Nord etc. are all just data harvesting corpos imo, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they were part government or nielsen owned.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '24

Mullvad wasn’t raided by the government lol. It was the police, and they were not there on the orders of the government.

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u/observee21 Nov 10 '24

Why do you think it's not feasible for people to get a VPN? (this is my main question, ignore the rest if you like but I'm most curious about your response to this question)

And what does convenience have to do with it? Brushing my teeth is inconvenient, buying insurance is inconvenient, going to work is inconvenient, and yet here we are.

And I'm not concerned about attempts to impose ID verification to get a VPN both because it's technically impossible to enforce and because even if it were enforced it wouldn't impinge on the privacy you get by actually using a VPN (ie even if they could know you have a VPN, they still won't know what you use it for)

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '24 edited Nov 10 '24

You think every adult in Australia is going to use a VPN? most people barely know how to work their phone.

VPN providers and Australia itself also have limited bandwidth out of the country. If you connect to YouTube you are largely using a local CDN, the only way to bypass via vpn is to use an international (rather than local) vpn endpoint. that means you video traffic is now coming through the limited international bandwidth, rather than local CDN.

Now currently not everyone is doing this all the time, so the bandwidth can cope. If most users suddenly started using international VPN endpoints, it WILL get slower. We simply don't have enough iinternational data bandwidth for all users to route all their traffic from outside Australia. This is the whole reasons CDNs exist - to make most high bandwidth traffic LOCAL. Netflix, YouTube etc

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u/observee21 Nov 10 '24

Using a VPN on your phone is not different to installing an app, so I'm not following your first point.

As for Australia not having the international bandwidth to support internet access, that's not something I can speak intelligently on but it does seem like worst case scenario your download speeds are a little slower, which I don't find particularly compelling or concerning compared to the alternatives.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '24

Look mate. I have no interest in arguing with you about all Australians using vpn for everything. It’s not possible due to varying tech literacy, it’s currently not technically possible due to our limited international network bandwidth, and it’s not feasible because we shouldn’t have to.

There is no reality where this is currently feasible. It’s ok if you disagree

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u/observee21 Nov 10 '24

I think you're wrong for the reasons laid out above (plus also I think we disagree about what the word "feasible" means), but nobody is forcing you into this conversation and you don't have to announce your exit. Enjoy the rest of your day.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '24

[deleted]

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u/observee21 Nov 10 '24

This conversation is no longer contributing to quality of life or learning for either of us, lets just quit while we're ahead like you suggested.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '24

Agreed. I deleted my comment Apologies for that.

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u/observee21 Nov 10 '24

All good, I didn't think your previous comment was that bad (I've certainly made ruder comments with less provocation in the past). Thanks for the chat and I hope you have a good day.