Australia's most popular YouTube channel boasts 31 million subscribers, more than 24 billion views and many hot takes on the internet ear worm that is Baby Shark.
But the founders of Melbourne-based children's entertainment channel Bounce Patrol also have serious concerns about the future of their business and industry after the announcement of the federal government's proposed social media ban.
Even though the creators abide by strict YouTube Kids content rules, Shannon Jones says the long-standing account and many others like it could be hit unfairly by Australia's world-first social media age limit.
"It's putting YouTube, Instagram and adult sites all under the same umbrella and saying they have the same potential harm to children," she says.
"Baby Shark isn't going to create much harm, other than to annoy parents the world over."
Her concerns come after the government outlined details of its proposal to raise the age limit for social media from 13 to 16 years, with the approval of National Cabinet and legislation to be introduced to parliament within days.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland also confirmed YouTube was expected to fall into the definition of a social network and the eSafety Commissioner would be tasked with identifying potential exemptions.
But technology experts say definitions under the ban are too broad and could deliver unintended consequences that put children and teens at a disadvantage rather than under greater protection.
It's a concern shared by Ms Jones, who started the Bounce Patrol YouTube channel with "a bunch of theatre friends" 12 years ago and now employs 10 people to produce child-friendly, colourful and educational videos.
Its audience would not expect the YouTube Kids channel to be swept up in a ban, she says, and many would not consider YouTube as a social network.
"We get a lot of messages from parents saying we're really grateful for the free education and my child learned to count from you or learned the alphabet from you, or my child is non-verbal and they've really engaged with the content you make," she says.
"It will be really sad to see that taken away from Australian audiences and, from our perspective, really bizarre because people in America will be able to access this Australian content but Australians won't be able to."
Bounce Patrol, like other YouTube channels making content for children, had already made significant changes following the introduction of a US law, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule, in 2019.
Under the rules, YouTube Kids content is sorted into three age groups - under four years, five to eight years and nine to 12 years - and cannot include user comments, overly commercial content or material with violence or bad language.
Approved content is also shown with age-appropriate advertising, which Ms Jones says reduces revenue for creators but ensures young audiences are not exposed to harmful material.
It's a process Lah-Lah's Big Live Band co-founder Mark Harris also went through when he and his opera-singing wife Tina turned to YouTube when the COVID pandemic curtailed their touring plans.
More than one million people have subscribed to their YouTube Kids channel, full of jazz-filled educational videos, that feature no comments or interactive elements.
The one-way entertainment, Mr Harris says, makes YouTube Kids more like a broadcast platform than a social network and should ensure it is not swept up in an age ban.
"We understand why protections on social media for young people should be put in place and we wholly agree with that in principle," he says.
"It's inappropriate to apply the same restrictions being proposed for Facebook and Instagram to content made for kids."
Banning kids from accessing age-appropriate videos online, Mr Harris says, could also exacerbate the lack of children's entertainment being produced for TV.
"If kids are locked out of the platform completely in Australia, it doesn't bode well for the future of being a kids' content creator," he says.
"It's already hard enough in the traditional screen landscape, with funding being pulled globally for children's productions."
A report prepared for the South Australian government by former High Court chief justice Robert French did recommend YouTube be included in social media age restrictions, however, and Ms Rowland confirmed the Google-owned video site would "likely fall within" the definition of a social media service.
Following a National Cabinet meeting on Friday, however, she said the social media ban would also feature exemptions governed by the eSafety Commissioner and YouTube Kids could be a candidate for one.
"YouTube is likely to fall within that scope of age-restricted services," she said.
"YouTube Kids is a different product but, of course, it would need to balanced against a set of criteria."
The need for exemptions underlines the wide reach of the current proposal, RMIT information sciences Professor Lisa Given says, which could stop children from accessing low-risk resources like LinkedIn and teachers from tapping into online content.
"Educational organisations use YouTube regularly as a learning tool and have come to rely on a lot of excellent content on that platform," she says.
The proposal's broad definition also has the potential to distract from the intent of the law, Prof Given says, which should be to limit the spread of bullying, threatening, violent and abhorrent content from social media platforms.
"What I worry about is that we're not having a different conversation, which is around how to enforce or to ask the tech companies to remove harmful content at the source," she saysd.
"At the end of the day, the problem is actually the potential harm that we're seeing on social media that all of us face."
