The government of Australia has reversed its decision to grant YouTube an exemption from its sweeping ban on social media for children under 16. YouTube’s parent company, Google, is threatening legal action, but Australian officials vowed to push ahead with the ban.
“We can’t control the ocean, but we can police the sharks, and that is why we will not be intimidated by legal threats when this is a genuine fight for the wellbeing of Australian kids,” Communications Minister Anika Wells said when Google threatened to sue.
Australia announced its “world-leading” plan to bar children from using social media in November 2024. Despite resistance from Internet freedom advocates, and difficult questions about precisely how such a ban could be implemented, the relevant legislation was quickly passed, and the ban is set to take effect in December 2025.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave a press conference on Wednesday in which he pledged to promote Australia’s social media ban to other countries at the United Nations General Assembly in September.
“I know from the discussions I have had with other leaders that they are looking at this and they are considering what impact social media is having on young people in their respective nations, it is a common experience,” Albanese said, appearing with the parents of children who were bullied to death on social media.
“We don’t do this easily. What we do, though, is respond to something that is needed here,” he said.
YouTube was granted an exemption from the ban when it was passed by Parliament in November, for several reasons. One was that YouTube was viewed as an important source of information for teens, so even though it carried potentially harmful content, the good was thought to outweigh the bad.
LGBTQ groups insisted YouTube was an important resource for gay and lesbian children, while public health groups said they used the platform to distribute important information to young people. Australian parents found YouTube less alarming that competing platforms like TikTok. YouTube also featured less direct interaction between users than most of the social media platforms that troubled Australian regulators.
A final objection to banning YouTube was that logging into the service is not required – visitors can access the vast majority of the platform’s content as “guests.” This meant there was no practical way to hold YouTube accountable for policing the age of its users.
Naturally, many of the platforms that were targeted by Australia’s social media ban resented the exemption granted to YouTube. These complaints might have had some bearing on the government’s decision to cancel YouTube’s exemption.
According to Australia’s ABC News, YouTube was added to the social media ban at the request of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, who wrote a letter to Wells asking for YouTube’s exemption to be rescinded. Inman Grant said her recommendation was based on a survey of 2,600 children that found nearly 40 percent of them had been exposed to “harmful content” while using YouTube.
“When we asked where they were experiencing harm and the kinds of harms they were experiencing, the most prevalent place where young Australians experienced harm was on YouTube – almost 37 per cent,” she said.
“This ranges from misogynistic content to hateful material, to violent fighting videos, online challenges, disordered eating, suicidal ideation,” she added.
Wells was a bit vague about how YouTube would be required to comply with the ban. It seems likely the platform will be required to mark some of its content as “age-restricted” and prevent unverified guest users from accessing it. YouTube will also be restricted from offering viewing suggestions to unverified users.
“There is technology and each platform works differently. Reasonable steps is reasonable,” Wells shrugged, referring to the November law’s requirement that social media companies must take “reasonable” precautions to keep children from accessing their content.
Wells dismissed arguments that it was unreasonable to expect platforms like YouTube to police the ages of their users.
“Platforms have to provide an alternative to providing your own personal identification documents to satisfy themselves of age. These platforms know with deadly accuracy who we are, what we do and when we do it. And they know that you’ve had a Facebook account since 2009, so they know that you are over 16,” she argued.
“We share the government’s goal of addressing and reducing online harms. 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,” YouTube said in response to losing its exemption.
“The government’s announcement today reverses a clear, public commitment to exclude YouTube from this ban. We will consider next steps and will continue to engage with the government,” the company said.
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