Australia adds YouTube to platforms covered by world-first ban on social media for teenagers
The reversal could trigger a legal challenge.
The ban, set to take effect in December, seeks to protect minors from harmful content and algorithm-driven exposure.
The latest decision came after the internet regulator asked the government last month to overturn the YouTube carve-out, citing a survey that found 37 per cent of minors reported harmful content on the site, the worst showing for a social media platform.
The prime minister said his government was standing with parents and prioritising child safety online. 'I am calling time on it,' Anthony Albanese said, stating that Australian children were being negatively affected by social media platforms.
'I want Australian parents to know that we have their backs.'
While YouTube claims it's a video sharing platform, critics argue it functions similarly to banned apps like Instagram and TikTok.
'Our position remains clear: YouTube is a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens. It's not social media,' a YouTube spokesperson said by email.
'We have written directly to the government, urging them to uphold the integrity of the legislative process and protect the age-appropriate experiences and safeguards we provide for young Australians.'
Other social media platforms had criticised the earlier decision to exempt YouTube from the ban, arguing that it functioned similarly to them by promoting user interaction and algorithm-based content. TikTok had described it as a 'sweetheart deal'.
Although YouTube will now be included in the ban for users under 16, parents and teachers can still show videos to minors.
The decision to include YouTube in the under-16 social media ban reflects growing concern over AI-driven misinformation and big tech's influence, according to cybersecurity expert Adam Marre.
'The Australian government's move to regulate YouTube is an important step in pushing back against the unchecked power of big tech and protecting kids,' he told Reuters.
Mr Albanese had earlier asserted that the policy would be made independently of any corporate threats. 'The minister will make these assessments,' he told ABC TV on Sunday, 'independent of any of these threats that're made by the social media companies. I say to them that social media has a social responsibility. There's no doubt that young people are being impacted adversely in their mental health by some of the engagement with social media and that is why the government has acted.'
The decision was set to heighten tensions with Alphabet, which previously threatened to withdraw services over regulatory disputes.
Federal communications minister Anika Wells vowed not to be swayed by legal threats as the Albanese government awaited a report on age-verification tools that could shape enforcement of the ban.
'I will not be intimidated by legal threats when this is a genuine fight for the well-being of Australian kids,' Ms Wells told the parliament on Wednesday.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Does Queensland have a crocodile problem or a people problem?
'We from the country have had enough.' So ends the submission of Kelvin Douglas John Bunyan to a Queensland parliamentary committee considering legislation that would allow for safari style hunting and the harvesting of eggs of the most fearsome apex predator of the tropical north: the saltwater crocodile. The 177 submissions lodged in response to Katter's Australian party's Crocodile Control and Conservation bill 2025 are penned by the kind of rich and colourful cast for which the far north is renowned. And, like the country itself, they are submissions full of surprise and contradiction. There is the bowhunter, spearfisher, ex-professional fighter and diesel trucks driver who writes with passion and erudition that the proposed crocodile cull is 'incredibly naive', unscientific and dangerous – and then there is the general practitioner and standup paddle boarder who believes crocodiles need to be 'kept in their place' so that young people can get off their phones and back into the fresh waterways. There is the Carpentaria Land Council Aboriginal Corporation, which supports the bill 'overall' – though with the important caveats that Indigenous people play a more integral role in croc management and that the species' conservation be given greater emphasis. Then there is the Kunggandji Cultural Custodian to whom Kunjurra Kunggandji – or the saltwater crocodile in his language – is a totem, a spiritual guide, an ancestor and for whom the killing of this sacred animal is the killing of kin. Sign up: AU Breaking News email There are the tour guides who say they would be embarrassed to tell international visitors they lived in a state that slaughtered wild crocs and that removing salties would hurt their businesses. Then the charter boat operators and fishing guides who fear for their industries should the bill not pass. There is the houseboat resident who says she nearly lost her husband to a lunging croc a week after it took her dog. And the Daintree forest dwellers who say their swampy retreat is healthier with crocodiles in it. There is Bunyan, born in 1961, who grew up on a farm in the Innisfail region and who writes – almost entirely unburdened by punctuation – with echoes of the wild poetry of the Jerilderie Letter, that handwritten manifesto of the legendary bushranger Ned Kelly. 'At those times there was no crocodiles however eventually after 10 or so years we suspected that they're crocodiles and sure enough on New Year's Day in about 1983 several young children on the side of the river we're going down for a swim when a crocodile took their pet dog my father warned me that at some point that would be the case making one of the children but fortunately Oh well unfortunately for the dog he was the victim in that case … ' And there is the University of Queensland's crocodile expert, Prof Craig E Franklin. A global authority on Crocodylus porosus, Franklin is the scientific lead for the world's largest and longest active tracking program of crocodiles, which is done in collaboration with Australia Zoo on the saltwater crocs of far north Queensland. Franklin recommended the bill be rejected outright, describing it as 'foolish, misguided and dangerous'. In the end, it was by the likes of Franklin that the parliamentary committee tasked with reading through these submissions – and attending several public hearings as well as travelling through croc country – was swayed when they handed down their recommendations on the crocodile bill in late July. The Health, Environment and Innovation Committee recommended the bill not be passed and was, Franklin says, 'quite damning' of the proposal. The Gold Coast-based Liberal National party chair, Rob Molhoek, began his forward to the report by noting more Australians are 'injured or killed by everyday incidents like accidental falls, choking, drowning or homicide than by crocodiles'. In 2023 one Australian was killed by a crocodile, compared with six people by dogs, while accidental falling accounted for 4,105 deaths, choking 1,427 and drowning 204, he wrote. Molhoek cited Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service's croc expert, Simon Booth, who argued that even if crocodiles could be removed from the state's waterways, the stealthy ambush predators would still migrate in from afar. And the International Union on the Conservation of Nature's Crocodile Committee co-chair Charlie Manolis, who continued, with more than a hint of sarcasm, that making waterways safe in Queensland was 'simple'. 'You have to make crocodiles extinct entirely – remove every single one of them – and then put a fence up between the Northern Territory and Queensland, to stop them swimming across, put up another fence between Papua New Guinea and us to stop them coming down, and then you will be able to guarantee safety,' Manolis wrote. Finally, Molhoek signed off with a nod to those who said that crocodile attacks were often a result of people engaging in risky behaviour – and that the key to avoiding human fatalities was to encourage 'crocwise' behaviour. 'Throughout this inquiry, many submitters told the committee that fundamentally Queensland does not have a crocodile problem; Queensland has a people problem,' he wrote. For the man who tabled the bill, KAP's Shane Knuth, the 'people problem' line adds insult to injury. 'That is the biggest woke, insulting statement that I've ever come across since I've been in the parliament, 21 years,' he tells the Guardian. Knuth says his bill – which also called for the creation of a Queensland Crocodile Authority based in Cairns and the creation of 'zero-tolerance' crocodile zones – would help take the fresh waterways of the north back to the 'good old days' of the '70s, 80s, 90s and even early 2000s' when swimming the creeks and waterholes carried an 'acceptable risk'. He cites the example of the Tully River in his electorate of Hill, south of Cairns. 'That river, 20 years ago, was full of families camped on the sands, kids snorkelling,' he said. 'Now it is completely taken over by crocs'. Knuth rejects the evidence submitted by scientists which showed crocodile numbers were stable or still gradually recovering from being hunted to near local extinction. 'Just tell 'em to come swim across the North Johnstone River or the Tully,' he says. 'That's the true science of whether there is an explosion in croc numbers or it's an illusion'. The LNP defector from Tully laments that there were no north Queenslanders on the parliamentary committee, and that they 'wouldn't have a clue of the reality of what's going on here in the north'. Brisbane-based Franklin bristles at that criticism, which he says is frequently directed at him. 'I've spent well and truly more than a year of my life living under canvas in north Queensland catching crocodiles – and I do that safely,' he says. 'It is easy to live alongside crocodiles. It is just following common sense and some simple rules'. The crocodile researcher left Brisbane on Friday for a month of crocodile field work on the Wenlock River north of Weipa. Knuth's bill will probably be debated in parliament in coming weeks. If, as the parliamentary committee recommends, it is rejected, Knuth promises it won't be the last word on a croc cull. This is the fifth similar bill he has tabled since 2017. 'I will keep tabling and putting in bills until north Queensland is heard and action is taken'.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Australia shouldn't fear the AI revolution – new skills can create more and better jobs
It seems a lifetime ago, but it was 2017 when the former NBN CEO Mike Quigley and I wrote a book about the impact of technology on our labour market. Changing Jobs: The Fair Go in the New Machine Age was our attempt to make sense of rapid technological change and its implications for Australian workers. It sprang from a thinkers' circle Andrew Charlton and I convened regularly back then, to consider the biggest, most consequential shifts in our economy. Flicking through the book now makes it very clear that the pace of change since then has been breathtaking. The stories of Australian tech companies give a sense of its scale. In 2017, the cloud design pioneer Canva was valued at $US1bn – today, it's more than $US30bn. Leading datacentre company AirTrunk was opening its first two centres in Sydney and Melbourne. It now has almost a dozen across Asia-Pacific and is backed by one of the world's biggest investors. We understand a churning and changing world is a source of opportunity but also anxiety for Australians. While the technology has changed, our goal as leaders remains the same. The responsibility we embrace is to make Australian workers, businesses and investors beneficiaries, not victims, of that change. That matters more than ever in a new world of artificial intelligence. Breakthroughs in 'large language models' (LLMs) – computer programs trained on massive datasets that can understand and respond in human languages – have triggered a booming AI 'hype cycle' and are driving a 'cognitive industrial revolution'. ChatGPT became a household name in a matter of months and has reframed how we think about working, creating and problem-solving. LLMs have been adopted seven times faster than the internet and 20 times faster than electricity. The rapid take-up has driven the biggest rise in the S&P 500 since the late 1990s. According to one US estimate, eight out of 10 workers could use LLMs for at least 10% of their work in future. Yet businesses are still in the discovery phase, trying to separate hype from reality and determine what AI to build, buy or borrow. Artificial intelligence will completely transform our economy. Every aspect of life will be affected. I'm optimistic that AI will be a force for good, but realistic about the risks. The Nobel prize-winning economist Darren Acemoglu estimates that AI could boost productivity by 0.7% over the next decade, but some private sector estimates are up to 30 times higher. Goldman Sachs expects AI could drive gross domestic product (GDP) growth up 7% over the next 10 years, and PwC estimates it could bump up global GDP by $15.7tn by 2030. The wide variation in estimates is partly due to different views on how long it will take to integrate AI into business workflows deeply enough to transform the market size or cost base of industries. But if some of the predictions prove correct, AI may be the most transformative technology in human history. At its best, it will convert energy into analysis, and more productivity into higher living standards. It's expected to have at least two significant economy-wide effects. First, it reduces the cost of information processing. One example of this is how eBay's AI translation tools have removed language barriers to drive international sales. The increase in cross-border trade is the equivalent of having buyers and sellers 26% closer to one another – effectively shrinking the distance between Australia and global markets. This is one reason why the World Trade Organization forecasts AI will lower trade costs and boost trade volumes by up to 13%. Second, cheaper analysis accelerates and increases our problem-solving capacity, which can, in turn, speed up innovation by reducing research and development (R&D) costs and skills bottlenecks. By making more projects stack up commercially, AI is likely to raise investment, boost GDP and generate demand for human expertise. Despite the potential for AI to create more high-skilled, high-wage jobs, some are concerned that adoption will lead to big increases in unemployment. The impact of AI on the labour force is uncertain, but there are good reasons to be optimistic. One study finds that more than half of the use cases of LLMs involve workers iterating back and forth with the technology, augmenting workers' skills in ways that enable them to achieve more. Another recent study found that current LLMs often automate only some tasks within roles, freeing up employees to add more value rather than reducing hours worked. These are some of the reasons many expect the AI transformation to enhance skills and change the nature of work, rather than causing widespread or long-term structural unemployment. Even so, the impact of AI on the nature of work is expected to be substantial. We've seen this play out before – more than half the jobs people do today are in occupations that didn't even exist at the start of the second world war. Some economists have suggested AI could increase occupational polarisation – driving a U-shaped increase in demand for manual roles that are harder to automate and high-skill roles that leverage technology, but a reduction in demand for medium-skilled tasks. But workers in many of these occupations may be able to leverage AI to complete more specialised tasks and take on more productive, higher-paying roles. In this transition, the middle has the most to gain and the most at stake. There is also a risk that AI could increase short-term unemployment if investment in skills does not keep up with the changing nature of work. Governments have an important role to play here, and a big motivation for our record investment in education is ensuring that skills keep pace with technological change. But it's also up to business, unions and the broader community to ensure we continue to build the human capital and skills we need to grasp this opportunity. To be optimistic about AI is not to dismiss the risks, which are not limited to the labour market. The ability of AI to rapidly collate, create and disseminate information and disinformation makes people more vulnerable to fraud and poses a risk to democracies. AI technologies are also drastically reducing the cost of surveillance and increasing its effectiveness, with implications for privacy, autonomy at work and, in some cases, personal security. There are questions of ethics, of inequality, of bias in algorithms, and legal responsibility for decision-making when AI is involved. These new technologies will also put pressure on resources such as energy, land, water and telecoms infrastructure, with implications for carbon emissions. But we are well placed to manage the risks and maximise the opportunities. In 2020, Australia was ranked sixth in the world in terms of AI companies and research institutions when accounting for GDP. Our industrial opportunities are vast and varied – from developing AI software to using AI to unlock value in traditional industries. Markets for AI hardware – particularly chips – and foundational models are quite concentrated. About 70% of the widely used foundational models have been developed in the US, and three US firms claim 65% of the global cloud computing market. But further downstream, markets for AI software and services are dynamic, fragmented and more competitive. The Productivity Commission sees potential to develop areas of comparative advantage in these markets. Infrastructure is an obvious place to start. According to the International Data Corporation, global investment in AI infrastructure increased 97% in the first half of 2024 to $US47bn and is on its way to $US200bn by 2028. We are among the top five global destinations for datacentres and a world leader in quantum computing. Our landmass, renewable energy potential and trusted international partnerships make us an attractive destination for data processing. Our substantial agenda, from the capacity investment scheme to the Future Made in Australia plan, will be key to this. They are good examples of our strategy to engage and invest, not protect and retreat. Our intention is to regulate as much as necessary to protect Australians, but as little as possible to encourage innovation. There is much work already under way: our investment in quantum computing company PsiQuantum and AI adopt centres, development of Australia's first voluntary AI safety standard, putting AI on the critical technologies list, a national capability plan, and work on R&D. Next steps will build on the work of colleagues like the assistant minister for the digital economy, Andrew Charlton, the science minister, Tim Ayres and former science minister Ed Husic, and focus on at least five things: Building confidence in AI to accelerate development and adoption in key sectors. Investing in and encouraging up skilling and reskilling to support our workforce. Helping to attract, streamline, speed up and coordinate investment in data infrastructure that's in the national interest, in ways that are cost effective, sustainable and make the most of our advantages. Promoting fair competition in global markets and building demand and capability locally to secure our influence in AI supply chains. And working with the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, to deliver safer and better public services using AI. Artificial intelligence will be a key concern of the economic reform roundtable I'm convening this month because it has major implications for economic resilience, productivity and budget sustainability. I'm setting these thoughts out now to explain what we'll grapple with and how. AI is contentious, and of course, there is a wide spectrum of views, but we are ambitious and optimistic. We can deploy AI in a way consistent with our values if we treat it as an enabler, not an enemy, by listening to and training workers to adapt and augment their work. Because empowering people to use AI well is not just a matter of decency or a choice between prosperity and fairness; it is the only way to get the best out of people and technology at the same time. It is not beyond us to chart a responsible middle course on AI, which maximises the benefits and manages the risks. Not by letting it rip, and not by turning back the clock and pretending none of this is happening, but by turning algorithms into opportunities for more Australians to be beneficiaries, not victims of a rapid transformation that is gathering pace. Jim Chalmers is the federal treasurer
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Sportsbet advertises multi bets on AFL website after pulling TV ads due to ‘community sentiment'
Gambling giant Sportsbet has splashed ads for its expanded same-game multi bets on the AFL's website, months after pulling them from free-to-air broadcasts due to 'strong community sentiment'. The ads, which reveal Sportsbet now accepts same-game multi bets on how many possessions a player acquires during a match, encouraged people to 'bet now' and surrounded the AFL homepage. While the ads did not breach any rules, Sportsbet has previously voluntarily withdrawn ads for the same product on different platforms 'after listening to stakeholder and community sentiment on gambling advertising'. 'Same-game multis' allow gambling on a combination of outcomes such as possessions and goal scorers, and all must succeed for the bet to be paid out. Analysis has shown that multi-bets have a high fail rate for gamblers. Sign up: AU Breaking News email Crossbench MP Kate Chaney, who sat on a parliamentary inquiry into gambling harm led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, said the ad showed why the gambling industry's attempts to self-regulate had failed. 'Expecting gambling companies to take their own hand out of the cookie jar is a joke and the government must know it,' Chaney said. In early July, weeks before the ad was published, the communications minister Annika Wells met the AFL's chief executive, Andrew Dillon, to discuss the government's long-awaited plan to restrict gambling advertising. The former communications minister Michelle Rowland's proposed changes, made in response to June 2023 parliamentary inquiry, were abandoned shortly before the election. The inquiry recommended a total ban on gambling advertising after a three-year transition period. ACT independent senator David Pocock urged the federal government to fast-track its reforms and said the industry could not be trusted to regulate itself. 'Sportsbet response to concern over recent advertising highlights this, after they pulled advertisements from TV only to then splash them over the AFL's website,' Pocock said. Prof Samantha Thomas, a Deakin University academic who specialises in gambling and who gave evidence to the inquiry, said the ad was 'a clear example of why comprehensive bans are needed'. 'Partial restrictions will continue to leave the door open for the gambling industry to promote their products across multiple platforms,' Thomas said. The Alliance for Gambling Reform's chief executive, Martin Thomas, accused Sportsbet of 'virtue signalling' by removing its ads from television and then 'resorting back to type' by splashing them on the AFL's website. Sportsbet and the AFL were contacted for comment. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion Unlike television broadcasts, the ad was only visible to people aged 18 or older. Anyone who visits the AFL website can also opt out of seeing gambling odds and wagering content. Earlier this year, Guardian Australia reported on leaked documents showing the AFL received a bigger share of gambling revenue when people submitted same-game multi bets. Shortly before the season began, the AFL sought an even bigger share of revenue from these bets, arguing the money was necessary to address an 'unprecedented' increase in 'integrity risks' posed by the wagering industry. That proposal was not accepted by some bookmakers and the Victorian gambling regulator is considering whether to make an unprecedented intervention in the dispute, which could set a limit on the league's revenue from wagering. In recent weeks, Wells has also discussed proposed gambling ad restrictions with NRL chair Peter V'landys and chief executive Andrew Abdo, Seven West Media's chief executive, Jeff Howard, and the chief executives of Free TV Australia and Foxtel. Before those meetings, Wells met Rod Glover, who was Peta Murphy's husband for more than 20 years before she died from cancer in December 2023, six months after delivering her report into gambling harms. So far, sources familiar with the consultation say it has focused on identifying the main objections and testing support for compromises. They say the government intends to act by the end of the year. In Australia, Gambling Help Online is available on 1800 858 858. The National Debt Helpline is at 1800 007 007. In the UK, support for problem gambling can be found via the NHS National Problem Gambling Clinic on 020 7381 7722, or GamCare on 0808 8020 133. In the US, call the National Council on Problem Gambling at 800-GAMBLER or text 800GAM.
