20 ms·
Completely banning all of YouTube feels like throwing out the baby—valuable educational content—with the bathwater—everything else. It seems more effective for
by simpaticoder 1y ago
Completely banning all of YouTube feels like throwing out the baby—valuable educational content—with the bathwater—everything else. It seems more effective for YouTube to offer a dedicated educational platform, like education.youtube.com, with content filters built in. That way, students could access channels like 3blue1brown without exposure to unrelated or less appropriate content like MrBeast or Jubilee. Heck, I might personally prefer to use that version of YT myself.
- JJMcJ 1y agoDo you want mere children exposed to David Attenborough and Mister Rogers?
- Arubis 1y agoCan’t speak for the Aussies, but if you’re a US-inflected conservative today, probably not!
- CoastalCoder 1y agoI wish people wouldn't conflate conservatives per se with the Republican/MAGA definition of that term. I consider myself somewhat conservative in the traditional sense, and yet the Republican platform is almost diametrically opposed to my values.
- mc32 1y agoOh, is that the majority of their content, traditional educational content? I must be mistaken in thinking they were funneling their audience into “shorts” and that kids obviously naturally recoil from “shorts” as much as they do green veggies and chores…
- OJFord 1y agoBut this is basically the way for Australian government to try to make YouTube do that isn't it? There's already YouTube Kids, so maybe this makes YouTube think ok we need YouTube Teenz, or YouTube Educational or whatever.
- arebop 1y agoYouTube Kids is also full of garbage. The bar to get content into YouTube Kids is substantially higher than YouTube but still the average video's educational quality is abysmal. There are people at YouTube/Google/Alphabet who care but at the end of the day we get what the invisible hand gives us. Market forces have not yielded a well-curated educational video experience on YouTube.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoThey can already access 3blue1brown[1] content without youtube. They just have to visit the site with the same name. 1. https://www.3blue1brown.com/#lessons https://www.3blue1brown.com/#lessons
- qualeed 1y agoThat is not the only channel of value on YouTube. Not all of them have a website with their content available.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoCan you spell out the standard plainly?
- qualeed 1y agoThe standard of what?
- kelseyfrog 1y agoThe channels besides 3blue1brown that would reach parity.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- angry_moose 1y agoThose are just page after page of embedded YouTube videos. It's doubtful that's a meaningful difference under this bill.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoWhat are you talking about? You can click on any of the lessons and get text and images. https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/essence-of-calculus https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/essence-of-calculus
- RankingMember 1y agoI think Google/YouTube would slow-walk the hell out of this only because they are making a ton off of the worst, basest of content and more filters = less eyeballs. See also: Facebook "efforts" to stop scam advertisements and Marketplace fuckery
- EA-3167 1y agoPutting that aside, the reality is that kids are bored, highly motivated, and networked with each other across the planet. Even more than porn, which is only going to appeal to a subset of kids, "all of Youtube" is definitely a bit more universal. The major outcome of this legislation should be nothing more than Australian kids being the most familiar with VPN's and very little else, along with other tricks to bypass this.
- dumama 1y agoYoutube is optimized for engagement and ad revenue. In my experience, there's more click/rage bait and entertainment than educational content (perhaps that reflects my algorithm haha). Unless there's improved content moderation or media training, I can see how this would ultimately benefit teens as they're minds are still developing.
- armchairhacker 1y agohttps://nebula.tv https://nebula.tv seems like it's basically that, just curated podcasts. Although 3blue1brown isn't on there.
- AlexandrB 1y agoNebula is nice, but has a very specific ideological leaning. It's basically paid "breadtube".
- AlexeyBelov 1y agoWhat leaning is that? And how can I confirm?
- TsiCClawOfLight 1y agoThere are quite a few excellent, neutral channels on there that I moved over from YouTube. I ignore the home page, which is more ideological.
- ncruces 1y agoAs a parent (who also btw uses Google products every single effin day) I just can't agree. This is entirely Google's issue to fix. Yes, YouTube has amazing educational content. I'd really like to make it available for my kids to see. YouTube, however, makes it completely impossible to permanently filter/hide/disable the bane that is YouTube Shorts. I don't let my kids on TikTok not because it's Chinese, but because it's trash. I don't allow them near Instagram either. The chances of kids growing an attention span by seeing interesting stuff in installments of 30 seconds approaches zero really, really fast. Yes there's the possibility telling a fun joke, demonstrating an optical illusion, or some interesting curiosity in under a minute. But it's far more likely that it's trash, and teaching kids (and adults) that if they don't get a kick of something within the first 10 seconds, it should be skipped. And it's not necessarily age/quality rating of content; UX matters. It's totally different to find that your kid wasted an hour of their life doom scrolling over 150 videos of which they didn't even complete half, or that they spent it seeing half a dozen things videos of dubious quality: if it's half a dozen it's at least feasible to discuss with them why some are better than others. So, I'm very close to just banning YouTube (at the DNS level if required). Which is a shame, because I then can't share the interesting stuff with them, and neither can their teachers.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoYeah, no amount of effort allows me to shut off YouTube Shorts. Imagine you're the one running a business where you keep repeatedly trying to shove some feature down your user's throat. What's that called in business school? I don't know, I never took any Business courses. That I have no where else to go to see the content I want to see smells like a de-facto monopoly.
- jordanb 1y agoIt's a form of bundling.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago> That I have no where else to go to see the content I want to see smells like a de-facto monopoly. Not in this case, since the content makers can choose to host the digital files on a computer not owner by Alphabet. Your situation is simply the content maker betting that it is not worth their time to try to earn a return by hosting on a non Alphabet computer. But Alphabet is doing nothing to stop the content maker and you from reaching a deal.
- AlexandrB 1y agoThe bathwater is not any specific piece of content but the YouTube discovery and recommendation algorithm. As long as that's in place, there will be incentive to create terrible "slop" content to get into "education.youtube.com" and collect ad revenue. The same thing happened with kids.youtube.com[1] and I don't see a solution other than hand-curating channels for inclusion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
- anigbrowl 1y agoWell put. I do not agree with the clumsy approach taken by countries like Australia, UK, and Texas, but I absolutely consider youtube and social media problems responsible for the tsunami of lowest-common-denominator slop. Free market/user choice idealists need to face up to the fact that slops is bad and lowers standards rather than elevating them, because the economic incentives tilt in favor of low quality, sensationalism, and so on. To some extent that's a reflection of the viewing/clicking population, but that doesn't mean that you should always just give people more of what they want. We tried that with high fructose corn syrup and the result is whole populations ravaged by obesity and diabetes.
- __d 1y agoTo state it plainly: We humans, when given enticing bad choices, will often give in to the enticement. That universal tendency can be overcome by strict application of willpower, which can have long-term benefits. It is possible to exploit this tendency to make money. And so, by recursive application of this principle, we arrive at 2025.
- crtasm 1y ago>The ban outlaws YouTube accounts for those younger than 16, allowing parents and teachers to show videos on it to minors. But you don't need an account to watch most videos on youtube, so this isn't banning all of youtube.. right?
- giantg2 1y agoThe law says providers need to prevent minors from accessing their services. This likely means that YouTube will require an age verified login.
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoMy thought was that a version of YouTube that: 1. Had no opaque algorithmic feeds 2. No comment sections 3. Have a "show me more content like this" button, but again, no auto algorithmic feeds 4. Filter out age inappropriate content. would be great for teenagers. I think the problem for YouTube is that it would be great for everyone else, too, so they'd get bombarded by "Hey, I want that version" requests, which would clearly make them less money. There is no moral high ground with basically any online platforms, it's all solely based on financials, and people should realize this.
- glial 1y ago5. No "Shorts"
- hasperdi 1y agoThis exists. It's called YouTube Kids
- hn_throwaway_99 1y agoYeah, but there is a gaping difference between content for kids (i.e. 12 and under) and content for teenagers. Most teenage-appropriate content would be enjoyed by adults too (e.g. lots of how-tos, educational content, music, entertainment, etc.) Most adults are not going to be into watching Blues Clues or whatever, which is why YouTube doesn't have to worry about cannibalizing more profitable content/algorithms for adults due to the existence of YouTube Kids.
- ImJamal 1y agoIt doesn't meet requirement #4 (Filter out age inappropriate content). You can find many articles and videos, over the years, about all the inappropriate stuff making it into YouTube Kids.
- signatoremo 1y ago> Have a "show me more content like this" button, but again, no auto algorithmic feeds What kind of content would you envision to be shown? Says if I want to watch more car review videos
- guywithahat 1y agoYeah but how do you decide who's educational content and who isn't? Mr Beast does tons of "educational" videos in the context of "$1 vs $10,000,000 house" or "living in Antarctica for a week". Same with Jubilee. The real big-brain move is understanding this isn't about protecting kids, and there isn't really anything YouTube can do long-term. Australia has been going after US big tech for a long time
- anothereng 1y agoI use invidious to watch YouTube and have no shorts.
- jeffybefffy519 1y agoYoutube has gotten so much worse in the last 6 months tho, introduction of shorts has devalued the platform terribly and it seems like all the good educational creators are moving off it anyway and now its just ripped crap that is often AI produced. Hopefully this move makes some actual competition show up for Youtube, because it sorely needs it.
- BLKNSLVR 1y agoThe amount of bathwater is increasing rapidly, whilst the baby is about the same size. And it's almost purely bathwater that gets put in my face on the YT front page. The occasional baby pops up. (as someone who rarely logs in, and only with a couple of throw away-ish accounts because I don't like being tracked and don't like YT/Google - so this will affect my perception of the baby:bathwater ratio)
- energy123 1y agoYouTube has so much good content with sub-5000 views. Lectures or interviews with quality thinkers who avoid the podcast bro drama circuit. Hard to discover with Youtube's junk-food recommendation engine.