Recently the Commonwealth Government announced that YouTube will be included in the proposed social media ban for people aged under 16. To be clear, this only applies to accounts. You will still be able to watch videos without being logged in. Although this does restrict the ability to view some videos that require you to log in.

I am writing this from the point of view of a video creator. I started my channel over seven years ago and since then I’ve produced over 130 videos viewed over 4.2 million times. Even though I’m not under 16, I believe that this will impact my channel and many others like it.

I think that these new restrictions will likely see an overall drop in views and subscribers. Exactly how many? I don’t know and it remains to be seen. But I am acutely aware that channels like mine with a mostly-Australian audience will likely be more affected than those with more global coverage and topics.

The reason is that I don’t think this will just affect people who are under the age of 16. The requirement to prove your age through uploading your ID or other mechanisms will likely put people off maintaining their existing account or creating a new one. Recent data leaks from major companies don’t inspire confidence that anything uploaded to prove your age won’t just be leaked on the Dark Web in a couple of months. Or even if it isn’t, that these companies won’t sell or otherwise use this valuable data in other ways. Even if these were somehow magically resolved, this doesn’t address fundamental issue of anonymity online.

I have no plans to move away from YouTube at this point. For all its faults, YouTube is still the place to be for creating and sharing videos online. It has a far greater reach and audience than any comparable website and has the most extensive brand recognition. But I will be keeping a close eye on what happens and the impact on how people access and interact with content.