Decision imminent on whether YouTube will be captured in social media age ban

Labor is expected to imminently announce if YouTube will be captured by the social media age ban.

Australia will not be bullied by Google or any other tech giant from “taking action” to protect children online, says Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek as a decision looms for Labor on including YouTube in its social media age ban.

The Albanese Government is expected to announce within days whether the video platform will be added to laws preventing Australians aged 16 and below from having a social media account, which are due to take effect in December.

Labor is expected to imminently announce a decision on if YouTube is to be included in teh social media age ban Picture: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP

Sources familiar with the deliberations said any inclusion of YouTube would likely be in line with the recommendation from the eSafety Commission that younger Australians be banned from holding an account, but not stopped from accessing the platform in a “logged-out” state.

YouTube was initially excluded from the laws late last year, but in June the government published advice from eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant recommending “no single platform or service be specifically excluded under the rules”.

In her reasoning, Ms Inman Grant pointed to features and functions of YouTube associated with the very harms the social media ban was designed to address, such as autoplay, “endless” and “algorithmically” recommended content.

She said banning younger Australians from a YouTube account would not stop them accessing the platform.

TikTok is among the social media platforms included in the ban already. Picture: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP

But YouTube has been critical of this proposal, arguing safety measures designed to protect children on the platform could not be applied if a young user did not have an account.

A spokeswoman for YouTube also said the site was a “video sharing platform, not a social media service” that should not be captured by the age ban as it offers “benefit and value to younger Australians”.

Facebook Messenger Kids, Google Classroom and Kids Helpline ‘MyCircle’ platforms are among the services that have also been explicitly excluded from the ban.

It comes as lawyers for Google have threatened a possible constitutional challenge in the High Court if YouTube is belatedly added to the restrictions.

Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek says the government will not be bullied by any social media platform. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

But Ms Plibersek said on Monday the government would do “whatever it takes” to keep Australian kids safe.

“We need to make sure that as a government we back in parents’ efforts to protect their kids from some of the harmful stuff that’s online,” she told Sunrise.

“We’re not going to be bullied out of taking action by any social media giant.

“We’ll do what’s in the best interests of Australian kids.”

Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce said he broadly supported greater controls on social media because of the damage that can be done to young Australians, particularly in relation to girls and eating disorders.

“It really concerns so many parents,” he said.

Mr Joyce said he believed Google could “easily” come forward and say they have capacity to control the “noxious” content online using new technologies like AI.

He said the proliferation of harmful material suggested social media giants were not being “model” corporate citizens and therefor must be subjected to some controls.

Originally published as Decision imminent on whether YouTube will be captured in social media age ban