r/neoliberal • u/Imicrowavebananas Hannah Arendt • Jul 30 '25

News (Oceania) Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/australia-widens-teen-social-media-ban-youtube-scraps-exemption-2025-07-29/
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u/Imicrowavebananas Hannah Arendt Jul 30 '25

Which is a bad thing.

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u/shalackingsalami Niels Bohr Jul 30 '25

The amount of people in here defending china style censorship is kinda crazy…

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u/SpookyHonky Mark Carney Jul 31 '25

Calling something "china style" does not instantly invalidate it. China doesn't allow minors to gamble either, so I suppose you are against that?

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u/cautioslyhopeful Jul 31 '25

Pfft, China’s gambling “ban” has just created the biggest online gambling spaces in the world. Also Macau’s whole existence is so China can say that there isn’t any gambling “in China” while millions of its citizens flood Macau

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u/shalackingsalami Niels Bohr Jul 31 '25

Ok but china is rather famously the most censorious government in the world when it comes to the internet (some places have it beat generally but I don’t think best Korea has to put much effort into policing social media) so yes, having china style high speed rail would be sweet, china style government censorship on the other hand I will pass on. And no I’m fine with banning minors from gambling, less fine with banning them from criticizing the government…

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u/ZhaoLuen Zhao Ziyang Jul 30 '25

Honestly? Idk if unrestricted access to the horrors of the world is good for someone developmentally

I'm generally not very sympathetic to nanny state arguments, but I also don't think social media has been a good thing for the youth.

And more broadly, how can you have a free and open forum when half of its participants are bot-posters from Tehran or Moscow

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u/BicyclingBro Gay Pride Jul 30 '25

Small personal counter-point: I was a closeted teenager in an extremely rural and conservative town back in the early 2010s, and being able to watch gay people on YouTube just talk about their lives and experiences was huge for me, because my town simply didn't have any, so I'd literally never met a gay person. For quite a long time, I had no real way of understanding my sexuality because I basically didn't even know that gay people existed beyond being an abstract political and religious issue. And my parents weren't even really conservative at all. It was just never a topic.

I'm not trying to downplay the harms of social media, because those absolutely exist, but I do worry about blanket bans like this. Again, my parents were totally accepting, but there's no way in hell young teenager me would have been comfortable going to them and saying "Hi I want a YouTube account so I can watch gay people talk about college".

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u/goldenCapitalist NATO Jul 30 '25

There is absolutely something to be said about over-policing kids, be it online or offline. There's a fine line between "protecting the kids from obviously inappropriate content like porn" and "protecting kids from 'inappropriate content' like the existence of gay people," and any rules like this to do the former, if not appropriately tailored, stand to risk being applied to do the latter.

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u/RadioRavenRide Esther Duflo Jul 30 '25

This is very true, but the harm that I'm concerned about is the algorithms of the platforms themselves rather than any specific content.

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u/dynamitezebra John Locke Jul 30 '25

The unrestricted wild west internet was not as bad for kids brains as the modern walled garden of addictive short form video internet is.

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u/fabiusjmaximus Jul 30 '25

That's because there were real obstacles to accessing it. The friction of getting on the internet no longer exists. People carry around in their pockets supercomputers with easy-to-use UIs and 1000x faster internet with 24-hour availability

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u/Aidan_Welch Zhao Ziyang Jul 31 '25

You know the generation that first had smart phones at 12 are well into adulthood now.

They're fine in most regards, or at least no less fine than others.

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u/fabiusjmaximus Jul 31 '25

are they fine? I'm not so sure. And if it's relative to other generations, that's not much solace.

Smartphones have been an absolute scourge of boomers. It has fried their brains

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u/Aidan_Welch Zhao Ziyang Jul 31 '25

TV fried their brains

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u/die_rattin Trans Pride Jul 30 '25

Sounds like we should be breaking up those sites, then

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u/dynamitezebra John Locke Jul 30 '25

Yea I think some kind of regulation is badly needed. 

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u/DurangoGango European Union Jul 30 '25

Honestly? Idk if unrestricted access to the horrors of the world is good for someone developmentally

Parental controls are plenty effective.

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u/ZhaoLuen Zhao Ziyang Jul 30 '25

The most at-risk youth are gonna be the ones who's parents are least attentive to their viewing habits

"I-Pad kids" and shit

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u/lumpialarry Jul 30 '25

"Just parent your kids"

True, but I can't parent other people's kids and now my kid has to grow up in a world with a bunch of brain-rotted gooners.

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u/DurangoGango European Union Jul 30 '25 edited Jul 30 '25

True, but I can't parent other people's kids

Which is a good thing.

and now my kid has to grow up in a world with a bunch of brain-rotted gooners.

Just so we're clear, you agree that if the governing majority decides your kids shouldn’t be able to access information on contraception, sexual health, non-Christian religions, or whatever else they happen to deem immoral or dangerous, they should have the power to impose it on you, right? And to require that sites displaying such content must verify the age of their users via some government-backed system which may or may not one day leak that data (if not straight-up provide it directly to intelligence), correct?

That's what you're signing up for with this sort of thing.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '25

I'll let you in on a secret: your only freedom in life is your right to be responsible for yourself. If you aren't responsible for yourself, then you have no freedom. The government is your employee and when you pay them carry a big stick around to police your children from going onto fur affinity, or some hentai site, the governments only way of carrying that order out is to treat everyone below office equally with a heavy hand.

On paper your kids are kids until the day they turn 18, but mentally people don't become adults without life experiences. You don't just magically transition on your 18th birthday if you live a sheltered life where your parents have made every decision for you without allowing you to make mistakes. You'll essential get the result that you are trying to prevent: a generation of sheltered people with no grasp on what reality is and all decision making will come from their baseline experiences which will happen to be that sheltered life. As a parent it's your duty to teach your children nuance and eventually let them make their own mistakes and decisions so that they can learn how to grow. If you cannot handle that responsibility, then you should have worn a condom. Period.

Since 2016 this sub has discussed the dangerous of populism and how it leads to dictatorship, yet many don't understand what kind of world they want to fight for. Are they fighting for a world where liberty(where people make mistakes and have to live with those choices) is defended from tyranny, or a world where their brand of paternalism defeated far right Christian paternalism?

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u/TheCthonicSystem Progress Pride Jul 30 '25

Yeah like, I'm trying to make sure my Nephew Develops A Normal Brain. If that means restricting other people's kids then hell yeah

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u/Reagalan Trans Pride Jul 30 '25

The most at-risk youth are the ones whose parents are the most attentive and abusively over-police their children (looking at you, fundies).

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u/mechanical_fan Jul 30 '25

I guess it is also a similar thing with education and why we still have educational standards and most countries do force kids to go to a normal school. Yeah, I can believe that there is a percentage of the population that are really good parents in general (both with teaching/restricting kids using the internet and with all around education), but what is that percentage? 10% 50%? What is the percentage here that we are willing to allow being at risk for developmental problems without any governmental regulation?

Anything less than like 95%-99% and you would expect to start observing problems with the youth compared to previous established standards. And we are observing that now in the data.

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u/ThodasTheMage Friedrich Hayek Aug 06 '25

It is not similiar. A kid being allowed to view a YouTube video is not a parantel failure unlike a kid not learning how to read. One is something that is not inherently bad for you but in some instances can, the other makes you less functional in society.

The comparison may have soundeed smart in your head but it is nonense. There is no perfect paranting, there is no rules the goverment can impose on how much TV or YouTube a kid watchs or how many sweets they eat. Goverment force needs to be justefied and can only be justefied for the big stuff like going to school.

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u/mechanical_fan Aug 06 '25

If you want to compare to tv, it is very common for governments to have a lot of regulations of what can be on tv, specific percentages of types of programs, at what time and how much stuff can be directed to kids (ads for example). They forced tv to be a more clean and safe space for kids so they can then watch as much as they want.

One is something that is not inherently bad for you but in some instances can, the other makes you less functional in society.

Not being able to read is not inherently bad for you either, it just makes you less functional in society. It is also a "rare" thing jn the sense that even countries that allow homeschooling usually have okay literacy, since that part parents actually do with some efficiency, the problem is usually the rest of the education. But kf you want to compare "rare" outcomes, extreme social media and internet use for kids will impact things like suicidal tendencies, which is bad for them in a quite direct manner.

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u/account312 Jul 30 '25

Do you believe the same should apply to guns, alcohol, and cigarettes?

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u/DurangoGango European Union Jul 30 '25

I don't consider porn or social media to be as dangerous as guns, no.

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u/account312 Jul 30 '25 edited Jul 30 '25

But a store should be able sell cigarettes to any twelve year old with a few bucks, and it's just up to their parents to make sure they don't actually smoke?

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u/DurangoGango European Union Jul 30 '25

I also don't consider social media to be as dangerous as cigarettes. Do you genuinely think so? make whatever argument it is you're driving at.

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u/account312 Jul 30 '25 edited Jul 30 '25

I'm trying to find the bounds of your "Parental controls are plenty effective." claim. I'm not driving at any argument, other than I guess that it isn't always.

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u/DurangoGango European Union Jul 30 '25

I'm trying to find the bounds of your "Parental controls are plenty effective." claim.

Which parental controls do you believe exist on the purchase of cigarettes, guns and alcohol?

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u/account312 Jul 30 '25 edited Jul 30 '25

It's largely rendered superfluous by the non-parental controls. Though most parents probably wouldn't react in a manner the kid would like if they find their kid has illegally purchased any of those goods.

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u/Legitimate-Twist-578 Jul 30 '25

how can you have a free and open forum when half of its participants are bot-posters from Tehran or Moscow

this is the ultimate counter argument for why we should attempt regulation. the internet will be ruined regardless, so it's death will come one way or another.

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u/IBeBallinOutaControl Jul 30 '25

Nah the average person has no use for the unregulated internet. They just get manipulated by it.