Spanish
On Wednesday's press conference, the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, announced the decision of the country's authorities to ban access for minors under 16 years old to YouTube.
"It is important to note that, following the advice of the eSafety commissioner, young people under 16 years of age will not be able to have accounts on YouTube", Albanese reported.
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What is the reason?
eSafety's investigations, Australia's online safety regulator, revealed that the video platform was the favorite of young people in the nation, as well as the place where they most frequently suffered some kind of harm generated by its use. "YouTube currently employs many of the same characteristics and functionalities associated with the harms that legislation [on the minimum age for social media use] seeks to address. These include features such as autoplay, endless content, and algorithmically recommended content", indicates its report. Additionally, the organization issued a warning about the platform's features that allow the publication of short-form content, as these videos could encourage excessive consumption and uninterrupted viewing by users. Following the decision, YouTube joins Facebook and Instagram (owned by Meta*), Snapchat, TikTok, and X on the list of "social media platforms with age restrictions" that Canberra seeks to regulate and which was issued last November.All platforms that fail to detect and block registrations and active accounts of users under 16 years of age will have to pay fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars (about 32 million US dollars). The measure will come into effect from next December 10th.
