Meta, TikTok and Snapchat say the Australian government should apply the same restrictions to YouTube as to them under its ban on social media for under-16s.

“Meta (which owns Instagram and Facebook), TikTok and Snapchat said YouTube functioned similarly to their services and should not be treated differently.”
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TikTok gave the strongest criticism, calling YouTube’s carve-out a “sweetheart deal”, and saying it was “irrational and indefensible”.

“While experts may debate the merits of restricting teens’ access to social media, now that Parliament has delivered its verdict, Australians deserve a system that works and industry deserves a level playing field,” the platform’s statement said.

“Handing one major social media platform a sweetheart deal of this nature – while subjecting every other platform in Australia to stringent compliance obligations – would be illogical, anti-competitive, and shortsighted.”

TikTok’s statement suggested the government had “begun its analysis from the starting position that YouTube must be exempt and then attempted, half-heartedly, to reverse-engineer defensible supporting evidence”.

Meta accused the government of a “disregard of evidence and transparency” in deciding how the ban applied, claiming YouTube’s exemption “makes a mockery of the Government’s stated intention, when passing the age ban law, to protect young people”.

The three tech companies argued in separate submissions to the government’s consultation process that YouTube functioned similarly to their services and should not be treated differently.

TikTok’s submission repeated its previous position that it should be treated as a messaging service, and that it supported the exclusion of messaging services from the ban. It argued that if Snapchat was captured by the rules due to its own “story” function, other platforms with “equivalent” features should be as well.

“The exclusion rule for messaging services must apply a fair and impartial standard that applies equally across all messaging services,” Snap Inc said in its submission.
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