Sydney (AFP) – Australia will use landmark social media laws to ban children under 16 from video-streaming site YouTube, a top minister said Wednesday stressing the need to shield them from "predatory algorithms".
Communications Minister Anika Wells said four-in-ten Australian children had reported viewing harmful content on YouTube, one of the most visited websites in the world.
"We want kids to know who they are before platforms assume who they are," Wells said in a statement.
"There's a place for social media, but there's not a place for predatory algorithms targeting children."
Australia announced last year it was drafting laws that will ban children from social media sites such as Facebook, TikTok and Instagram until they turn 16.
The government had previously indicated YouTube would be exempt, given its widespread use in classrooms.
"Young people under the age of 16 will not be able to have accounts on YouTube," Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters on Wednesday.
"They will also not be able to have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and X among other platforms.
"We want Australian parents and families to know that we have got their back."
Albanese said the age limit may not be implemented perfectly -- much like existing restrictions on alcohol -- but it was still the right thing to do.
A spokesman for YouTube said Wednesday's announcement was a jarring U-turn from the government.
"Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens," the company said in a statement.
"It's not social media."
On paper, the ban is one of the strictest in the world.
But the current legislation offers almost no details on how the rules will be enforced -- prompting concern among experts that it will simply be a symbolic piece of unenforceable legislation.
It is due to come into effect on December 10.
Social media giants -- which face fines of up to Aus$49.5 million (US$32 million) for failing to comply -- have described the laws as "vague", "problematic" and "rushed".
TikTok has accused the government of ignoring mental health, online safety and youth experts who had opposed the ban.
Meta -- owner of Facebook and Instagram -- has warned that the ban could place "an onerous burden on parents and teens".
The legislation has been closely monitored by other countries, with many weighing whether to implement similar bans.
nah I've never 'gathered a misunderstanding' of it. Somewhere in the past 5 years, everyone and their mom has started referring to idiotic things as being social media, like roguetrick claiming that Wikipedia is social media (they even provided an 'academic' source (from a school of business mind you)).
Social media must be a subset of social networking because the literally concept of a 'social' website implies networking. So if all you're adding to the social element is 'media' (rather than just text, like Twitter), then it is by definition a subset. If you see 'adding' media as expanding the category, rather than restricting the set of social networking sites to only those with sharing of media, then sure I could see how you think that social networking sites must be a subset of the media sites, since they don't have media. But I see it as a subset of sites that allow for connections and follows of other users, which would make it a subset in the direction I stated.
I honestly do not care what 'mountain of evidence' there is. Some things people are just frankly idiots about and it doesn't matter what the actual justification for it is, in the current world it's dumb to continue calling it that. I can give two other examples if you would like, where the majority of people in any given region might refer to something as but it makes no sense from any logical, political, social, ethical, moral, legal, etc. standpoint. The only reason being historical (or etymological), which frankly is a dumb reason, especially in this day and age. We should use words so that they communicate something.
If 'social media' refers to anything that exists on the internet (which by the arguments I've seen so far, it would literally include 99.99% of websites out there) then it's a pointless, meaningless word that serves only for politicians to use as a battering ram to remove civil liberties and personal freedoms from citizens. Instead of a law stating "You are now required to verify your ID on every website on the internet" they instead can state "You are now required to verify your ID on social media sites" and then that suddenly includes Wikipedia, World of Warcraft, a website bookmarking service called Delicious, and the General Motors blog site (all of these according to roguetrick's 'academic' source of what social media is)! What is the point of the word if it refers to anything and everything under the sun...
You ignore everything presented to you as stupid, and demand the world is defined by whatever vibes you've developed. It doesn't work that way. Language doesn't work that way and you defining history in ways that are wildly against reality doesn't work that way. You're not making a historical argument and you're not making a usage argument. You're making an argument that the world should align with Tyler's vibes. In this often repeated phrase: "I don't care" about that.
You’re the one redefining history dude. Even another person in this comment section is telling you how it never meant that to start with. You linked an article from a business school that literally makes up history. Your “source” calls the General Motors blog “social media”.