For all Australian parents, educators and content creators: please have a say

YouTube is not 'social media' and should not be banned for under 16s

The Albanese government has decided to rush through new legislation by Nov 18, 2024 to ban access to social media for all children under 16.

What many Australians don’t realise is that due to the government’s broad definition of social media, YouTube is likely to be included in this ban, preventing Australia’s youth from accessing wonderfully enriching content across all genres: education, music, entertainment, and more.

This petition is designed to urge the Australian government to reconsider the inclusion of YouTube in this legislation, and the following points present the case:

YouTube is not a Social Media platform in the likes of FB, Insta, TikTok, SnapChat, X, etc. as its primary function is not to enable social interaction between users. Instead, YouTube is more akin to Netflix, Prime or Disney+ - with the exception that In addition to professional producers, private citizens can upload content.

Banning kids from YouTube will result in children losing access to an enormous amount of freely available fantastic content: entertainment, music, education, and more.

This legislation would result in unfair economic harm to a large number of Australian small content production businesses, whose business model is publishing content to YouTube for advertising revenue.

After the removal of children’s content sub-quotas from commercial free to air TV broadcasters during Covid, and the lack of any commitment to a new framework of children’s content quotas for TV and streamers, there remains only two real avenues for children’s content producers to get Australian voices on screen for Australian kids: ABC TV and YouTube. The ABC, as it is only one broadcaster with limited resources, can only commission or acquire a handful of new Australian shows each year.

‘Excluding’ YouTube Kids app from the ban won’t help as that product is only designed for children aged 2-8 years, meaning kids aged 9-16 will be locked out. And, as views on the YouTube Kids app are almost completely un-monetized, it would be a non-commercial concession, which might look good to the public, but would still majorly impact creators forcing many out of business.

The restrictions that YouTube has already imposed on kids content in the platform, globally, as a result of the US Govt COPPA case in Sep 2019 (Children's Onlive Privacy Protection Act 1998) has already done the work for the Australian (and other countries’) governments. It’s already fixed. YouTube is not a social media platform.

Content marked 'Made For Kids' activates the following restrictions (0-13yrs):

- Comments disabled
- End screens disabled
- Cards disabled
- Notification bell disabled
- Live chat disabled (Inc. donations)
- Save playlist disabled
- Watch later disabled
- Targeted ads removed (only contextual)
- Legal requirement to mark content Made For Kids
- New platform features not available (e.g. thumbnail A/B testing, AI translation, etc.)

Additionally, users 0-13 are prohibited from creating a YouTube account or channel. Parents of children under 13 who feel their kids are ready to begin exploring YouTube can create a supervised account (Pre-teen Supervised Accounts)

COPPA inflicted a major hit to kids producer revenues, but we accepted it because it was in the interest of protecting kids. This clumsy blanket ban would effectively and unfairly remove our home audience from our business model.

In the current Australian Online Safety Act, a social media platform is defined as an electronic service that satisfies the following conditions:

1. The sole or primary purpose of the service is to enable online social interaction between two or more end users; THIS IS WHERE WE FEEL YOUTUBE DOES NOT QUALIFY AS A SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM.
2. The service allows end users to link to, or interact with, some or all of the other end users;
3. The service allows end users to post material on the service.

YouTube is 2nd biggest search engine after Google. By flat banning from using it, you’re removing a major education source.

The regulation key players:
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
Communications Minister: Michelle Rowland
E-Safety Commissioner: Julie Inman Grant

The petitioners:
Lah-Lah Productions, founded by Sydney musicians Tina and Mark Harris, is an Australian children's musical entertainment and education company that creates recorded music, live performance and screen content. Lah-Lah has an active YouTube channel, publishing Made For Kids content fortnightly that has amassed over 1 million subscribers and almost a billion channel views.

Sarah Renae Clark is an Australian art YouTuber who creates videos to inspire and build confidence in adults who want to learn how to be more creative. She’s also a mum of 2 kids under 10, and the creator of the renowned Color Cube.

Bounce Patrol, created by Melbourne producer Shannon Jones, is Australia's largest YouTube channel of any genre, with over 31 million subscribers, producing engaging original songs as well as educational content and reimagined nursery rhymes for kids.

Sign this petition to add your voice to the argument that YouTube is not a social media platform and as such it should be excluded from the Australian Government's proposed legislation.