JPlol they're going to backflip on YouTube, so now Google is Big Mad, and the Coalition is rubbing their face in it from the sidelines (while not taking a position themselves) and Snapchat and TikTok are all going to be yelling about YouTube and this is all such an obvious mess that was predicted in advance by many people.
You can read the eSafety advice to the Minister here: https://www.infrastructure.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/esafety-commissioner-advice-on-draft-online-safety-rules-19-june-2025.pdf
It has weird things in it, like "some messaging services include features and functionality associated with these harms, such as ephemeral content that is only accessible for a short window of time"
You are describing a phonecall.
"recent findings from the Black Dog Institute showed an association between higher daily hours spent using YouTube and greater symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia."
correlation != causation. Deeply unserious stuff here.
"In general, I caution against excluding particular services without conditions in the Rules. A legislative instrument excluding a particular service would be based on a point-in-time assessment of that service."
Yes, that is the entire purpose of a legislative instrument. It is to enable point-in-time assessments to be made by the Minister, and a new legislative instrument to be issued. It means you don't have to go back to Parliament for a new Bill for an Act every five seconds.
But otherwise, sure, feel free to accurately and completely define the behaviour you are trying to regulate such that we can all objective determine if a given service is in scope or out of scope. It will save us a lot of court cases trying to figure out what Parliament meant by "the vibes are off".
eSafety would like the government to list "features and functionality associated with harm".
"Combined with the constantly evolving nature of services and emergence of new features, the articulation of features would also need to be sufficiently broad to enable some flexibility but not so broad as it would be difficult to implement."
I would also like a pony.
Colin