YouTube fights against Aussie teen ban
Australia's internet watchdog and YouTube exchanged barbs on Tuesday after the regulator urged the government to reverse a planned exemption for the Alphabet-owned video-sharing platform from its world-first teen social media ban.
The quarrel adds an element of uncertainty to the December rollout of a law being watched by governments and tech leaders around the world as Australia seeks to become the first country to fine social media firms if they fail to block users aged under 16.
The centre-left Labour government of Anthony Albanese has previously said it would give YouTube a waiver, citing the platform's use for education and health.
Other social media companies such as Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok have argued such an exemption would be unfair.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she wrote to the government last week to say there should be no exemptions when the law takes effect.
She added that the regulator's research found 37 per cent of children aged 10 to 15 reported seeing harmful content on YouTube – the most of any social media site.
"This is not a fair fight where our kids are concerned, vis-a-vis social media sites," Inman Grant told the National Press Club in Sydney.
She said social media companies deployed "persuasive design features" like recommendation-based algorithms and notifications to keep users online and "YouTube has mastered those, opaque algorithms driving users down rabbit holes they're powerless to fight against".
YouTube, in a blog post, accused Inman Grant of giving inconsistent and contradictory advice, which discounted the government's own research which found 69 per cent of parents considered the video platform suitable for people under 15.
"The eSafety commissioner chose to ignore this data, the decision of the Australian Government and other clear evidence from teachers and parents that YouTube is suitable for younger users," wrote Rachel Lord, YouTube's public policy manager for Australia and New Zealand.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Express Tribune
11 hours ago
- Express Tribune
Louis Vuitton's ship-shaped shop wows the crowd
Louis Vuitton's latest Shanghai store is not your average luxury flagship. The 30-metre-high, ship-shaped store, The Louis, is billed as an experience, and houses an exhibition space and cafe in Shanghai's downtown Nanjing Road shopping strip. The Louis, which had a grand opening on Thursday, will undoubtedly draw crowds eager to post pictures to social media of its gleaming facade and the photo-ready exhibits inside. But LVMH-owned Louis Vuitton will also be hoping it can stimulate sales among Chinese consumers whose spending on luxury goods has slowed. LVMH's business strategy aligns with a broader shift among luxury goods retailers from a transactional model – where a shop merely sells goods to customers – to enticing customers with "experiences" that ultimately spur growth. The stakes are high for the luxury brands, which for years have relied on brisk sales in China to fuel their global growth, and ambitions, but are now facing a slowdown in demand in the world's second-biggest economy. The size of the Chinese market declined more than 18 per cent last year to around 350 billion yuan ($48.80 billion) and sales are on track for a flat performance in 2025, according to estimates from consultancy Bain. Zino Helmlinger, head of China retail at real estate service provider CRBE, acknowledges that the luxury segment as a whole in China has taken "a hit" recently, though he believes the slowdown was expected. "If you look at the megastars – I mean LVMH, Kering, Richemont, Hermès – they almost tripled their profit within five years," he said. "At some point, there is some counterbalancing, there is only so much you can grow, only so much you can generate." In the first quarter, LVMH's revenue in the region that includes China fell 11 per cent on an organic basis – the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan accounts for 30 per cent of the group's total sales. Chinese consumers, hard hit by broader economic uncertainty and a prolonged property market downturn, have tightened spending on discretionary purchases – luxury branded handbags among them. Wall Street extended its rally on Friday, sending the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to all-time closing highs — with each adding half a per cent – while the Dow climbed one percent. Shanghai native Natalie Chen, 31, says she already owns enough "stuff" and has redirected a significant portion of the funds she once used for luxury goods to travel. "Truthfully speaking, I don't feel that buying another bag will improve my life," she said, though she has already visited a new restaurant opened by Prada in Shanghai and intends to check out Louis Vuitton's new cafe concept with girlfriends. "It brings a different kind of feeling than just [shopping] in a mall," Chen said, though she was unsure the ship-shaped store would lead her to make any purchases outside of coffee and cake. Still, the luxury brands are sensing a longer term opportunity to pump-prime sales. While appetite for personal luxury goods in China and around the world is declining, hurt by economic pressures and price fatigue, sales rates of "experiential goods" are rising, according to Bain, which highlighted a surge in personalised luxury hospitality experiences and rising fine dining sales in its spring luxury report. In 2024, for example, the overall personal luxury goods market worldwide fell 1 to 3 per cent even as experiential luxury spending rose 5 per cent, Bain said. Reuters
Express Tribune
a day ago
- Express Tribune
Meta wins copyright lawsuit
A US judge on Wednesday handed Meta a victory over authors who accused the tech giant of violating copyright law by training Llama artificial intelligence on their creations without permission. District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco ruled that Meta's use of the works to train its AI model was "transformative" enough to constitute "fair use" under copyright law, in the second such courtroom triumph for AI firms this week. However, it came with a caveat that the authors could have pitched a winning argument that by training powerful generative AI with copyrighted works, tech firms are creating a tool that could let a sea of users compete with them in the literary marketplace. "No matter how transformative (generative AI) training may be, it's hard to imagine that it can be fair use to use copyrighted books to develop a tool to make billions or trillions of dollars while enabling the creation of a potentially endless stream of competing works that could significantly harm the market for those books," Chhabria said in his ruling. Tremendous amounts of data are needed to train large language models powering generative AI. Musicians, book authors, visual artists and news publications have sued various AI companies that used their data without permission or payment. AI companies generally defend their practices by claiming fair use, arguing that training AI on large datasets fundamentally transforms the original content and is necessary for innovation. "We appreciate today's decision from the court," a Meta spokesperson said in response to an AFP inquiry. "Open-source AI models are powering transformative innovations, productivity and creativity for individuals and companies, and fair use of copyright material is a vital legal framework for building this transformative technology." In the case before Chhabria, a group of authors sued Meta for downloading pirated copies of their works and using them to train the open-source Llama generative AI, according to court documents. Books involved in the suit include Sarah Silverman's comic memoir The Bedwetter and Junot Diaz's Pulitzer Prizewinning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the documents showed. "This ruling does not stand for the proposition that Meta's use of copyrighted materials to train its language models is lawful," the judge stated. "It stands only for the proposition that these plaintiffs made the wrong arguments and failed to develop a record in support of the right one." Market harming? A different federal judge in San Francisco on Monday sided with AI firm Anthropic regarding training its models on copyrighted books without authors' permission. District Court Judge William Alsup ruled that the company's training of its Claude AI models with books bought or pirated was allowed under the "fair use" doctrine in the US Copyright Act. "Use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use," Alsup wrote in his decision. "The technology at issue was among the most transformative many of us will see in our lifetimes," Alsup added in his decision, comparing AI training to how humans learn by reading books. The ruling stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, who accused Anthropic of illegally copying their books to train chatbot Claude, the company's ChatGPT rival. Alsup rejected Anthropic's bid for blanket protection, ruling that the company's practice of downloading millions of pirated books to build a permanent digital library was not justified by fair use protections.
Business Recorder
2 days ago
- Business Recorder
JSW strengthens India paints push with $1.6 billion Akzo Nobel unit deal
BENGALURU: JSW Paints will buy Dutch paint maker Akzo Nobel's Indian arm for about $1.6 billion, in what will be the country's biggest deal yet in the sector as competition intensifies between established players and new entrants. The deal comes as challenges for Indian paint makers mount, including volatile raw material costs and heightened competition, with billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla's entry into the sector last year eating into Asian Paints' market share. Dulux Paint-owner Akzo Nobel had announced a review of its South Asia operations last year to rein in costs and boost its core coatings business. Shares of Akzo Nobel India jumped more than 11% after the deal was announced, and were trading 7.6% higher in Mumbai at around 0830 GMT. India's paint and coatings market is expected to reach $16.37 billion in size by 2030, Mordor Intelligence estimates, from $10.46 billion in 2025, driven by a boom in infrastructure and real estate development. The deal, which includes debt, will be the Indian paint sector's biggest deal on record, Dealogic data showed. JSW Paints, launched in 2019 and part of the $23 billion JSW Group, will buy a 74.76% stake in Akzo Nobel India for $1.05 billion and launch an open offer for the roughly 25% held by public shareholders. JSW Steel files review petition before India's top court on Bhushan Power deal collapse Parent Akzo Nobel, the fourth-largest paint maker in the world by market capitalisation behind PPG, Nippon Paint and Sherwin-Williams, will continue to retain its research and development centre and powder coatings business in India. Growing competition Once completed, the deal will propel JSW Paints to fourth place by market share in a sector dominated by Asian Paints , Berger Paints and Kansai Nerolac, according to Geojit Financial Services analyst Antu Thomas. Birla-owned Grasim launched Birla Opus in 2024, crowding the already-competitive market. Birla has since filed an antitrust complaint against Asian Paints for allegedly abusing its market position, Reuters has reported. In 2022, the competition regulator closed a case filed by JSW Paints against Asian Paints for abusing its market position, saying it found no breach of competition laws. 'While this acquisition offers JSW Paints a significant scale-up opportunity, near-term integration challenges could provide an opportunity for incumbent players to strengthen their market position in the luxury segment,' Amit Purohit, vice president at Elara Capital said. Akzo Nobel is likely to rake in 900 million euros in net proceeds and plans to launch a 400 million euro share buyback program after the deal's closing, which is expected in the fourth quarter of 2025.
