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Australia Completely Loses The Plot, Plans To Ban Kids From Watching YouTube
(www.techdirt.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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Will anonymous access still be allowed? I remember there was some vague wording about logged in vs logged out in terms of search engines, which seemed to suggest that only logged in users would be affected. Presumably there would still be age-gated content, though, which historically required a login. Hopefully that doesn't expand if that's the case.
To YouTube? Yes. The legislation requires social media companies to ensure people under the age of 16 do not have accounts. It does not prevent people under the age of 16 from accessing these social media platforms whilst logged out. For something like Facebook or Instagram, which rarely work unless logged in, this will have a significant impact, but for YouTube it makes barely any difference. I haven't used YouTube logged in for a very long time and there is very little that is off-limits, beyond highly graphic content, so this is a far cry from the "ban" it has been hysterically portrayed as in the media.
The search engine thing is a different piece of legislation I believe, but it also does not require you to be logged into an account to perform web searches. You will still be able to use Google and Bing with default safety settings enabled.
I agree the media reporting has not been great, but the concern is more about slippery slope type effects where this will be extended to cover more and more sites. Some would argue that "slippery slope" arguments are fallacious, but I think there is a point here, especially when laws that can be argued to "protect children" are hard to roll back due to the political risk (and are easy to expand for the same reason).
I agree and I am concerned too, given that the Australian Government has a track record of encroaching on civil liberties under very vague "security" and "safety" justifications. I do think regulation in this area is very important, though, and that perhaps the only realistic way in which occurs is via some encroachment on our individual freedoms as netizens. I find a lot of people who claim to only be opposed to this specific implementation are actually just outright opposed to literally anything that even minutely affects them once you coax their ideology out a bit more, and I'm definitely not in that group. There is an important balancing act to make here between complete individual freedom and combating a widespread societal brain drain and mental health decline in young people, and my feeling is that many of the loudest opponents are only interested in the former, purely for selfish reasons.
I’m going to lose access to my playlists and have a hard time finding rare versions again or song titles that are hard to search.
Random things also can get flagged as mature
Video playlists? You can export those outside of YouTube. I use Grayjay so exported all my subscriptions and playlists a long time ago (hence why I no longer watch through an account).
Cool thanks. I’ll check it out
I personally use a mix of grayjay and revanced. Grayjay is missing a few QoL features like a sleep timer. You can always make a burner account for revanced if you want to keep to a single app but honestly I find it works fine when I use it!
These are great suggestions thanks