YouTube to Become a Government Surveillance Agency.

From 10 December 2025, Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2024 will come into effect. It is presented as a child-protection measure, but its real-world implications reach far beyond the protection of minors. Under the Act, every major online platform — including YouTube — must take “reasonable steps” to prevent Australians under sixteen from maintaining accounts, or risk civil penalties of up to $49.5 million. This single requirement transforms global media companies into compliance officers for the state.

The “reasonable steps” test sounds innocuous, but the eSafety Commissioner’s September 2025 regulatory guidance reveals what it means in practice. Platforms must deploy “age-assurance” systems: layered mechanisms that include self-declaration, document verification, biometric analysis, and most significantly, age inference — algorithmic monitoring of user behaviour to estimate the likelihood that an account belongs to a child.

Age inference works by analysing patterns of viewing, commenting, search behaviour, language use, and content interaction. In theory it distinguishes adult from child users. In practice it observes everything you do. If your account repeatedly plays The Wiggles, Peppa Pig, or Bluey, or spends long periods in children’s content categories, the system may flag your account as “underage.” Platforms, terrified of being accused of non-compliance, are likely to over-enforce, deactivating or suspending accounts that fall within risk parameters. Parents allowing their children to watch YouTube under a family login could find the account locked or deleted without recourse.

This regime creates a perverse incentive: to avoid risk, platforms must treat every household as a potential compliance problem. What began as a rule about children’s access becomes a mandate for continuous behavioural surveillance. To prove that they are excluding minors, companies must retain and analyse enormous volumes of user data. Those data trails — viewing history, likes, comments, and engagement patterns — constitute a behavioural dossier capable of revealing far more than age. Under lawful disclosure powers, regulators can require that information to demonstrate compliance. What was once private viewing becomes a record in a government-auditable file.

The chilling effect does not stop with users. It strikes directly at creators. Independent artists, educators, and entertainers who make content for children now face a new layer of risk. Because underage viewing is itself treated as a compliance flag, a channel heavily associated with child audiences may become a liability. Platforms could suppress or demonetise family-oriented creators simply to reduce exposure to age-verification scrutiny. The democratisation of children's media — one of the internet’s great cultural achievements — will strain under the weight of regulatory caution.

There is also the deeper political danger. Age-inference algorithms are not neutral. They are trained on datasets that embed cultural assumptions about what counts as “mature” or “immature” content. If those definitions are ever influenced by political or ideological preferences, age classification becomes a weapon. Consider the possibility that certain commentators or cultural figures — for instance, high-energy or contrarian voices such as Andrew Tate or others like him — could be algorithmically labelled as appealing primarily to adolescent males. If an adult account engages heavily with that material, the system might infer a “teenage profile,” prompting automated restriction or cancellation. What begins as a compliance mechanism could evolve into ideological sorting, with entire communities quietly sidelined under the guise of child protection.

Once that infrastructure exists, it does not require overt political interference to be effective. The fear of being flagged will cause users to self-censor. People will adjust their viewing habits, moderate their tone, and avoid content that might make their account appear “immature.” That is how algorithmic governance erodes liberty: not through explicit bans, but through the silent internalisation of compliance.

The danger is not hypothetical. Each “reasonable step” demanded by the Act normalises the expectation that citizens must prove their eligibility to speak, view, or participate. Every platform becomes an instrument of verification. Every act of communication becomes data to be justified. The open, anonymous culture that once defined the internet is being replaced by a digital caste system policed by algorithms of suspicion.

Australia’s child-safety law may therefore mark the beginning of a profound realignment between government, corporations, and citizens. In its language of protection, it builds the architecture of surveillance. In its promise of accountability, it authorises behavioural control. The screen that once offered access to information now reports on the watcher. Welcome to the new nanny state — where the price of digital participation is perpetual scrutiny, and where the distinction between corporate moderation and state surveillance becomes almost impossible to see.

Other Consequences

With this law requiring YouTube to ensure age verification, the government gives itself the power to review the very information that determines how YouTube judges the age of each user. This means that all data and metadata connected to your account — viewing history, likes, search terms, and even comment patterns — become open to government inspection. It effectively grants the state unprecedented surveillance capacity over individual behaviour online. The implications of this extend far beyond child safety; they strike at the heart of personal privacy and political freedom.

Where this becomes truly alarming is in its potential for political or professional cancellation. We have already seen firearm owners lose their licences over social media comments that expressed sympathy with or identification toward “sovereign citizen” ideas. Now imagine the same principle applied to algorithmic inference. What if you never post a word about sovereign citizens, yet your YouTube history shows a consistent pattern of viewing related content — whether out of curiosity, research, or criticism? Does that place you on a watchlist? Could your viewing habits alone be interpreted as ideological alignment? Would that make you “unfit” to hold a firearm licence?

The danger extends beyond gun owners. Consider professionals subject to “good character” requirements — lawyers, teachers, public servants. A governing body could one day interpret your YouTube engagement as evidence of improper belief or moral deficiency. A pattern of watching politically incorrect or dissenting material might be enough to trigger disciplinary review. In a culture already steeped in cancelation and compliance, the mere perception of ideological deviation could destroy livelihoods.

This is why the government’s power to review YouTube’s age-verification data is so insidious. It establishes a framework where viewing behaviour — the most private and introspective form of learning or curiosity — becomes evidence against you. The ability to observe what people watch, without their consent, is an extraordinary expansion of state surveillance cloaked as child protection.

My advice is simple: after 10 December 2025, commenting on YouTube becomes a calculated risk. A comment is a declarative act that can be easily misconstrued or weaponised. Viewing, by contrast, is passive and may at least be defensible as inquiry or education. But even that distinction is fading. When the government can review your digital behaviour, curiosity itself becomes dangerous. Be cautious — the surveillance has already begun.

Conclusion

As a parent, this really angers me. I closely monitor what my young children watch on YouTube. There are many great, wholesome channels not available on other platforms, such as Danny Go, Handyman Hal, and Miss Moni. But now I’ll have to be careful not to let my account become dominated by child-content recommendations. I also frequently search for educational videos to help answer my children’s questions, such as “What happened to the dinosaurs?” or “What is the solar system?”—questions that are often best explained visually rather than verbally. My relationship with YouTube has always been a private transaction: I pay for a premium service for my own viewing and for my children’s viewing under my supervision. The fact that the government is now intruding on parents’ discretion over what their children watch is proof that Australia is descending into a nanny-state Karenocracy.

The real and corrupt intent behind classifying YouTube as a “social media” platform in the proposed children’s access ban is transparent. It is not about protecting children; it is about control. The policy will effectively force children to consume only legacy media programming—driving families back to the government’s propaganda arm, the ABC, or propping up the collapsing ratings of dying media empires like Channels 7, 9, and 10. It is a bid to stop children from accessing content that falls outside the reach of the state’s ideological machinery. The government already dictates the worldview pushed in schools, and now it seeks to control the media shaping young minds at home. This is an attempt to centralise power over what ideas children can encounter, based on the presumption that parents cannot be trusted to guide their own children’s viewing choices.

The earlier “misinformation bill” failed because it tried to define truth for adults. This new approach is far more insidious. By controlling what children are allowed to see, the state can manufacture consent from the ground up. It won’t need to manipulate adults later if it can program children first. YouTube, for all its flaws, remains one of the last spaces where young people can freely explore ideas outside institutional control—where they can watch alternative voices instead of the state-approved narrative. That is why YouTube is being relabelled as “social media” despite being primarily a broadcast platform. The goal is not safety. It is ideological dominance. Another attempt by an increasingly authoritarian government to ensure ideological adherence.