Age verification continues to spiral further out of control as Australia has included YouTube in their outright youth ban.
The age verification insanity is continuing to grow. It was only a year or two ago that age verification was only meant for porn sites. If you had a certain percentage of content be porn, then you were subject to these age verification laws. The problem is that this has continued to expand since then.
At first, it was just that lawmakers dropped the percentage requirement in order a website to qualify. Now, platforms and websites had to age gate anything deemed “pornographic” (which was problematic given that it could mean anything). Then, lawmakers started to expand further. They began tacking on the term “harmful”. Anything deemed “harmful” was then tacked on, forcing everyone to, in theory, submit their facial recognition scans. Even then, this was not enough. Some governments have started pushing the idea that the nations youth should be banned completely. Forget avoiding “harmful” content, governments are starting to classify all of social media as not appropriate to the nations youth.
If you think that last bit is an exaggeration, it is not. Last year, we reported on Australia moving further into the extreme of internet thought control by just banning youth entirely. Obviously, this move was backed by no real evidence. After all, many youth today are able to obtain educational and emotional support resources through social media. So, there is little doubt that these measures are going to cause considerable harm to the Australian youth. Of course, none of that matters to the Australian government as they forge ahead with these harmful policies.
Recently, however, Australia made another move on this front. As it turns out, YouTube was exempt from this. No doubt, there was a case that there is a number of educational materials and kids entertainment on YouTube – Super Simple Songs and Lucas the Spider being two examples. Apparently, though, something changed and Australia has decided to extend the youth ban on social media to YouTube. 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.”
It’s disappointing to see the Australian Prime Minister actively making decisions that harm children, but that seems to be where we are at these days with government. The government wants to harm the population wherever possible and will do so while pretending that harm is something that benefits them.
Mike Masnick of TechDirt points out that the 37% statistic is completely meaningless. From TechDirt:
This is painfully stupid and ignorant. The claim that 37% of minors reported seeing harmful content is also… meaningless without a lot more context and details. What counts as “harmful”? A swear word? Political content their parents disagree with? A video explaining evolution? What was the impact? Is this entirely self-reported? What controls were there? Just saying 37% is kind of meaningless without the details.
This is vibes-based policymaking dressed up in statistics. You could probably get 37% of kids to report “harmful content” on PBS Kids if you asked them vaguely enough. The fact that Australia’s internet regulator is using this kind of methodological garbage to reshape internet policy tells you everything you need to know about how seriously they’ve thought this through.
But also, YouTube is not just effectively the equivalent of television for teens today—it’s often far superior to traditional television because it’s not gatekept by media conglomerates with their own agendas. The idea that you should need to be 16 years old to watch some YouTube programs is beyond laughable, especially given the amount of useful educational content on YouTube. These days there are things like Complexly, Khan Academy, Mark Rober, and plenty of other educational content that kids love and which lives on YouTube. Kids are learning calculus from 3Blue1Brown, exploring history through Crash Course, and getting better science education from YouTube creators than from most traditional textbooks. This isn’t just entertainment—it’s democratized education that bypasses the gatekeeping of traditional media entirely.
Masnick goes on to say how this is unworkable and people will be working hard to circumvent the government censors.
I also agree with Masnick on what this teaches the youth of Australia. In short, it trains younger Australians to believe that the government is actively out to get them and that it is up to them to protect themselves from the government and all the harms that come with the government. After all, the government is already actively trying to take away everything that the Australian youth enjoys and cherishes. A far superior version of traditional television being one of them. Either way, this is yet another very sad day for free speech.
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