By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Google’s YouTube said it will obey Australia’s world-leading ban on social media accounts for children under 16, a capitulation which means all the most popular platforms with young users have agreed to comply after campaigning against the law.
Google initially received an exemption on grounds its main purpose was video viewing and education, not social networking. Canberra later broadened the scope of the ban to include it following complaints by other platforms.
“We will comply with the law and implement age restrictions as required,” YouTube said in a blog post on Wednesday, a week before the law takes effect on December 10.
However, it added that it continued to disagree with the decision to classify YouTube as a social media service, saying it was “fundamentally different”.
The Australian ban is being closely watched by other jurisdictions considering similar age-based measures, setting up a potential global precedent for how the mostly U.S. tech giants behind the biggest platforms balance child safety with access to digital services.
The Australian government says the measure responds to mounting evidence that platforms are failing to do enough to protect children from harmful content.
SIGNED OUT
YouTube said any user aged under 16 would be automatically signed out of their account from December 10, meaning they could no longer subscribe, like or comment on posts although they could still view content logged out.
That meant underage content creators also could not log in or post. YouTube did not say how it would verify someone’s age.
The company also said in an email to caregivers of underage users that “parental controls only work when your pre-teen or teen is signed in, so the settings you’ve chosen will no longer apply”.
The law prohibits platforms from allowing under-16s to hold accounts, with penalties of up to A$49.5 million ($32.5 million) for breaches. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok and Snap’s Snapchat previously said they would comply.
Of the platforms named by the government as being covered by the ban, only Elon Musk’s X and message board Reddit have not publicly committed to abide by the law.
YouTube has 325,000 accounts held by Australians aged 13 to 15, according to regulator the eSafety Commissioner, behind only Snapchat which has 440,000 and Instagram which has 350,000 in that age range.
eSafety has said more than one-third of Australians aged 10 to 15 have reported seeing harmful content on YouTube, the worst of any platform.
Since being added to the age-restricted list, YouTube said it was getting legal advice, prompting media reports that it was considering a legal challenge. A YouTube spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question about whether a legal challenge was being considered.
($1 = 1.5239 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Stephen Coates)
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