[HN Gopher] Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, s...
___________________________________________________________________
Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 112 points
Date : 2025-07-30 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| WantonQuantum wrote:
| It's important to note that this ban is for having an account -
| it does not ban people under 16 from watching youtube videos.
| general1726 wrote:
| So you can just log off to bypass it? That seems short sighted.
| azemetre wrote:
| Not really. It means it's no longer profitable to advertise
| to teens on most corporate social media.
|
| Anything that moves the needle toward dismantling the
| advertising and marketing industries will always be a
| worthwhile endeavor.
| Gud wrote:
| Why would it no longer be profitable to advertise to teens
| on YouTube just because they can't have accounts?
| mathiaspoint wrote:
| Right they'll still have a persistent session that
| accumulates data for them. Just without the ability to
| persistent settings, subscriptions etc.
| azemetre wrote:
| Putting YouTube in the social media ban also removes
| personalized ads for teenagers. Personalized ad buys are
| very profitable for companies like Google and Meta.
| Hurting their ability to make money would only be a net
| positive for humanity.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Anything? Including preventing teens from having an online
| life?
| azemetre wrote:
| I had no issue with using the noncorpotized social media
| as a teen (livejournal, myspace before the buyout,
| forums, etc). Anything that ruins the might of Meta,
| Google would be a net positive for society.
|
| Let's not act like the only way to communicate with each
| other or use the internet is through corporate controlled
| software.
|
| It would do teenagers good to be forced to use other
| forms of social media that aren't controlled by companies
| that don't care about their mental health.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| You put these laws in place, and they will be used
| indiscriminately as needed. Anything can become "social
| media", and if not, it's easy to add a new category to
| the list since the Overton window has already been
| allowed to shift.
|
| We the people are vanguards of our own freedom. Always
| assume a government organization is lying to you about
| their intentions. We're taught about slippery slopes in
| civics and history class for a reason.
|
| The true intent here is to control the ability for teens
| to freely congregate online and contribute to discussion
| around unsanctioned topics. To prevent teenagers from
| being exposed to or distributing material that challenges
| the incumbent authorities.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It means it's no longer profitable to advertise to teens
| on most corporate social media.
|
| Advertisements are targeted on a number of factors. It's
| not a simple checkbox that says "market this to teens"
| azemetre wrote:
| It is when they're personalized ads, which is what gets
| banned under Australia's social media ban for teens.
| yreg wrote:
| Maybe they target content production, not content
| consumption?
| tartoran wrote:
| > Maybe they target content production, not content
| consumption?
|
| How can you do that on the internet?
|
| What Australia did may be a bit shortsighted but it's a
| step in the right direction together. Other countries did
| all sorts of measures such banning smartphone use in
| classrooms and such. We will figure out what works and what
| does not, but at least something is being done.
| yreg wrote:
| >How can you do that on the internet?
|
| Well to upload YouTube videos you obviously need to log
| in.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "So you can just log off to bypass it?"
|
| Nobody knows. The government hasn't determined how the age
| verification will work. A good guess will be that it will
| require age verified accounts for anyone in that country to
| access content on those platforms... or a VPN.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Also note: just being logged out won't stop the algo choosing
| content based on past watches.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This ban includes watching videos. The law says they must take
| action to prevent underage persons from accessing their
| services. This means they will likely have to require login and
| age verify any accounts. The carve out in the article is
| talking about teachers and parents being allowed to show the
| content to the kids.
| asyx wrote:
| I think that's a really bad idea. I owe my career to YouTube and
| I think especially these days it's much more useful for learning
| than it was back then. The whole internet moved to bite sized
| content but on YouTube you can find hour long videos of people
| doing really cool and sometimes super niche stuff.
| blahlabs wrote:
| They are not being banned from watching YouTube.
| 404mm wrote:
| Asyx, you have an opinion on the ban before reaching the 3rd
| paragraph of the article. I recommend reading it first.
| [deleted]
| worthless-trash wrote:
| Please ban comments. Please...
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Completely banning all of YouTube feels like throwing out the
| baby--valuable educational content--with the bathwater--
| everything else. It seems more effective for YouTube to offer a
| dedicated educational platform, like education.youtube.com, with
| content filters built in. That way, students could access
| channels like 3blue1brown without exposure to unrelated or less
| appropriate content like MrBeast or Jubilee. Heck, I might
| personally prefer to use that version of YT myself.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Do you want mere children exposed to David Attenborough and
| Mister Rogers?
| Arubis wrote:
| Can't speak for the Aussies, but if you're a US-inflected
| conservative today, probably not!
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wish people wouldn't conflate conservatives _per se_ with
| the Republican /MAGA definition of that term.
|
| I consider myself somewhat conservative in the traditional
| sense, and yet the Republican platform is almost
| diametrically opposed to my values.
| mc32 wrote:
| Oh, is that the majority of their content, traditional
| educational content? I must be mistaken in thinking they were
| funneling their audience into "shorts" and that kids
| obviously naturally recoil from "shorts" as much as they do
| green veggies and chores...
| OJFord wrote:
| But this is basically the way for Australian government to try
| to make YouTube do that isn't it? There's already YouTube Kids,
| so maybe this makes YouTube think ok we need YouTube Teenz, or
| YouTube Educational or whatever.
| arebop wrote:
| YouTube Kids is also full of garbage. The bar to get content
| into YouTube Kids is substantially higher than YouTube but
| still the average video's educational quality is abysmal.
|
| There are people at YouTube/Google/Alphabet who care but at
| the end of the day we get what the invisible hand gives us.
| Market forces have not yielded a well-curated educational
| video experience on YouTube.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| They can already access 3blue1brown[1] content without youtube.
| They just have to visit the site with the same name.
|
| 1. https://www.3blue1brown.com/#lessons
| qualeed wrote:
| That is not the only channel of value on YouTube. Not all of
| them have a website with their content available.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Can you spell out the standard plainly?
| qualeed wrote:
| The standard of what?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The channels besides 3blue1brown that would reach parity.
| angry_moose wrote:
| Those are just page after page of embedded YouTube videos.
| It's doubtful that's a meaningful difference under this bill.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| What are you talking about? You can click on any of the
| lessons and get text and images.
| https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/essence-of-calculus
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Which aren't videos. The entire draw is the video format.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| That seems awfully particular.
| schoen wrote:
| Grant Sanderson's mathematical animations and
| visualizations are famously excellent, though. He
| developed his own mathematics animation software just for
| his channel. I wouldn't think of video as preferable to
| textbooks for math education in general, but for his sort
| of videos, I might!
| Aurornis wrote:
| The bill only bans them from having accounts.
|
| It does not ban them from streaming embedded YouTube videos
| or even browsing YouTube.com
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The bill only bans them from having accounts."
|
| No, the bill says they must take reasonable steps to
| prevent underage persons from accessing their services.
| Arguably, this means embedded videos will need to be
| restricted just as the regular site will be.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I think Google/YouTube would slow-walk the hell out of this
| only because they are making a ton off of the worst, basest of
| content and more filters = less eyeballs.
|
| See also: Facebook "efforts" to stop scam advertisements and
| Marketplace fuckery
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Putting that aside, the reality is that kids are bored, highly
| motivated, and networked with each other across the planet.
| Even more than porn, which is only going to appeal to a subset
| of kids, "all of Youtube" is definitely a bit more universal.
|
| The major outcome of this legislation should be nothing more
| than Australian kids being the most familiar with VPN's and
| very little else, along with other tricks to bypass this.
| dumama wrote:
| Youtube is optimized for engagement and ad revenue. In my
| experience, there's more click/rage bait and entertainment than
| educational content (perhaps that reflects my algorithm haha).
| Unless there's improved content moderation or media training, I
| can see how this would ultimately benefit teens as they're
| minds are still developing.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| https://nebula.tv seems like it's basically that, just curated
| podcasts. Although 3blue1brown isn't on there.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Nebula is nice, but has a very specific ideological leaning.
| It's basically paid "breadtube".
| ncruces wrote:
| As a parent (who also btw uses Google products every single
| effin day) I just can't agree.
|
| This is entirely Google's issue to fix. Yes, YouTube has
| amazing educational content. I'd really like to make it
| available for my kids to see.
|
| YouTube, however, makes it completely impossible to permanently
| filter/hide/disable the bane that is YouTube Shorts. I don't
| let my kids on TikTok not because it's Chinese, but because
| it's trash. I don't allow them near Instagram either.
|
| The chances of kids growing an attention span by seeing
| interesting stuff in installments of 30 seconds approaches zero
| really, really fast. Yes there's the possibility telling a fun
| joke, demonstrating an optical illusion, or some interesting
| curiosity in under a minute. But it's far more likely that it's
| trash, _and_ teaching kids (and adults) that if they don 't get
| a kick of something within the first 10 seconds, it should be
| skipped.
|
| And it's not necessarily age/quality rating of content; UX
| matters. It's totally different to find that your kid wasted an
| hour of their life doom scrolling over 150 videos of which they
| didn't even complete half, or that they spent it seeing half a
| dozen things videos of dubious quality: if it's half a dozen
| it's at least feasible to discuss with them why some are better
| than others.
|
| So, I'm very close to just banning YouTube (at the DNS level if
| required). Which is a shame, because I then can't share the
| interesting stuff with them, and neither can their teachers.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, no amount of effort allows me to shut off YouTube
| Shorts.
|
| Imagine you're the one running a business where you keep
| repeatedly trying to shove some feature down your user's
| throat.
|
| What's that called in business school? I don't know, I never
| took any Business courses.
|
| That I have no where else to go to see the content I want to
| see smells like a de-facto monopoly.
| jordanb wrote:
| It's a form of bundling.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > That I have no where else to go to see the content I want
| to see smells like a de-facto monopoly.
|
| Not in this case, since the content makers can choose to
| host the digital files on a computer not owner by Alphabet.
|
| Your situation is simply the content maker betting that it
| is not worth their time to try to earn a return by hosting
| on a non Alphabet computer.
|
| But Alphabet is doing nothing to stop the content maker and
| you from reaching a deal.
| timschmidt wrote:
| > But Alphabet is doing nothing to stop the content maker
| and you from reaching a deal.
|
| They bought DoubleClick, which Microsoft and others felt
| strongly enough about to warn the FTC that might give
| Google too much control over online advertising. Seems
| like Meta is their only real competition on that front
| these days.
| andy99 wrote:
| > Imagine you're the one running a business where you keep
| repeatedly trying to shove some feature down your user's
| throat.
|
| > What's that called in business school?
|
| Pretty sure it's called inflating metrics. Things that get
| pushed on you (see many AI features, my pet peeve,
| especially at google) are not wanted (or they wouldn't need
| to be pushed) but someone has a big stake in showing
| uptake, e.g. promises made to investors that this would
| drive revenue.
| decimalenough wrote:
| You can completely disable Shorts by turning off your YouTube
| history.
|
| No idea why, but it works and it's blissful. Plus you can
| still like videos, subscribe to channels and curate your own
| lists if you want to bookmark stuff to come back to.
| nullc wrote:
| unfortunately turning off history kills all forms of
| suggestions, including ones like "you're subscribed to
| these things, so perhaps you might also be interested
| in...", which is the form of recommendation I want the most
| since it's driven by what I chose to be watching rather
| than what I've previously watched.
|
| I had assumed the behavior was malicious compliance on
| Google's part against California law that said no history
| had to actually mean no history.
| svachalek wrote:
| I have had history turned off for years. It won't
| recommend anything on the main feed, but when I watch a
| video, it recommends more as usual. There's plausible
| deniability that the recommendations are based on just
| what I'm watching but in practice that's obviously not
| true, many recommendations are based on either my
| subscriptions or my watch history, as they are not
| related to the video I am watching but are related to my
| interests.
|
| Since there's not supposed to be any history, I have to
| trust it's just based on subscriptions. It seems like
| that could be the case, I guess? But I do have doubts
| that they do in fact have my history somewhere that's
| accessible to this recommendation engine.
| ncruces wrote:
| OK, I didn't know that, though it's not very intuitive.
| Thanks!
|
| Now, as a parent, I face a tough choice: I have history on
| the kids accounts precisely because I want to check on it
| and discuss with them what's good, or less so, to watch.
| svachalek wrote:
| I've had my history turned off for years, and still get
| Shorts.
| upboundspiral wrote:
| I have been able to somewhat reasonably block youtube shorts
| with the following custom filter ublock origin rules (on
| firefox at least). Note that it might accidentally hide some
| legitimate stuff but from my experience it should be pretty
| minimal if any. I think to hide the shorts from the left
| sidebar it hides one of your subscribed channels but that's
| all I've noticed so far.
|
| www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-
| renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1) www.youtube.com##ytd-
| rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-
| of-type(2) www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-
| rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(4)
| www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-entry-renderer.ytd-guide-section-
| renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2)
| AlexandrB wrote:
| The bathwater is not any specific piece of content but the
| YouTube discovery and recommendation algorithm. As long as
| that's in place, there will be incentive to create terrible
| "slop" content to get into "education.youtube.com" and collect
| ad revenue. The same thing happened with kids.youtube.com[1]
| and I don't see a solution other than hand-curating channels
| for inclusion.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Well put. I do not agree with the clumsy approach taken by
| countries like Australia, UK, and Texas, but I absolutely
| consider youtube and social media problems responsible for
| the tsunami of lowest-common-denominator slop. Free
| market/user choice idealists need to face up to the fact that
| slops is bad and lowers standards rather than elevating them,
| because the economic incentives tilt in favor of low quality,
| sensationalism, and so on. To some extent that's a reflection
| of the viewing/clicking population, but that doesn't mean
| that you should always just give people more of what they
| want. We tried that with high fructose corn syrup and the
| result is whole populations ravaged by obesity and diabetes.
| __d wrote:
| To state it plainly:
|
| We humans, when given enticing bad choices, will often give
| in to the enticement.
|
| That universal tendency can be overcome by strict
| application of willpower, which can have long-term
| benefits.
|
| It is possible to exploit this tendency to make money. And
| so, by recursive application of this principle, we arrive
| at 2025.
| crtasm wrote:
| >The ban outlaws YouTube accounts for those younger than 16,
| allowing parents and teachers to show videos on it to minors.
|
| But you don't need an account to watch most videos on youtube,
| so this isn't banning all of youtube.. right?
| giantg2 wrote:
| The law says providers need to prevent minors from accessing
| their services. This likely means that YouTube will require
| an age verified login.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| My thought was that a version of YouTube that:
|
| 1. Had no opaque algorithmic feeds
|
| 2. No comment sections
|
| 3. Have a "show me more content like this" button, but again,
| no auto algorithmic feeds
|
| 4. Filter out age inappropriate content.
|
| would be great for teenagers. I think the problem for YouTube
| is that it would be great for everyone else, too, so they'd get
| bombarded by "Hey, I want that version" requests, which would
| clearly make them less money.
|
| There is no moral high ground with basically any online
| platforms, it's all solely based on financials, and people
| should realize this.
| glial wrote:
| 5. No "Shorts"
| hasperdi wrote:
| This exists. It's called YouTube Kids
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yeah, but there is a gaping difference between content for
| kids (i.e. 12 and under) and content for teenagers.
|
| Most teenage-appropriate content would be enjoyed by adults
| too (e.g. lots of how-tos, educational content, music,
| entertainment, etc.) Most adults are not going to be into
| watching Blues Clues or whatever, which is why YouTube
| doesn't have to worry about cannibalizing more profitable
| content/algorithms for adults due to the existence of
| YouTube Kids.
| ImJamal wrote:
| It doesn't meet requirement #4 (Filter out age
| inappropriate content). You can find many articles and
| videos, over the years, about all the inappropriate stuff
| making it into YouTube Kids.
| signatoremo wrote:
| > Have a "show me more content like this" button, but again,
| no auto algorithmic feeds
|
| What kind of content would you envision to be shown? Says if
| I want to watch more car review videos
| guywithahat wrote:
| Yeah but how do you decide who's educational content and who
| isn't? Mr Beast does tons of "educational" videos in the
| context of "$1 vs $10,000,000 house" or "living in Antarctica
| for a week". Same with Jubilee.
|
| The real big-brain move is understanding this isn't about
| protecting kids, and there isn't really anything YouTube can do
| long-term. Australia has been going after US big tech for a
| long time
| anothereng wrote:
| I use invidious to watch YouTube and have no shorts.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| Youtube has gotten so much worse in the last 6 months tho,
| introduction of shorts has devalued the platform terribly and
| it seems like all the good educational creators are moving off
| it anyway and now its just ripped crap that is often AI
| produced. Hopefully this move makes some actual competition
| show up for Youtube, because it sorely needs it.
| Jalad wrote:
| Interesting, I find that youtube is a great resource for
| educational content and was very useful in highschool etc.
|
| This seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but to
| be fair AI and really toxic context wasn't as big of a thing when
| I was in highschool
| bananapub wrote:
| adding more laws that will be universally ignored by anyone with
| a small amount of thought and effort feels like a stupid way to
| solve anything, but it is absolutely the Australian Way. to
| quote[0] a noted philosopher:
|
| > weird how a foundational myth of australia is that we're a
| nation of subversive larrikins, when in actuality everyone here
| is an ultracop
|
| 0: https://nitter.net/tfswebb/status/976299234491121665?lang=en
| trallnag wrote:
| Where does this myth come from? It's quite the opposite. For
| example, around 30 years ago hundreds of thousands of
| Australians willingly handed in their guns. And they accepted
| new laws that mostly prevented them from owning guns, and by
| that using them for self-defense.
| viktorcode wrote:
| I think that was a buyout. Government offered money for the
| guns.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| That's irrelevant to the argument that was being made.
| Confiscation for payment is still confiscation; see also
| "eminent domain."
| incone123 wrote:
| About that time my then boss handed in his guns, 'willingly'
| only in that he wasn't daft enough to think he could beat the
| police in a firefight.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The only entities that can possibly control Facebook and Google
| are nation-states. If there is to be any regulation of them (or
| the content they push) at all, that's where it has to happen.
| These giant tech companies have demonstrated that they don't
| care to do it themselves. Of course individuals can decide to
| use these platforms or not, but if that was good enough to
| achieve the society most of us want to live in, we wouldn't
| need 90% of the laws we currently have.
| jon-wood wrote:
| Sadly nation states, or at least the ones acting currently,
| seem to think the only thing available is a banned or not
| binary. There's no nuance to laws because nuance is hard to
| get into a 1 paragraph sound bite for the media.
|
| We're seeing the same thing in the UK currently with fuzzy
| definitions of what does and doesn't need age verification,
| and even what verification means, and that's leading to
| completely harmless communities shutting down to avoid having
| to risk being in the wrong while the megacorps just hoover up
| some more metadata about users.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Banning inappropriate things, whether media, alcohol,
| smoking, driving, etc. for young people is pretty much the
| long-established way of regulating what they do.
| spicyusername wrote:
| Under, say, 10-12 or so, I can understand a blanket ban. In
| general, the YouTube content aimed at children is pretty vapid
| and encourages too many parents to use it as parenting auto-
| pilot.
|
| But so much YouTube content is educational or otherwise has
| significant utility for older children or adults. Seems like a
| pretty big misstep to outright ban it.
|
| And that doesn't even get to the thorny question of how this is
| supposed to even be enforced...
|
| Then again, it may be better to do SOMETHING to start making
| these tech companies take solving these problems themselves
| seriously. Hard problem to solve, for sure.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Ridiculous. Would we have had a similar ban against flash video
| and game websites growing up if it were today? Against AOL
| Instant Messenger?
|
| I already had a local net nanny software to contend with, if
| the government had also tried preventing me from participating
| in online culture, assuming I didn't kill myself because of a
| lack of escape from my abusive situation, I would 100% have
| ended up being an absolute menace to the government in defiance
| and retaliation.
|
| I would have opened myself up to fraud charges creating
| accounts with private information from adults. And once I was
| over the wall of censorship, I'd only find adults and other
| criminally-minded children. I'd be on a conveyor belt to more
| serious crimes. Is that what we want the next generation of
| computer enthusiasts to grow up with?
| spicyusername wrote:
| We're talking about 8-year-olds here not 15-year-olds, and a
| website intended for passive consumption, not active
| participation.
|
| I would say the circumstances are pretty different.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| When I was 8, I was already hacking around net nanny
| software and involved in several online communities
| operated by other children, I was learning how to program
| and hack and generally use the internet as a gateway into
| culture that I otherwise never would have experienced.
|
| I tried involving myself in a lot of communities related to
| my interests, but some sites were just for entertainment
| and not active participation, or I simply didn't
| participate in the community. That doesn't change anything.
|
| Now a software engineer and artist, my entire life was
| shaped by that time, and as I said, I likely would have
| committed suicide due to my abusive situation if it wasn't
| for these communities.
|
| I will always fight to provide that kind of environment for
| others and not pull up the ladder now that I've climbed up.
| __d wrote:
| If you substitute the word "television" for "YouTube" or
| "social media", you can almost exactly replay the arguments of
| the 1970s.
| spicyusername wrote:
| Except in this case the content is basically totally
| unmoderated and mediated through an algorithm designed to
| keep the childrens attention permanently, so I would say the
| circumstances are at least a little different than back then.
| __d wrote:
| Yes. And yet.
|
| It's like every generation gets fixated on something new
| which can be perceived as moral decay and societal harm,
| and then rails against it. Making it even more popular with
| the younger generation, of course.
|
| I've seen the same thing play out with rock music,
| television, computer games, and now social media. There's
| likely examples back throughout history.
|
| I think you can mount an argument against all of these
| things. In retrospect though, it doesn't hold up. I wonder
| if social media is the same?
| spicyusername wrote:
| YouTube isn't social media, though... It's basically just
| television with a massive amount of really really bad
| channels.
| ccppurcell wrote:
| It's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I don't know
| what the right metaphor is. Throwing the scrap of edible meat out
| with the ton of rotten flesh? YouTube has got really bad in
| recent years. There are channels deliberately trying to get
| through to kids with horrific content. And of course the tobacco,
| gambling and sugar industries trying to turn our kids into
| addicts. They are often only one or two clicks away from
| extremely inappropriate content.
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| That edible meat is close to being the only edible thing around
| though. Can you really name anything on the level of
| 3Blue1Brown available for free?
|
| Hopefully this forces Youtube to set up a limited educational
| version that the Australian government would be ok with.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Most (all?) top universities have free educational content,
| often including entire courses, available. For instance here
| [1] is MIT's open courseware site where you can download all
| the required media, including lecture video/notes/problem
| sets/exams/etc, for courses - completely for free.
|
| Things like this are generally going to be orders of
| magnitude better than any YouTube video.
|
| [1] - https://ocw.mit.edu/
| sirwhinesalot wrote:
| Sadly I disagree. Those resources are great but they don't
| come close to the visualization work 3Blue1Brown makes.
| Many subjects only clicked for me after watching his
| videos.
| rhdunn wrote:
| 1. Welch Labs (Complex Numbers, AI)
|
| 2. Mathologer (Various maths-related theorems and properties)
|
| 3. Simon Roper, Colin Gorrie (Old English)
|
| 4. Jackson Crawford (Norse)
|
| 5. Doctor Mix (Synthesizers; Recreating classic songs)
|
| 6. Numberphile / Computerphile / Sixty Symbols / etc.
|
| 7. NativLang
|
| 8. Artifexian, Biblaridion, etc. -- ConLang and Speculative
| Biology, but also cover linguistic, geographical, and
| biological topics where relevant
| RankingMember wrote:
| Besides content harmful to kids, there's a ton that's harmful
| to just about any human psyche from a social or personal
| perspective. I wasn't aware of how bad it was until I recently
| browsed Youtube.com from an incognito window and saw the
| default experience- it's rage bait, misinformation, and just
| straight mental junk food. My logged-in experience is nothing
| like that, thankfully, but I can't imagine throwing a kid into
| a fresh YouTube account and them needing to pare that down (or
| even having the critical thinking skills to do so).
| showcaseearth wrote:
| +100 here. I think everyone should try this exercise- browse
| outside your algorithm. It's a sea of garbage to sort
| through.
| SlowTao wrote:
| This is probably why I havent seen YouTube as being a big
| issue. The algorithm on my account is so tightened up that non
| of that stuff bleeds through. So while I don't see the issues
| directly it is because they are kept away from me.
|
| I do get the very occastionally glimpse when I have to log in
| fresh and the recommendations on the front page are not great.
|
| This whole situation leaves me very torn. Great arguments on
| both sides. I just hope it isnt a trogan horse to online
| digital IDs being linked to all content access.
| nottorp wrote:
| It bans _accounts_ on youtube not watching, I think?
| m101 wrote:
| Perhaps this will mean a version of YouTube comes out without
| YouTube shorts integration. YouTube shorts, imo, legitimises the
| govts complaint.
| ivanmontillam wrote:
| I really wish there was a version of YT in Android that did not
| come with YT Shorts. As a YT Premium user, I should be able to
| disable it, or at least not make it the first thing it opens
| when I tap on the app icon.
|
| I mean, a legit app, not a 3rd party one that'll get my Google
| account banned eventually.
|
| I had to delete it, using: $ adb shell pm
| uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.youtube
|
| It lasted a month for me that way; then I installed it, and
| after a week or two I fell into the old habit of Doomscrolling
| and had to nuke it again.
|
| TikTok/Reels/Shorts format is really, really exploitative on
| the mind.
| simmerup wrote:
| I've recently started watching shorts. I blink and an hour
| has passed!
|
| Ridiculous. Adding insult to injury, a significant portion of
| them seem to be AI generated
| Avamander wrote:
| As a premium user I should be able to add content "made for
| kids" to playlists and see comments as well. It's absolutely
| idiotic how "save the children" is just an excuse to fuck
| over everyone else.
| j1elo wrote:
| You know, the current best option is not exactly a 3rd party
| app but an original app with some patches applied to it. Of
| course in the end you're trusting someone out there, but hey
| the patches are FOSS so they can be downloaded, reviewed, and
| applied locally.
|
| The feeling of a cleaned-up front page without addictive
| shorts or clickbait thumbnails is refreshing... and,
| ironically (as it usually happens), a much better experience,
| not to speak mentally healthier for anyone, especially a kid.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| As a free YouTube user, I was able to disable the Shorts
| stuff by disabling watch history on my YouTube account. I can
| watch shorts from my subscriptions only, on the subscriptions
| tab, by explicitly clicking on them.
| amelius wrote:
| People would go to TikTok if shorts were removed.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| People who want shorts would go to TikTok. People who keep
| clicking the "don't show me Shorts" button are probably not
| using TikTok in the first place.
| foobarian wrote:
| I would love to block the shorts at home router level. I
| hesitate to just block the site altogether
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732683
| 9rx wrote:
| _> "YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free,
| high-quality content [...] It's not social media."_
|
| Aren't "sharing platforms" and "social media" the same thing? I
| understand a long time ago there was a dream that people would
| produce and share as much content as they consume, and that is
| what social media was supposed to be in reference to, but that
| imagined world never happened. Social media, as used to refer to
| any practical service in the real world, has always been about
| one-sided content being shared to a mostly consumer-only
| audience.
|
| _> increasingly viewed on TV screens_
|
| Are people digging old Trinitrons out of the trash, or what? If
| you try to buy a new "TV", you are going to get a computer with a
| large monitor instead.
| lvass wrote:
| >Aren't "sharing platforms" and "social media" the same thing?
|
| Meta claimed in FTC v. Meta that they are indeed the same.
| non- wrote:
| Teens are old enough to find their way around any content bans.
| This seems like a good way to introduce teens to VPN's and
| skirting content regulations early. It's also dumb because
| YouTube can teach you almost anything, I'd say it's the "best of
| the worst" when it comes to social media on the internet.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| My teens, and each one I have encountered through them, cannot
| discern a pixel from a wallsocket. They are tech consumers. Not
| tech savvy. My dad (82) is more tech savvy.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Exactly, teens have tons of access to tech. But that tech is
| just a straw through which to consume an endless stream of
| content. It's not a tool to master and manipulate.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| My 13yo wanted to install some dotnet disassembly or
| injection tool so he could download mods and inject new code
| into existing games on steam. All his friends were doing it
| and I'm the mean dad because I won't let him download any
| random code from the internet and run it.
|
| They don't know what they are doing, but they know how to
| follow instructions on github.
| foobarian wrote:
| If this were my kid I would rejoice and thank my lucky
| stars
| SlowTao wrote:
| For now. Maybe this will be the incentive to get them to dig
| into how these things work.
| standardUser wrote:
| Your kids don't need to be savvy, just a small number of kids
| will create the culture and technology to circumvent these
| laws and other kids will consume it. And the sharpest kids
| will always outflank the adults because their perspectives
| are fresher and their motivations are far more personal and
| urgent.
| ncruces wrote:
| Good, at least they'll learn a useful skill in the process.
|
| Unlike what happens if they open the app and are pushed to doom
| scroll through dozens of videos on every 10 min school break.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > "best of the worst"
|
| Such a low bar.
| seydor wrote:
| This is raising a generation of radicalized teens with
| institutionalized hatred against the older generation. Will end
| well
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| That was already the case.
| simmerup wrote:
| You mean YouTube (and social media in general)?
|
| If so, you can expand it to hating those younger than
| themselves, hating the opposite gender, and hating each other
| jjangkke wrote:
| More likely this will force them to be right wing as they get
| older. Young ppl arent digging left wing stuff as trends show
| many are shifting to conservatism.
| __d wrote:
| That's not universally true.
|
| In Australia, young people skew significantly progressive,
| and young woman even more so.
| jjangkke wrote:
| it is is the dominating trend globally in OECD countries
| neilv wrote:
| Hatred/resentment, maybe.
|
| What could be great is a _revolutionary_ generation. But I don
| 't see that happening. We've already been dumbed-down, and
| indoctrinated into a selfish and therefore neutered culture.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| A couple months ago, I saw people everywhere online (including
| HN) saying they love the idea of social media bans for kids. They
| love the idea of keeping people under 18 safe from the dangers of
| porn and mature games and other unclean things as well.
|
| Now governments around the world are acting in unison to happily
| give those people what they want, and people are suddenly
| confused and pissed that these laws mean you need to submit proof
| that you're over 18. And instead of being an annoying checkbox
| that says "I'm 18. Leave me alone", it's needing to submit a
| selfie and ID photo to be verified, saved, and permanently bound
| to your every single action online.
|
| People who asked for social media bans for kids got what they
| wanted. They'll have to live with the consequences for the rest
| of their lives. We all will.
| RankingMember wrote:
| I think the concern about how this will be implemented (e.g.
| selfie and ID submission) is well-founded. I also think that
| letting tech companies make billions by feeding our youth
| mental junk food is a problem. I'm not sure where the middle
| path is, but I think it'll need some real thought to figure
| out.
| Bukhmanizer wrote:
| If you didn't realize that making teens verify their age
| online meant that everyone had to verify their age and
| identity online, that's just a dangerous level of stupidity.
|
| The issue is everyone wants some quick and easy solution when
| the truth is we're going to need to get much more intentional
| as a society about this. Take phone bans. Everyone wants to
| ban phones from schools/classrooms, but the truth is in a lot
| of places phones are already banned from school. But we've
| spent the last 3 decades taking away any power from teachers
| to enforce their rules so kids just do it anyway.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > People who asked for social media bans for kids got what they
| wanted. They'll have to live with the consequences for the rest
| of their lives. We all will.
|
| I guess I'm fine with not visiting any of these age-restricted
| sites. They're not the thing I would miss if the whole internet
| shut down. (In fact, there's precious little I would miss --
| maybe just archive.org?)
| stavros wrote:
| He said, on an online forum.
| kristopolous wrote:
| If "save the children" creates enough friction to bring the
| demise of social media then I'll go lay a flower on Anita
| Bryant's grave and tell her I'm sorry.
| XorNot wrote:
| It's going to be _every_ website. There will be no place they
| will stop. You think a forum like this one where it 's
| conceivably possible someone in a bad category could interact
| with someone under the age of 16, however unlikely, won't be
| regulated?
|
| "But sir! The largest websites on the internet implement
| Government ID Age Check. Just federate with one of those, why
| are you complaining so much? Don't you want to protect the
| children or stop anti-Semitism or something?"
| jjangkke wrote:
| When I mentioned that any attempt at identifying users to
| access or write content is a trojan horse for a wide
| surveillance yet HN users downvoted and flagged such comments
| and were zealously supportive of "prottecct kidz"
|
| In the late 90s and early 2000s we as teenagers had access to
| unfiltered internet and unregulated. The harm to us were
| largely moral fanaticism, this was when they also tried to ban
| video games because of violent content and now we have complete
| censorship and control over what games can sell or not on
| steam.
|
| Much of the panic on social media amplified by protestants and
| religious ppl are greatly exaggerated. Porn isnt the danger its
| the addictive tendencies of the individual that must be
| educated upon.
| j1elo wrote:
| > _it 's needing to submit a selfie and ID photo to be
| verified, saved, and permanently bound to your every single
| action online._
|
| And leaked every 6 months, now including your ID photos and
| real name instead of an internet pseudonym, and lots of other
| sweet details that make extortion schemes a child's play
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Why are so many countries like Australia, UK, EU, etc suddenly
| pro censorship. Aren't these all liberal democracies? I would
| think these policies would be very unpopular. Is there some
| analysis of how this came to be normalized?
| aspbee555 wrote:
| this is why "think of the children" is always used in these
| instances, it gets right past peoples defenses and if you try
| to argue against privacy invasive/life invasive/completely
| useless regulations/regulations ripe for abuse (by design) then
| you are somehow the "bad guy"
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I'm an everyday Australian, I'll take a few guesses. (I don't
| support these new laws)
|
| 1. we don't have as an antagonistic relationship with our
| government and we trust that most of what will be banned will
| be gross stuff we don't want weirdos watching.
|
| 2. I think most people feel social media really is breaking
| young people, and its easier if all kids are banned than just
| trying to ban your own kids. It's really hard to explain to a
| kid why they are not allowed to watch you tube when every other
| kid is.
|
| Update: Also, the only thing this law is going to do is to
| force every parent in Australia to create accounts for their
| kids.
| t0lo wrote:
| I'm an australian who completed the esafety survey which helped
| guide this policy. I pushed for anonymous temporary age
| verification tokens generated through a government app.
|
| Social media is undermining the fabric of our societies and
| destroying a whole generations emotional development. I support
| this- in part because I know those who want to get around
| enough or be private will always find a way, but it has a
| positive, reality affirming effect on the public.
|
| Watch the press conference from our PM and comms minister from
| yesterday to understand that this is coming from a place of
| compassion or control. They have said repeatedly they will
| always ensure a non id method is ensured. I know there are
| flaws in that though.
| https://youtu.be/SCSMQUmrh38?feature=shared
| general1726 wrote:
| So they will start using YouTube Revanced. What now?
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _YouTube to be included in Australia 's social media ban for
| children under 16_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44732683 - July 2025 (117
| comments)
|
| (I haven't merged that one hither because it's quite a bit more
| generic than this one.)
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| The Australian Prime Minister - Anthony Albanese - was once asked
| by a radio host what he would do if he was dictator - he said he
| would ban all social media.
|
| And lets note that the ALP government is very fast and snappy to
| ban social media, very slow to do important things like:
|
| - ban money laundering in real estate
|
| - ban gambling advertising
|
| And very quick to:
|
| - approve massive new coal mines
|
| - approve massive new natural gas projects
|
| The Australian government hates social media because that's where
| the people get to say what they think of the governmnent - in
| real time.
|
| The social media companies have missed a crucial point about
| doing business in Australia - you must be paying your dues to the
| political parties and you must be paying big taxes. This is what
| the mining and gambling and fosil fuel companies do, and the
| Australian government does backflips to give them what they want.
| netsharc wrote:
| Ah yes, because it's the teenage vote and social media voice
| they're very very worried about...
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Uh, yea, it is. Teenagers grow up. In just a few short years.
| Then they become members of the voting group most vulnerable
| to propaganda and political manipulation. It's the same
| reason tobacco and alcohol companies love advertising to
| teens. You're creating a target that can be identified,
| manipulated and controlled through social reinforcement.
|
| Teens also have more time to connect with others and develop
| unsanctioned philosophies than adults who work and take care
| of the household full-time.
| __d wrote:
| The social media ban is broadly popular. The clear majority of
| voters support it. It's a political win for the government to
| push this through, over the objections from Google, Meta, etc.
|
| The fact that social media makes a stack of money in Australia
| but manages to pay almost no tax absolutely impacts their fate:
| both with the government and the voters.
|
| Some of the popularity of this legislation might even come from
| it being seen as sticking it to "techbros".
|
| Banning eg coal mining, online gambling, etc, is vastly less
| popular. And they contribute to employment, revenue (via
| taxes), and they lobby/donate effectively.
|
| Social media could easily have avoided this, as other
| industries have, but they decided not to. They might yet be
| able to leverage US tariffs though?
| like_any_other wrote:
| If only there was some kind of parental control software
| available, there would be no need to further expand state
| surveillance and repression. Unfortunately, this is the only way,
| that the government only reluctantly resorted to, after much
| public outcry, and after having tried many other non-invasive,
| freedom- and privacy-respecting measures, that have all failed...
| SlowTao wrote:
| Yep, it seems like a failure on all parties. Government, civil
| and corporate.
|
| Hyper optimization of attention to drive up profits for the
| sake of share holders while ignoring the externalities was a
| terrible idea but in a capitalist system, they are the winners.
| binary132 wrote:
| I don't see what the big deal is. Nobody has ground to stand on
| in asserting that minors have a moral right to an "online life".
| On the other hand, there are tons of good reasons to disallow
| minors from participating in the free online commons. I'm not
| saying I necessarily support it in all cases, but I definitely
| don't think it's necessarily a bad or immoral thing either, and
| it's a bit surprising that a bunch of extremely online tech
| jockeys seem to.
| Avamander wrote:
| The deal is that everyone shouldn't be subjected to invasive
| identity verification just to not be considered children. Not
| only is this process generally vaguely specified in depth, it's
| a massive (financial) burden for most online platforms. The
| effect this kind of legislation has, has not been properly
| thought out.
|
| Large corporations' eagerness to implement this legislation
| should be a MASSIVE red flag alone. How do they benefit from
| this? I can think of a few ways.
|
| Track record also shows that we can't properly do biometric
| data collection like this. This will end up in massive data
| leaks, if not people's IDs then at least faces. Congrats,
| you've given some scammers a full dataset for impersonating
| people.
|
| Not only that, most noninvasive methods for age verification
| are dumb and ineffective with the AI options available today.
| Not to mention five or ten years.
|
| So now you've got a vague unspecified and relatively nanny-
| state goal combined with ineffective and invasive methods and
| malicious compliance with immensely negative side effects. It
| is not worth it.
|
| It's akin to wanting every restaurant that sells beer to card
| everyone at the entrance and store it in a database. Do we
| perhaps also want lists of minorities to better "protect" them?
|
| "Oh, you bought lava cake? That's children's favourite, please
| show us your ID to see that you're not a child or we'll take
| the cake away."
| jackdawipper wrote:
| yea but that isnt why they are doing it. they dont gaf about
| kids, they want total control of the populace online behaviour
| and this is steps in that direction.
|
| what fascinates me most, is when people dont realise this.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Its a little bit of a stretch to call YouTube social media. There
| are tons of great instructional videos.
|
| The real kicker to me is that the government has passed a law
| restricting access yet they haven't determined how they're going
| to enforce an age check. It's wild that they passed a law without
| consideration to it's mechanics or feasibility.
| jeffybefffy519 wrote:
| Is mechanics of enforcement really a government thing tho?
| coolestguy wrote:
| No you're right, thinking about laws & second order effects
| isn't a government thing
| sophacles wrote:
| Um... its a law. And yes, law enforcement is widely
| considered a government thing. See also: police.
| observationist wrote:
| Good thing the internet police will be there to ensure
| those laws are enforced. Great job, Australia!
| y1426i wrote:
| It should at least be possible to ban YouTube shorts. I wish
| those were served from a separate domain to make it easier to
| block just those.
| exasperaited wrote:
| I would love to see more scrutiny of short content because it
| is without doubt the most manipulative.
| andriamanitra wrote:
| It's not too much effort to find uBlock Origin filter lists
| that hide them. The only time I see YouTube shorts is when I
| deliberately navigate to the shorts tab on a channel page.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > It's wild that they passed a law without consideration to
| it's mechanics or feasibility.
|
| It's not. Much of the world's governments (particularly those
| that follow the UK system) implement smaller laws and then
| delegate the implementation to statutory instruments/secondary
| legislation, written by experts and then adopted by ministers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_and_secondary_legislat...
|
| (Australia included)
|
| It seems suboptimal, but then so does the alternative of a "big
| beautiful bill" full of absurd detail where you have people
| voting it into law who not only _haven 't fucking read it_ but
| are now not ashamed that not only have _they_ not fucking read
| it, nobody on their staff was tasked with fucking reading it
| and fucking telling them what the fuck is in it.
|
| Lighter weight laws that establish intent and then legally
| require the creation of statutory instruments tend to make
| things easier, particularly when parliament can scrutinise the
| statutory instruments and get them modified to better fit the
| intent of the law.
|
| It also means if no satisfactory statutory instrument/secondary
| legislation can be created, the law exists on the books
| unimplemented, of course, but it allows one parliament to set
| the direction of travel and leave the implementation to
| subsequent parliaments, which tends to stop the kind of
| whiplash we see in US politics.
|
| ETA: for example, the secondary legislation committee in the
| UK, which is cross-party, is currently scrutinising these:
|
| https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/255/secondary-leg...
| giantg2 wrote:
| There is a happy medium. The big beautiful bill stuff is not
| normal. There are some states that have single issue clauses
| where the bill must be a single issue, resulting in more
| concise bills. Enforcement and rules can be made by agencies
| too. I think the whiplash is more of a two party thing since
| the bipartisan ones rarely flip-flop. The other stuff barely
| passes. We would still have whiplash even if implementation
| were left to another congress because it would still barely
| pass.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > We would still have whiplash even if implementation were
| left to another congress because it would still barely
| pass.
|
| Not so, not if it were left to cross-party committees. By
| and large even the US system seems to have functional
| committees when you ignore a few grandstanders.
|
| Unfortunately the US system seemingly tends towards
| creating _massive_ legislation, partly because of the
| absence of this secondary legislation distinction, and
| partly because of the really interesting difference in the
| way it approaches opposition. In most of the world, if your
| bill passes with a huge majority, it 's a good sign.
|
| From my external perspective, it appears that in the USA, a
| bill passing with a huge majority is often seen as a
| significant failure, because opposition is so much more
| partisan and party loyalty battles so much more brutal, and
| the system so nearly two-party 50:50 deadlocked at all
| times, that if you get what you want with a huge majority,
| you _weren 't asking for enough_.
|
| So what tends to happen is that a bill starts off with a
| strong majority and then gets loaded down with extra, often
| tangentially-related detail, until it is _juuuust_ going to
| squeak through.
|
| The primary/secondary legislation approach tends to head
| off that possibility because secondary legislation that is
| genuinely unwieldy tends not to get out of committee. It
| also _might_ be less vulnerable to lobbying, because the
| secondary legislation committees are small standing
| committees and handle more than one kind of secondary
| legislation, so lobbying influence tends to stick out a bit
| more.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "The primary/secondary legislation approach tends to head
| off that possibility because secondary legislation that
| is genuinely unwieldy tends not to get out of committee."
|
| Cause and effect is off here. If the primary legislation
| we already have makes it out of committee to be loaded
| down after, then having secondary legislation would also
| be loaded down after. Splitting into two stages isn't the
| fix. Fixing the two party issues would still be
| necessary.
| exasperaited wrote:
| > If the primary legislation we already have makes it out
| of committee to be loaded down after
|
| But it wouldn't be. I mean, you can't retrofit this onto
| the US system now anyway, but the primary/secondary split
| culturally leads to much, much smaller primary
| legislation.
|
| Our system still produces bloated things like the UK tax
| code, but the general thrust of UK primary legislation is
| that it is absolutely small enough to be read fully and
| debated.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "but the primary/secondary split culturally leads to
| much, much smaller primary legislation."
|
| Maybe if starting from zero, but not with the established
| culture.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > There are tons of great instructional videos.
|
| Yes, but its also unregulated and full of shit, Moreover its
| designed to feed you more stuff that you like, regardless of
| the consequences.
|
| For adults, thats probably fine (I mean its not, but thats out
| of scope) for kids, it'll fuck you up. Especially as there isnt
| anything else to counteract it. (think back to when you had
| that one mate who was into conspiracy theories. They'd get book
| from the library, or some dark part of the web. But there was
| always the rest of society to re-enforce how much its all
| bollocks. That coesn't exist now, as there isn't a canonical
| source, its all advertising clicks)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| YT still has the great instructional videos, but teens today
| (my son included) are mostly just scrolling the shorts just
| like TikTok. YT is heavily orienting itself as social media.
| jemmyw wrote:
| They aren't banning viewing videos, they're banning kids having
| an account I believe.
|
| I'm sure their approach to enforcement will be something along
| the lines of relying on the websites to sort it out and fining
| them if they don't. The govt doesn't need to enforce the age
| check themselves or even provide or suggest a mechanism.
|
| I imagine any smaller players in this market will just stay
| away from having an official presence in Australia.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This ban includes watching videos. The law says they must
| take action to prevent underage persons from accessing their
| services. This means they will likely have to require login
| and age verify any accounts. The carve out in the article is
| talking about teachers and parents being allowed to show the
| content to the kids.
|
| "The govt doesn't need to enforce the age check themselves or
| even provide or suggest a mechanism."
|
| I suppose it will be up to the courts to decide what is
| reasonable as an age check. However, the government has said
| that they don't want to include full ID checks, which is why
| one would assume they would provide guidance on how to
| comply.
| standardUser wrote:
| Maybe if the age limit was lower, and maybe if the law was less
| strict. But the delta between this law and the society its being
| imposed on is way too big to not cause serious unintended
| consequences. The younger kids will find ways to achieve many of
| the same interactions, only totally unregulated, and in doing so
| will be forced to create distance between themselves and 'adult'
| society.
| ElCapitanMarkla wrote:
| I don't really understand why Youtube won't let me create a
| profile, on my paid family account that I'm paying $29 NZD a
| month for, which lets me whitelist channels.
|
| I'm happy for my kids to have free access to certain channels on
| youtube, but the mind numbing shorts, and shit they find on
| random channels just does my head in. And it seems to be getting
| worse, I'm not sure if its that they are getting older and able
| to search for more content or if the content is just getting
| worse, maybe both, but I'm probably just going to cancel the sub
| so they at least have to put up with terrible ads if they try to
| access it.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Ads as effective parental controls is wild, hilarious, and
| somewhat dystopian to me.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| Presumably for the same reason Google doesn't let you block or
| filter shit sites.
|
| If you genuinely let user's preferences be taken into account,
| it's incredibly hard to make money from ads if the user's true
| preferences are not to be shown them.
|
| The entire point of ads is to manipulate and change user
| preferences and behaviours.
|
| So any preferences or customisation has to be minimal enough
| that their use can only partially implement user preferences.
| White listing is a step too far against the purpose of YouTube.
|
| Thus Google will always be biased to not letting you implement
| full customisability and user control.
| glaucon wrote:
| Agreed but ElCapitanMarkla is paying for an ad free service
| so at that point (as far as I can see) there shouldn't be any
| reason they can't have what they suggest.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| Well, there's additional powerful reasons for that:
|
| 1) you would be starting a culture and mechanism inside
| your own company that plugs into your main money generating
| platform who's entire purpose is to recognise and block the
| disutility of your primary revenue stream. In modern
| corporate culture that would be a huge no no. It also puts
| that thought out into the mainstream. You do not say your
| product is shit or harmful (especially with regulators
| looking at you)
|
| 2) it blocks or creates barriers to future expansion
| options to place or extend your ecosystem into the paid
| tier.
|
| 3) while explicit ads might be filtered (for now) it also
| interferes with and has implications for the rest of your
| non-explicit ad ecosystem (prediction, nudging,
| recommendations, subscribers, deals and influencers)
| kingnothing wrote:
| Try Kagi. You can filter out the shit sites. It's great!
| sharperguy wrote:
| I haven't tried it myself yet, but I self host my own
| Jellyfin(1) instance, and I've had it recommended to combine it
| with pinchflat(2), which will auto download and label entire
| youtube channels, as they publish new videos. So then you could
| use it to archive and provide access to the channels you want
| without worrying about the recommendations and other channels.
|
| 1. https://jellyfin.org/
|
| 2. https://github.com/kieraneglin/pinchflat
| modeless wrote:
| YouTube kids has a feature to only show whitelisted channels
| and videos. It's been there a few years now. You can share
| videos to your kids directly from the YouTube app.
| viraptor wrote:
| But that also opens all the yt kids content, doesn't it? At
| least I couldn't find any way to whitelist within the kids
| app too. And there's just WAY too much brainrot crap in it to
| allow open access for my kid.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > I don't really understand why Youtube won't let me create a
| profile, on my paid family account that I'm paying $29 NZD a
| month for, which lets me whitelist channels
|
| The answer is to this question is always: it is too niche a
| product feature for a giant corporation to prioritize. This
| product would require constant work to keep in sync as UIs and
| features change. It would be one more feature to regression
| test against an ever growing list changes, and an ever growing
| list of client apps that need to work across an endless list of
| phones, computers, tvs, etc.
|
| This is why it is important that society normalize third party
| clients to public web services. We should be allowed to create
| and use whatever UI we want for the public endpoints that are
| exposed.
|
| PS: this particular feature exists though.
|
| https://support.google.com/youtubekids/answer/6172308?hl=en&...
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Your second paragraph is kind of funny as a solution to your
| first, but was nonetheless what I was going to suggest: since
| it would require too much work for a multi-trillion dollar
| company to be cable of building, you can instead rely on
| hobbyists and use yt-dlp and jellyfin to make your own
| whitelisted youtube.
|
| The option (or at least documentation) does not seem to be
| there for computers. Is it only on mobile devices?
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| The PS kind of undermines the rest of your point.
| frereubu wrote:
| That feature isn't what I think the parent comment is asking
| for. What you've linked to is specifically YouTube Kids, and
| it's groups of channels whitelisted by the YouTube team. What
| I think the parent comment is asking for, and I want too, is
| full availability of all YouTube channels, but the ability to
| block everything except whitelisted channels. I agree, it's
| too niche a product. But I often think that people whose
| response to complaints about kids' access to inappropriate
| content is "you need to parent your kids" is _fine, but I
| need the tools to do that!_ A tool like this would be a
| godsend.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Of course if it made a bunch of money it would be a top
| priority though.
| upboundspiral wrote:
| For windows / linux I've found the freetube app to provide a
| lot of sane controls. I can block channels as needed, block
| shorts, hide profile pictures of commenters, and a lot of other
| quality of life things. You can even set a password for the
| settings as needed. Otherwise in the browser (firefox) I've
| been somewhat succesful in blocking youtube shorts with ublock
| origin filter rules: www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-
| renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(1)
| www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-
| renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2) www.youtube.com##ytd-rich-
| section-renderer.ytd-rich-grid-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-
| type(4) www.youtube.com##ytd-guide-entry-renderer.ytd-guide-
| section-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(2)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yup. Id pay money to lock down the 24/7 Bluey youtube channel
| for the kids... at least until the next trend comes along.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/live/cN4EPsfBnq0?feature=shared
| jackdawipper wrote:
| testing ground for whats coming out of Europe.
|
| the most annoying part of all of this is that the people voted
| for it by voting Labor again. we are fkd.
| pfych wrote:
| This law was popular with the Liberal & Greens parties sadly -
| was likely regardless of who won the election.
| scubadude wrote:
| It is absolutely not supported by the Greens [1].
|
| "The Greens have also called for: A ban on
| the targeting, harvesting and selling of young people's data
| A Digital Duty of Care on tech platforms EU-
| style guardrails to limit the toxicity of algorithms and
| extreme content The ability for users to turn
| down and opt-out of unwanted content The full
| release of the Online Safety Act review.
| Investment in education for young people and their families
| to help develop digital literacy and online safety skills,
| and equip them with the tools and resources they need for
| positive and responsible online use.
|
| " [2]
|
| [1] https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-condemn-
| pass...
|
| [2] https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/blunt-social-
| media-...
| t0lo wrote:
| Adding some context which is sorely missing:
|
| Our government intends to spruik this at the UN and get other
| countries on board.
|
| Our government has said there will always be a non id method
|
| Youtube will still be accessible it is just the account
| making/usership which will be banned
|
| Posting my threaded comment higher up:
|
| I'm an australian who completed the esafety survey which helped
| guide this policy. I pushed for anonymous temporary age
| verification tokens generated through a government app.
|
| Social media is undermining the fabric of our societies and
| destroying a whole generations emotional development and
| institutionalising a culture of infectious insecurity. I support
| this- in part because I know those who want to get around enough
| or be private will always find a way, but it has a positive,
| reality affirming effect on the public.
|
| Watch the press conference from our PM and comms minister from
| yesterday to make up your mind on if this is coming from a place
| of compassion or control. They have said repeatedly they will
| always ensure a non id method is ensured. I know there are flaws
| in that though. https://youtu.be/SCSMQUmrh38?feature=shared
|
| It's interesting to see that the press conference felt so
| uniquely grounded in reality and authentically emotional- maybe
| that's because they are directly challenging the delegitimising
| impermanent reality of social media-
|
| Yes they did bring families with children who had passed from
| social media abuse on stage but it felt genuine. Doesn't mean
| your privacy concerns aren't real but they don't always trump
| protecting a childs emotional development.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-30 23:00 UTC)