Australia Widens Teen Social Media Ban To YouTube, Scraps Exemption (reuters.com) 117
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Australia said on Wednesday it will add YouTube to sites covered by its world-first ban on social media for teenagers, reversing an earlier decision to exempt the Alphabet-owned video-sharing site and potentially setting up a legal challenge. The decision came after the internet regulator urged the government last month to overturn the YouTube carve-out, citing a survey that found 37% of minors reported harmful content on the site, the worst showing for a social media platform.
"I'm calling time on it," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement highlighting that Australian children were being negatively affected by online platforms, and reminding social media of their social responsibility. "I want Australian parents to know that we have their backs." The decision broadens the ban set to take effect in December. YouTube says it is used by nearly three-quarters of Australians aged 13 to 15, and should not be classified as social media because its main activity is hosting videos. "Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens. It's not social media," a YouTube spokesperson said by email.
"I'm calling time on it," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement highlighting that Australian children were being negatively affected by online platforms, and reminding social media of their social responsibility. "I want Australian parents to know that we have their backs." The decision broadens the ban set to take effect in December. YouTube says it is used by nearly three-quarters of Australians aged 13 to 15, and should not be classified as social media because its main activity is hosting videos. "Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens. It's not social media," a YouTube spokesperson said by email.
"Protect our kids" (Score:2)
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Specifically what censorship do you hide behind the word "responsible"? In the US, we have something called Section 230 that prevents these platforms from being held responsible for what third parties say; we think those third parties are the ones who should be held responsible.
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230 is basically left over junk from part of a law the rest of which was struck down. The regime it has created is basically full-retard.
Basically it amounts to you can go after the guy/gal who had the idea to lie, slander, libel, publish otherwise indecent material not covered by 1A; but the people that provided them with a free stage, mega phone, and promotion to do it effectively are beyond reach. Even when they were in every way intentional and encouraging because its good click bait that makes them m
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the people that provided them with a free stage, mega phone, and promotion to do it effectively are beyond reach.
That's the entire idea, yes -- as long as everyone else gets the same free stage, megaphone and promotion. That's why Section 230 is called "the 26 words that created the Internet".
And you didn't answer the question, apparently because you don't want to admit that you support making YouTube liable whenever anyone posts a video that offends a mayor or police chief in East Kerblickistan. You just launched invective against a statute. How brave!
Re:"Protect our kids" (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the only answer here is that we need a far less 'global' orientation to these platforms.
I don't know about you, but half of slashdot cheers for EU when they punish X for carrying what they consider 'hate speech' and make arguments like their country their rules..
Fine exactly. Youtube should probably implement different policy and perhaps even different features in East Kerblickistan than they do in the US, and different ones for Oz and EU etc. If other places are to small, to onerous to deal with and won't accept uses being routed one of the existing subsites with the most similar rules then:
youtube should just tell East Kerblickistan, well its on you to police you people and keep them from visiting our site, for our part we will not do business with anyone who has an address in your shit hole. Then our state department should tell Kerblickistan to STFU if they try any legal enforcement against a US person or business; warn them if they grab anyone or something like that 1000000000% tariffs and no visas for any of their people.
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https://www.techdirt.com/2020/... [techdirt.com]
It *is* social media ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... or at any rate, a platform for such.
Trying to ban it or whatever seems pretty useless, but it's silly to deny that it functions as social media.
I mean it's literally in the name, "You" post videos, others watch them, comment on them, react to them, share them, etc.
No, you don't have to use it that way, but you can, and it's built into every corner of the service.
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... or at any rate, a platform for such.
Trying to ban it or whatever seems pretty useless, but it's silly to deny that it functions as social media.
I mean it's literally in the name, "You" post videos, others watch them, comment on them, react to them, share them, etc.
No, you don't have to use it that way, but you can, and it's built into every corner of the service.
Think about it for a bit though. That a person can use the comment section of a YouTube page, sure. But anything that allows replies and comments is social media by that relaxed definition.
Is there offensive content on Youtube? Sure. Is there really valuable content on Youtube? Chryste yes!
I'm trying to imagine myself at say 15, when I was a nascent gearhead, not allowed to access one of the prime free educational resources for that sort of thing. All because parents are incapable of teaching their lar
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No, you've skipped past the part
The point of YouTube is that all of the content is posted by users, not by an editorial staff. That's what makes it "social media". If YouTube isn't social media, neither are Tik-tok, Instagram, etc.
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It's a bit more than that. The YouTube video feed is also generated based on your preferences and what you watch - just like the feeds on other social media sites designed to keep you scrolling and scrolling and on the site.
The whole "liking and subscribing" doesn't do much other than help YouTube refine the con
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I think the issue is that we have moved from the "Show you want you want" stage to the "Show you what will make you stay" stage. Stage 2 contains much of stage 1, but it's inherently malicious because everyone these days spends too much time watching constant brainrot, feels bad about it and thinks "I have wasted my whole day doing nothing. Am gonna stop doing this", then proceeds to do it the next day.
Sounds familiar? It's how addiction works and these algorithms are modern electric cocaine.
I am not for ce
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.I am not for censorship,
What is your name for censorship then?
if social media can be addictive, then a serious thought should be put into whether we have to consider it as a drug or not.
And here we go - you just made a case for censorship of social media for everyone. Adults can get addicted, so we must limit what they can see and do.
Yet here you are on Slashdot.
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It's a bit more than that. The YouTube video feed is also generated based on your preferences and what you watch - just like the feeds on other social media sites designed to keep you scrolling and scrolling and on the site.
Youtube also occasionally pops up asking if you want to try something different. And pops of different videos all the time.
That said, I know what I want. I watch woodworking videos, motorcycle and car videos, some physics channels like Sabine Hossenfelder's, Decline of Empires, radio and electronics channels, some programming channels, and some channels on my research into the Cold War between men and women. So I like their algorithms, even if it isn't aways "right".
Slashdot is a form of social media
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No, you've skipped past the part
The point of YouTube is that all of the content is posted by users, not by an editorial staff. That's what makes it "social media". If YouTube isn't social media, neither are Tik-tok, Instagram, etc.
That is Your definition of social media. A person posting a video about how he fixed his car - how is that social media? People comment, usually thanking him, sometimes offering criticism, a better way, or even tell him he did it wrong. But the guy doesn't flag their comments, he either ignores them to thanks them.
It's perspective. If you are incapable of taking any criticism, or so sensitive that you need to complain of bullying by anyone who doesn't agree with you - well whose fault is that? The proble
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Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you're trying to follow Gricean maxims of discourse (and I feel that I'm being very generous there, because most of your comment appears to be
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Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you're trying to follow Gricean maxims of discourse (and I feel that I'm being very generous there, because most of your comment appears to be about a completely different topic): your definition of social media involves people flagging comments on their posts?
I would counter that a news site that allows comments on their posts is also social media under the guidelines that comments ipso facto makes it social media.
Now despite you thinking that me posting what a person watches on a platform that is going to be restricted is irrelevant to the conversation, and being uncooperative as you claim - let me ask you a question.
Let's use Facebook as an example. Accepted as social media. A person posts something there. The reason they post is for the comments that foll
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That's not a counter because it's arguing against a position that no-one is arguing for. I joined this thread to point out that the first post in it wasn't arguing for it. The distinction is staff content vs user content, not the existence of comments.
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Giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you're trying to follow Gricean maxims of discourse (and I feel that I'm being very generous there, because most of your comment appears to be about a completely different topic): your definition of social media involves people flagging comments on their posts?
tl;dr answer. My definition of social media is the postings at heart are designed to interact with each other, Post reply, reply, ad infinitum. Not a person posting a video that is not there for any reaction at all.
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Think about it for a bit though. That a person can use the comment section of a YouTube page, sure. But anything that allows replies and comments is social media by that relaxed definition.
Yes.. By that ridiculous definition even Slashdot would be social media. The original understanding and popular meaning of the word have been subverted then.
A key requirement for a website to be social media is the website is focused around the concept of massive Peer to Peer networks of friends and followers who cr
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Yes.. By that ridiculous definition even Slashdot would be social media. The original understanding and popular meaning of the word have been subverted then.
Of course it is. Or do you just come here to read the articles?
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Videos posted by minors have comments disabled. Maybe YouTube should stop them posting comments as well, if that is the issue that Australia has.
Banning it seems excessive. There is a lot of useful content on YouTube for teenagers. Education stuff, support for marginalized communities, that sort of thing.
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So Netflix?
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There is a difference between recommending movies and shows in the same category and introducing new ideas. YT engagement algorithm will introduce new topics without any care of age-appropriateness of such topics.
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I'm conflating recommend with recommend? Netflix doesn't just recommend within a category, they have a ML personalised recommendation system, aka engagement algorithm. Of course movies and series have somewhat reliable age ratings and youtube videos don't.
Youtube is democratised media more than social media. A very low barrier to entry distributor.
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That's not a categorical difference, that's an appeal to emotion. I can do that too ...it could recommend A Serbian Film because their algorithm said it would keep you around (if they had it on the service). Personalised recommendations are not restricted by genre.
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It is a publishing platform, the comment section exists but it's almost irrelevant. By and large it's an one way medium.
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Why would anyone listen to an anonymous asshat like you?
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To whit: "You" was named Time's Person of the Year in 2006 [wikipedia.org]. The cover image [google.com] was a mockup of a YouTube-like site, and the article was a celebration of the rise of social media. They're all lumped together.
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Trying to ban it or whatever seems pretty useless, but it's silly to deny that it functions as social media.
I mean.. if Youtube hosting video channels makes it count as Social media, then so is GoDaddy's web hosting service and your individual websites hosted on that "platform". Where you can pay a monthly fee, and in exchange you can register a domain name and post a website on that domain. As well, all those traditional internet Forum sites, mailing lists, and Usenet become social media by that no
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You can upload a home video and send it to your acquaintances and hope they watch it, but I don't think many people do that, and esp
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How the fuck can a party win with 37% of the national vote?
This happens in countries with more than two political parties. In a two-party election, Labor would have won with 55% of the vote from the look of things - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Anonymity On The Internet Is Dying Fast (Score:5, Insightful)
EU laws, US laws, AU laws... they all setup for the erasure of anonymity on the internet.
Anonymity on the internet is dying fast, globally. It going to make the internet suck more. Much more.
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Horseshit. "Traditional media curators" brainwashing people like you for decades is how Trump won the general elections. Maybe if you said the first primary. But you had to get in your jab at "liberal" media Fox News, the largest news network and epitome of mainstream media, has programmed you to.
Nope. Trump won because of people like you. People like you insisting that others had to be "brainwashed" by Fox or some other source for voting and choosing the way they do. As long as you guys act like assholes and scream that those other people are "brainwashed", you're only going to drive more people to them. Nobody under 30 watches Fox, and yet Gen Z is shifting to the Right [cbs4local.com]. Now, you can find another shadowy conspiracy to account for this, or you can accept that maybe, just maybe, people vote the way
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LOL, since when has Youtube been anonymous? Maybe when it first started. These days it's full of user tracking scripts the same as every other social media site. It's all collected and sold at great volumes.
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Anonymity on the internet was always an illusion. If somebody wants to track you down, they can. In the early days, this was also possible, people just didn't think to try.
Progressive society... (Score:2)
Always expanding the list of the forbidden. It will not stop until it is rejected.
There will be new things to ban after social media, now expanded to Youtube. Since this is in large part keeping things people don't want the young and weak to see and be traumatized, perhaps it is time to promote state control of all news, and have it all approved - we don't want young people traumatized by that we don't want them to see. Let's call it .. Oh, I don't kno
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It isn't as though the Regressives aren't also ban-happy shitheads, also in the name of "protecting the children". The erosion of liberty comes from all angles.
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It isn't as though the Regressives aren't also ban-happy shitheads, also in the name of "protecting the children". The erosion of liberty comes from all angles.
Yup, you are correct.
The regressive don't lie about their intentions though, so they are easier to counteract. And if is that important that children are never exposed to a different opinion, or any adversity in their life, and need safe spaces to protect them, well, then we are in stage 3 of the below. Hard times create strong men
Strong Men create good times
Good times create weak men
Weak men create hard times
Rinse and repeat.
My favorite example of the differences between strong and weak comes fro
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Support for under-16 social media ban soars to 77% among Australians [yougov.com]
In addition, 87% of Australians support the introduction of stronger penalties for social media companies that fail to comply with Australian laws.
Aren't the conservatives always telling us to listen to the parents? Parents get whatever they want no matter how stupid it is?
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Support for under-16 social media ban soars to 77% among Australians [yougov.com]
In addition, 87% of Australians support the introduction of stronger penalties for social media companies that fail to comply with Australian laws.
Aren't the conservatives always telling us to listen to the parents? Parents get whatever they want no matter how stupid it is?
These things always devolve to the very successful dehumanization of the other. The counterexample is the cryptoliberals demand that public schools can transition children, and the parents have no right to get in the way of that, or even know it is happening.
How far does the ruling that Public schools have more authority over children than their parents do? https://cbn.com/news/us/are-sc... [cbn.com]
Incrementalism. You've probably noticed that every time one of our two political parties is in office, they overre
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p.s. I am politically unreliable, as I tend to analyze the issues before forming my opinion. That makes both sides hate me. I don't feel the need to go into therapy or ban people who hold different opinions - does that mean I need therapy?
No just a crypto conservative who is mired in the alt-media soup and IMO your political opinions are so incoherent and flakey that they can be safely ignored.
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p.s. I am politically unreliable, as I tend to analyze the issues before forming my opinion. That makes both sides hate me. I don't feel the need to go into therapy or ban people who hold different opinions - does that mean I need therapy?
No just a crypto conservative who is mired in the alt-media soup and IMO your political opinions are so incoherent and flakey that they can be safely ignored.
You prove my point. Your analysis of me is exactly what I said about left and right. You think I am incoherent because I don't march to the orders of whoever rules you. You might be intelligent, but you aren't thinking. It isn't even necessarily that I think I'm always right. I can be wrong, but it isn't because some conservative or liberal told me what is right or wrong.
A lot of conservative people tell me I'm a leftie. You seem to claim otherwise. I claim neither, but as I noted before, I'm politically
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Sure thing pal, the fact you needed 5 paragraphs to justify your continued smug centrism and an obsession about child generalis is all I need. Conservative who doesn't want to say it.
"We have parent's backs..." (Score:3)
Don't worry, you don't have to be aware of what your children are doing online, we'll protect them for you by banning their use of certain websites. Surely they won't work around this, and you can just continue letting your kid's electronic devices be their real parents.
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Yeah, I can't see this move being popular with parents at all. They've been letting YouTube and YouTube Kids babysit their kids since they were 3 by plopping them in front of a smartphone or tablet when they get cranky.
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There is a big difference between "Supporting stronger penalties" and "Making the e-babysitting service I've relied on for the past 10 years less useful by preventing content customization"
I'm expecting a huge parent backlash against this one.
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Yeah, the laissez faire approach has worked SO well in the US (sarc).
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Don't worry, you don't have to be aware of what your children are doing online, we'll protect them for you by banning their use of certain websites. Surely they won't work around this, and you can just continue letting your kid's electronic devices be their real parents.
Tell us you don't have kids without telling us you don't have kids.
Australia creating a lot of IT knowledge (Score:2)
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Future Australians will be well-versed in nuances of networking, online tracking, VPNs and TOR
It's nice to think that, but as a parent of a 16 and 19 year old, I can tell you right now that generation is so used to everything being rolled out in shrink-wrapped, shiny, ready to use packages, that they will gain no deep understanding of networking from this. They will install an app, like TOR, on their phone / iPad if they hear it will let them access something that was blocked from them, with no understanding of the underpinnings or what is going on at all.
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More like a shot across the bow of Google & th (Score:2)
A more likely objective is the idea that the Government can interfere with Googles business model - an idea that (if the technology works) other Governments may choose to follow. Australia doesn't have the numbers to directly impact on scale, but of these changes have any measurable effect then other countries may choose to use it as an
NordVPN (Score:1)
Next they will ban SlashDot (Score:2)
Out of touch (Score:2)
Harmful content? Like what? YouTube is usually pretty good at sanitizing their content, to the point where its policies are almost draconian. As far as social media goes, YouTube remains the most genuine. There's worse stuff on broadcast television, to be honest... Is this just the continuation of the artificial extension of childhood in the name of progress?
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I have been using the internet since the days when "using the internet" meant dialing up a UNIX box with a terminal program. I have been using things that would probably meet the dictionary definition of "social media" before that term was even a thing. I use, browse and post to most of the major platforms (including YouTube and Twitter) on a daily basis (posting YouTube comments, tweets etc)
And in all my time online I have never once seen content that justifies this "think of the Children" BS.
It was still Our Tube in those days... (Score:1)
I mean, if YouTube doesn't want to be classified as social media, they COULD just turn off the comments. They provide very little of value to anyone.
"WHO'S HERE IN 2011?"
"I am 86 years old and I still love this from when I was 14."
"Watching this because they referenced it in [another piece of media]."
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Depends on the channel. If it's music videos then yeah, [some obscure TV show that uses this on their soundtrack brought me here ] adds nothing.
But if I want to Google informational content such as cooking, history, science, language learning, solving a Rubik's cube, raspberry pi clusters etc then the comments often illuminate. Even Slashdot with its flame-wars has some gems; the audience has sat through 2 decades of my prattling anecdotes...
Anyhow, I'm really surprised there is not already a YouTube Kids a
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Turning off comments wouldn’t prevent them from being banned. What Australian politicians want is to wave a magic wand and auto-censor the content so there is no harmful content discoverable by kids, with perfect specificity and sensitivity. This is obviously impossible on a site that relies on large-scale uploads from users.
Up to them to police (Score:1)
Pants on head retarded. (Score:2)
The internet would never have come to exist in any kind of meaningful form had these cunty rules and regulations existed back then. This content nannying and censorship is a regulatory burden that only large players such as Google/MS/FBetc really manage.
Effectively this rules out any innovation.. bear in mind Youtube was not created by a mega corp, FB was a startup from a dorm room. Microsoft themselves thought the internet was a fad at one point.
Parents should parent, and regulators should fuck off. Peo
Have they ever used youtube? (Score:2)
That would be my question. What you have on youtube is a whole world of material that the intellectually and culturally curious kid cannot find anywhere else, or not easily and not at an affordable price. Instructional videos on everything from correct form in deadlifts to how to make mayonnaise or wire an electrical plug or take your laptop to bits and replace the hard drive. Audiobooks. Old movies, performances of (for example) Racine by the Comedie Francaise. Music of all periods performed in all st
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I’m 100% with you. This ban is clearly going to do more harm than good. There will be millions of Australian kids who use videos like the Khan Academy to learn maths, science, history, languages etc. This move is completely, utterly bonkers. It’s such an obvious, absurd a reaction to the modern world from technophobes.
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Damn, that should have been "RL" in the title....
Re: Bann TV and Tl next (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Bann TV and Tl next (Score:3)
YouTube kids content has no comment section either and for a child profile it won't display other than kids content
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We're not going to fully be able to put the genie back in the bottle, but I do think we should be doing as much as we can to limit their expose to social media and the internet while they're young. Unfettered and unsupervised access is bad for their development.
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YouTube kids content has no comment section either and for a child profile it won't display other than kids content
This isn't about YouTube kids, it's about YouTube non-kids being accessed by kids, and locking those kids into Youtube Kids.
Re: Bann TV and Tl next (Score:2)
Seriously?
First, ratings are basically fucking useless, one reason why the US doesn't regulate their use in any way, and the only attempts to do so were done by total assholes trying to force their morality on others, e.g: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
If a comment section is what bothers them, then why bother with a "social media" ban at all? It would make more sense to just ban web 2.0. But why even stop there? Just ban anything with user generated content, and not just on the web. Australia already ha
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Have you looked at the frigging news? That is enough to traumatize kids.
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The impression I have, from the seemingly coordinated global effort on age verification and anti-sex censorship, is that we're seeing preparations for war. Three weak quasi-evidences for it:
First, these age verification systems are effectively nation-wide, systemic, government-supervised information access control systems. Right now they only control for age and have only two buckets: children and adults. But nothing prevents expanding the buckets and the control parameters via changes to the laws once they
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This is Identity Governance in action imposed on the mass populace under the guise of protecting children. All transactions will be linked to identity, from packets to currency.
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Indeed. This is about establishing a full surveillance state and then some nice, cozy fascism on top of that. Utter evil masking as good and the clueless masses cheer it on.
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That's the excuse used. "Think of the children" is always extremely effective at curbing the rights of adults, while doing little for actual children.
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So how have the rights of adults been curbed?
Anonymity is eliminated. In countries adopting these policies one cannot watch YouTube content targeted at adults without signing into a Google account and having their face or ID scanned into a database they have no control over. Additionally, hundreds of smaller sites are closing because their operators cannot afford the intrusive ID tech, including text games that have existed since the early 2000s, as well as online forums that existed since the 1990s, where children hardly went. Slashdot itself, were i
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Sorry, I have a grand total of zero interest in antisemitic nonsense.
And before you say unhinged, I oppose the genocide of the Palestinians by Israel's government, while supporting the sane side of Israeli politics, which alas is currently powerless and incapable of stopping the madness.
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That you would willfully conflate with antisemitism the fact of the settler colony having an influential lobby in Australia (not to mention the UK and the US) says everything about your intentions. You can spare me your hollow words about the genocide.
The "sane side of Israeli politics" is overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinians' mass starvation, and your pretending that the colony's political landscape at one with its religion so that you can defend its politics is the sort of ideological cowardice t
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As I said, I have no interest in your antisemitism. Bye.
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> while supporting the sane side of Israeli politics, which alas is currently powerless and incapable of stopping the madness.
Why do you say they are powerless ?
Re: Bann TV and Tl next (Score:2)
Because they are a minority voice. The government in charge is a coalition of psychopaths.
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The main drivers for all this censorship are christofascists
Yes, indeed. Really evil people that want to control everybody. The scum of the scum.