Australia Bans Kids From Signing Up For YouTube Accounts, Angering Google

Australia will require Google to ensure that children aged under 16 cannot sign up for YouTube accounts.

The decision, announced today by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, alters the 2024 decision to exclude YouTube from the regime that will require Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and X to use age verification technology to ensure that kids cannot sign up for accounts.

Australia’s plan, which comes into force in December, is not to ban kids from using social media. The nation’s leaders instead want to stop social media services from tracking kids through their accounts.

Or as Minister for Communications Anika Wells put it: “We want kids to know who they are before platforms assume who they are.”

Kids will therefore be free to use social media using accounts created by adults, or without an account at all – which is possible on YouTube – or using curated services like YouTube Kids that attempt to guarantee a child-safe experience.

The policy is flawed because it means kids can use social media while logged into accounts established by others and encounter plenty of harmful content. Albanese therefore pitched the policy as part of an ongoing co-operation between Australia’s government and social media operators.

“We want this to be cooperative,” he said. “We make this point, that social media does have a social responsibility and they also need a social license.”

“We acknowledge that this is not going to be simple or easy … some of this will be inevitably a work-in-progress, a response. Like, if people are trying to get around it, how do we then respond?”

Asked if the government has any non-negotiable elements in its plans to regulate social media, Albanese said that ahead of Australia’s May election platforms offered their platforms as a useful campaign advertising tool for “identifying women between a particular age in a particular seat, in a particular demographic, with particular postcodes.”

A company with such capabilities, the PM argued, can “use the capacity which we know that they have” to protect children.

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Google isn’t happy that Australia’s government changed its mind about regulating YouTube, and says it “will consider next steps and will continue to engage with the Government.”

YouTube has also bought outdoor ads and even used old-school newspaper ads to advance the argument it is not a social media company. In a statement posted online a spokesperson says “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.”

That last point about not being social media misses the point, because Australia’s policy is to reduce the harms posed by all online media. YouTube’s argument that Australia changed its mind is also hollow, because the nation’s online safety regulator advised the government that YouTube is a major source of harm for kids down under.

Albanese proudly described his government’s approach as “world-leading”.

And that’s what Google fears, because if Australia’s plans succeed it will mean fewer kids acquire YouTube and disrupt the flow of data into the web giant’s info-hoard, first down under and then perhaps elsewhere.

But before that outcome eventuates, Australia must decide on what age verification technology is most appropriate to bring its laws to life. And at the time of writing, the government knows those technologies are flawed and may further weaken the impact of its laws. ®