Communications Minister once hailed YouTube as a place for kids — now she appears ready to ban it
Minister wells is considering banning children under 16 from YouTube, but just a few years ago she praised the video sharing platform as a means for a young parent to navigate the "parliament hustle".
"How do I handle the parliament hustle? Sturdy baby gates and The Wiggles on YouTube," she wrote in December, 2022, at a time she was sports minister.
Minister Wells appeared to confirm for the first time publicly that she would formally adopt a push from eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to prohibit children from creating accounts on YouTube.
'The eSafety Commissioner made it clear in her advice to the Minister that the law relates to children under the age of 16 having their own social media accounts,' Minister Wells told SkyNews.com.au.
'eSafety's recommendation does not prevent children from watching videos like The Wiggles on YouTube Kids or on their parent's account.'
Under this scenario, kids would still be able to access YouTube logged out, which means they would not be protected by Google's sophisticated parental controls.
YouTube has argued this move would make the internet less safe, a clear contradiction with the original intent of the Act.
A formal decision is expected as early as Thursday this week but the government has been criticised for confusion around the rollout of these new laws.
And it isn't just parents confused by Labor's flip-flopping on the social media ban.
The rushed implementation of the laws and the lack of industry clarity has infuriated multiple platforms involved in negotiations, leading to tense and highly complex legal discussions behind closed doors.
TikTok is understood to have made a legal threat on constitutional grounds over the ban. TikTok denies this but in a submission to the government, the Chinese owned platform alleged the laws would be fundamentally unworkable and anti-competitive in nature, if YouTube was exempt.
Labor appears to have listened to these warnings and could announce a major change to the child ban policy as early as next week.
After learning Labor was preparing to U-turn on a pledge to exempt YouTube, Google also called in the lawyers.
The video sharing platform argued the child ban breaches the implied constitutional protections Australians have to engage in political speech.
In March, TikTok wrote a scathing submission to the government which focused almost entirely on lobbying for YouTube to also be banned.
TikTok's submission alleged the laws were "unsupportable" and "anti-competitive" in nature, and accused Labor of reverse engineering legislation.
"Excluding any major platform by name from the minimum age obligation on educative grounds is unsupportable without evidence," the submission said.
"What is clear is that the Government has begun its analysis from the starting position that YouTube must be exempt and then attempted, half-heartedly, to reverse-engineer defensible supporting evidence.
"Handing one major social media platform a sweetheart deal of this nature - while subjecting every other platform in Australia to stringent compliance obligations - would be illogical, anti-competitive, and short-sighted."
TikTok also warned that an exemption for YouTube raised anti-competition legal issues which, it argued, had already been highlighted by the ACCC.
'That Google or any rational economic actor in its position would seek to lobby Government for favourable treatment is comprehensible. That the Government would accede to it, against the warnings of its own competition watchdog, is not,' the submission said.
In a forward to the submission TikTok warned the government the laws "would not work" if YouTube was exempt.
"For the reasons set out in this submission, we have grave concerns that the Rules, if implemented in their current form, would not work," TikTok said.
"We are particularly concerned that carving out any major platform by name - in this case, YouTube - from the minimum age obligation would result in a law that is illogical, anti-competitive, and short-sighted."
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant was accused earlier this month of misleading Australians after her push to have children banned from the platform was not supported in her own research.
It was revealed that even Ms Inman Grant's office used YouTube to educate children as part of her own publishing strategy, specifically targeting the demographic.
In late 2022, while Ms Inman Grant was in charge of the body, a series of videos called 'eSafety Mighty Heroes' including characters such as Dusty the frilled neck lizard, River the sugar glider, Billie the bilby, and Wanda the echidna was released on the same day - content clearly published with the intent to educate children.
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