YouTube plays different cards in US, Australia in adapting to age assurance era

There is continued consternation in Australia over the government’s decision to include YouTube in its online safety laws for social media, which will prohibit users under 16 from creating YouTube accounts.

In an article on the change in policy, the Guardian says “children will be banned from having YouTube accounts from December, with the federal government backflipping on an earlier decision.”

And 9 News Australia reveals just how hard Google, YouTube’s parent company, has lobbied to try and stop the law from affecting it. The Silicon Valley firm reportedly sent Communications Minister Anika Wells a plea delivered by none other than iconic Australian children’s band, The Wiggles.

Wells says she told the Wiggles, beloved though they may be, “you’re arguing that my four-year-old twins’ right to have a YouTube login is more important than the fact that four out of 10 of their peers will experience online harm on YouTube, and they might be two of those four.”

“I just didn’t find that argument ultimately persuasive,” the minister says.

Wiggles aside, Google maintains that YouTube is not social media, but “a video sharing platform with a library of free, high-quality content, increasingly viewed on TV screens.”

That argument is telling in and of itself. YouTube has been positioning itself as the successor to television, or the content engine that powers it. Its assertion focuses on viewing and sharing its content – both of which would still be possible for kids without YouTube accounts, just not for age-restricted content. Moreover, the YouTube Kids platform is expected to be exempted from the ban.

Age estimation tool aims to ensure age appropriate experiences

Google is aware of all this. The firm has made notable moves to adopt age assurance measures, positioning itself as a leader in the EU through a partnership with Germany’s Sparkasse banks.

In the U.S., it is extending its existing built-in protections to more teenage users through machine learning age estimation.

A statement on YouTube’s blog says it is following through on a promise made in February to introduce technology that would “distinguish between younger viewers and adults to help provide the best and most age appropriate experiences and protections.”

“Over the next few weeks,” it says, “we’ll begin to roll out machine learning to a small set of users in the U.S. to estimate their age, so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults. We’ve used this approach in other markets for some time, where it is working well. We are now bringing it to the U.S., and as we make progress we’ll roll it out in other markets.”

YouTub’s AI will estimate a user’s age based on search patterns, viewing history and the longevity of the account.

“When the system identifies a teen user, we’ll automatically apply our age-appropriate experiences and protections, including disabling personalized advertising, turning on digital wellbeing tools, and adding safeguards to recommendations, including limiting repetitive views of some kinds of content.”

The company notes that “YouTube was one of the first platforms to offer experiences designed specifically for young people,” and says it is “proud to again be at the forefront of introducing technology that allows us to deliver safety protections while preserving teen privacy.”

So why is YouTube fighting so hard against the inclusion in Australia’s law? Aside from Silicon Valley’s tendency to litigate anything that stands in its way, the video sharing site could also be looking at the longer game.

Long live the new tube: platform aims to distinguish itself from social

According to new numbers from UK regulator Ofcom, YouTube actually stands a pretty good shot at taking over the world’s televisions. “While broadcast TV still accounts for the majority of in-home viewing” at 56 percent, “audiences are increasingly turning to YouTube. The platform is now the second most-watched service in the UK, behind the BBC and ahead of ITV.”

Ofcom says “YouTube is now the first place younger viewers go as soon as they switch on.”

“Younger adults aged 16-34 are driving this trend, watching 18 minutes of YouTube a day on TV, while one in five (20 percent) children aged 4-15 head straight to the app as soon as they turn the set on.” Ed Leighton, Ofcom’s interim group director for strategy and research, says “scheduled TV is increasingly alien to younger viewers.”

But older watchers are also tuning in to stream their TV, doubling their YouTube viewing time over the previous year.

More significantly than demographics, however, is the nature of the content people are watching on YouTube. “Half of the platform’s top-trending videos now more closely resemble traditional TV, including long-form interviews and game shows,” Ofcom says. “This shift positions YouTube as a direct competitor to ad-supported TV services, while offering broadcasters a way to reach wider and younger audiences.”

If YouTube is to become TV, so to speak, taking the torch from traditional broadcast studios, it will want to be treated like TV, rather than like a website. The idea of age gating TV is somewhat counterintuitive: television is everywhere, always on. The answer on that front has been parental controls, rather than restrictions on platforms in terms of what content they can produce and distribute.

Meanwhile, the cable era enabled so-called “prestige TV,” which has garnered critical acclaim while pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in a mainstream context; consider Game of Thrones, which featured frequent full-frontal nudity, torture and death by conflagration. YouTube may believe it is its time to walk the red carpet on behalf of its own edgy masterworks.

Google appears willing to play the age assurance game, but presumably sees a future in which it doesn’t want the headaches of being lumped in with Instagram and X. The numbers suggest it is heading in the direction of the television screen. Australia’s regulatory and operational response will be instructive of how the broadening of TV’s palette to include almost everything could once again make its more lascivious content harder to see.

Article Topics

age verification  |  Australia  |  Australia age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  children  |  Google  |  Ofcom  |  social media  |  United States  |  YouTube