[WheatMillington]

The YouTube situation is the biggest self-own in Australia's implementation. Previously kids under 16 could have an account under a parent's Family, and there are full parental controls and monitoring. Now kids can't have these accounts, so they can only access youtube without signing in. Meaning zero parental controls and monitoring. Oh and have you seen what youtube looks like when you're not logged in!?

Give parents control over parenting.

[shirro]

Fully agree. I have no issues with the social media laws as they don't impact my family at all except for YouTube. Accounts under Family Link control should have been allowed as they are overseen by an 18+ parent.

Youtube should have voluntarily removed shorts and the front page or made them available as a parental control to appease the regulator. When I wrote to the minister they used YouTube's addictive algorithms as justification for including them as social media which I do agree with.

We had curated kids logins with age restrictions, subscriptions, and ad free under premium and also youtube music with individual playlists they used for instrument practice etc. We had to shift music platform. I know we can replicate a lot of this with special apps and browser extensions but this was a single cross platform solution that was working for responsible parents. To be fair it is partly YouTube's fault for prioritizing Shorts and watch time over quality.

[708145_]

Fully agree, responsible parents should not allow their kids (including teenagers) to use Shorts or TikTok. It is a shame that YouTube does not support blocking that crap. It is obvious "Don't be evil" is not Google's motto anymore.

[x187463]

For YouTube, in the case of Shorts, parents can now limit or block them altogether.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/14/youtube-now-has-a-way-for-...

[knollimar]

Can I prevent shorts from showing up for me?

[rasmus-kirk]

You can create two Google accounts and parental control yourself. You can also use ublock or other browser addons, and of course, NewPipe. Youtube should have more settings for this, it's clearly going down the drain, but it's not like you can do nothing.

Honestly, it's one of the reasons I don't want to pay for Youtube Red, why would I pay for "no ads", when I still feel like I'm the product, because of my complete lack of control over the algorithm and user experience.

[johnisgood]

> I have no issues with the social media laws as they don't impact my family

This is probably the most common reason for why our society is in the shitters wrt. laws. I find it problematic that people only care after they have been shown they are affected. Look at any anti-privacy laws. No one cares until they get thrown into jail for posting memes online.

[duskdozer]

Honestly. I am totally unable to understand that mindset, even if I may not actively work against everything because of limitations of time and energy

[aleph_minus_one]

> Youtube should have voluntarily removed shorts and the front page or made them available as a parental control to appease the regulator.

I honestly don't "get" the hate for YouTube Shorts:

While I clearly do prefer long-form videos on YouTube, in my Shorts feed I see videos that are, well, simply more short-form (admittedly because of the short length they are often more "shallow", but for sure not below some level that I would find annoying or unacceptable (and I think I am fast with such strong judgements)). So, at least judging from my Shorts feed, I can barely see any video that I would consider to be objectionable if I were a parent. It is quite possible that the YouTube algorithm detected very fast that I belong to a demographic that is not interested in particular kinds of videos that are perhaps common on YouTube Shorts and thus simply does not show them to me in my Shorts feed, so I am simply not aware of them.

So, seriously: why the huge hate for YouTube Shorts in particular concerning parenting?

[geekasm]

for kids, who are never exposed to youtube. I would assume there is a higher chance of them getting addicted to shorts.

[fc417fc802]

> We had to shift music platform. I know we can replicate a lot of this ...

As far as practical solutions go a cheap VPS and a wireguard connection should let you continue with business as usual. From the perspective of YouTube maybe you moved to NZ or something.

> they used YouTube's addictive algorithms as justification for including them as social media

Did they provide YouTube the option of swapping out those algorithms to be exempted from the new law? It seems like this law was perhaps not a bad idea but the execution poorly thought out.

[shirro]

I won't be chasing an increasingly shitty online experience. I imported chromecasts before they were ever released here and had them connected via vpn to a US vps before services like Netflix went global. The pricing and content were really good value back then. Increasingly the relationship with big companies feels abusive. We are moving more towards self hosting, using physical media and changing lifestyle. Disconnecting isn't so bad.

[Aeglaecia]

I agree with you in spirit , however nobody was taught how to raise their kids in an age of incessant hyperstimulation , and people in general don't go out of their way to learn things properly

[JumpCrisscross]

> Now kids can't have these accounts, so they can only access youtube without signing in. Meaning zero parental controls and monitoring

This sounds like a device-control problem. Banning social media and then regulating devices in school should go a long way towards defusing the challenge.

Even with anonymous log-in, the new status quo is a release from algorithmic targeting. (If YouTube is building shadow profiles and knowingly serving under-16-year olds, that can be fixed with enforcement.) I suspect this group of kids will grow up fitter despite the reduced opportunities for helicopter parenting. There are lots of parents who never try, or try and fail, to control and monitor their kids’ online activities. Way more than those who effectively do so.

[Jigsy]

> Give parents control over parenting.

The problem isn't lack of control, it's the lazy attitude from parents who're shocked that they have to actually do their own job of raising their progeny.

They'd rather abdicate that responsibility to the government, who in turn love the idea because it means more control.

[ares623]

> 5 years ago one parent's income was enough

> now both parents working

> barely enough to keep up with expenses and chores

> child has no allowance to go out

> very limited spaces to go out for free

> live in a poorer area where safe and nice places that are free require a chaperone

> child's friends in the same socioeconomic group all have similar situation

> computers provide accessible distraction during parents' only few minutes of downtime during the day

> are parents lazy?

[wolvoleo]

People aren't forced to have kids though.. If they don't really want them or can't accomodate them in their lives just don't have any. I've never had any because I don't want to give up my freedom and relaxation either.

And one income hasn't been enough for much longer than 5 years. Especially in housing.

I see a lot of people around me that seem to pretty much hate having kids and they probably did it just because of social/family pressure or something. They always treat them like a nuisance and fob them off with a tablet. Really, just don't have them then. The world is already so overpopulated which is one of the causes of tension (migration, fighting over resources, climate/pollution).

[ares623]

I would argue that evolution’s primary driving force is not something so easily resisted. It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away. I would be careful to handwave away another person’s desire to have children.

5 years ago single income households were feasible for a subset of the population. Yes that subset has been decreasing for a while. But the last 5 years or so have eroded it so much more.

And pointing at struggling children/parents as the source of society’s ills is a low blow. When there are individual humans who have accumulated so much resources that they can feed an entire country for a few days at a single thought and _still_ have enough left over to live comfortably. You are looking at the wrong place to blame, in my opinion.

[LocalH]

> It is literally a person’s only purpose when you strip everything else away.

And then you strip that away too, leaving us with our true purpose at the core of everything else - to simply exist. To live and then to die. That is our true purpose.

[wolvoleo]

I'm not pointing at them as a source of society's ills. I don't think society (as in socially) is ill at all, except for conservatives that are trying to tell us how to live our lives.

I do think the human population as-is is unsustainably big though but I'm not blaming individuals for it. And luckily enough the population growth seems to be plateauing anyway. I think it would be great if we shrink by half or so, life would be a lot easier. Yes, the wealth distribution is a massive issue too, but decreasing this will actually make things worse. All these ultra-rich are just sitting on their money. They have as much money as say 100.000 normal people but they are not buying 100.000x as many things. In fact I often wonder why they care so much about accumulating ever more wealth if they already have so much more than they could ever spend in a lifetime.

But once all the poor people in China and India will want to have a big house, a car etc like us then we will really have a resource problem.

But for me having kids is not a purpose at all. Perhaps that colours my ease with which I dismiss it. I just know several parents that mainly talk about their kids in a dismissive/nuisance way and I wonder why they ever bothered to have them in the first place.

[WheatMillington]

Having children is one of the most basic human instincts, and honestly it's kind of disgusting how you dismiss many parents as obviously hating their kids. Do we complain sometimes? Yes, parenting is hard.

[RHSeeger]

It's both. Saying "the problem" is the parents, implying there's one problem and that's it, is ridiculous. There's a lot of factors that go into why raising a good, caring, strong, self sufficient child is difficult.

We see this same type of argument from the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps; if you weren't lazy you'd succeed" crowd. It's a stupid argument there, and it's just as stupid here. The world is complicated, and working to improve things from multiple angles is good, and improves the changes of success; for everyone.

[slumberlust]

Do you feel the same way about restrictions to gambling and drug access? Why not just let the parents parent.

A stronger solution is a combination of both approaches.

[mkoubaa]

Well put

[conartist6]

For that, we have to give control over clients to consumers. In the model of the past the company provides the client and so the client is accountable to the company not the consumer. Only the web browser has ever come close to changing that, but there's not many of us left still fighting for third party clients, even on the web

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

Huh? I’ve never understood this, and coincidentally it’s a talking point constantly pushed by Google in Australia.

If they could use YouTube without signing in now, they could do so before.

The whole argument is utterly nonsensical.

[Dwedit]

When not signed in, you get no videos at all, just a "Sign In To Confirm You're Not A Bot" screen.