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Australia is home for YouTube star Jordan Barclay, the place where he was born, went to school and built a company worth $50 million by age 23 that produces gaming content for 23 million subscribers.

Now, with a world-first social media ban on Australian children younger than 16 set to take effect on December 10, he is thinking of leaving his Melbourne studio and moving abroad.

"We're going to move overseas because that's where the money is going to be," said Barclay, whose seven YouTube channels include EYstreem, Chip and Milo, and Firelight.

"We can't afford to keep doing business if advertisers leave Australia."

Nine participants interviewed by Reuters in Australia's social media industry, estimated to generate annual revenue of A$9 billion ($5.82 billion), did not put a dollar figure on the ban's impact but agreed it could lead to a drop in advertisers and views.

YouTubers, who get paid 55% of ad revenue and up to 18 Australian cents per 1,000 views, could be hit hardest, said social media researcher Susan Grantham at Griffith University.

"If it is one clean sweep and all these accounts disappear, then instantaneously, it's going to be detrimental to the influencer economy."

The law requires companies to block the accounts of more than a million people under the cut-off age, punishing "systemic breaches" with penalties of up to A$49.5 million.

While teenagers can still watch YouTube without an account, the site's algorithm will fail to drive traffic to popular posts, reducing views.

Equally, creators on YouTube, TikTok and Meta'sInstagram stand to lose earnings through promotions if the number of their followers fall, Grantham said.

Advertisers are also on edge about campaigns targeting younger audiences, said Stephanie Scicchitano, general manager at Sydney-based talent agency Born Bred Talent.

FEWER SPONSORSHIP DEALS AS BAN DEADLINE NEARS

Barclay's company Spawnpoint Media sells advertising to companies such as Lego and Microsoft, but clients' interest in sponsorship deals has declined as the ban approaches, he said.

"They're worried about what the ban could mean later," he said. "If it expands, if it grows ... it makes sense for us to invest overseas and not here."

The United States could be among his options, he said, pointing to more favourable laws and government support in such markets.

Some creators are already leaving to avoid the curbs, such as influencers the Empire Family, who told followers in October they were relocating to Britain.

The careers of those creating content featuring children younger than 16, such as family vloggers and child influencers, were particularly at risk, said Crystal Abidin, the director of the Influencer Ethnography Research Lab.

"They agree that in order to continue, it's an easy decision to immigrate," she said.

Children's musicians Tina and Mark Harris, whose Lah-Lah YouTube channel has 1.4 million subscribers, said, "Any negative impact on income is going to hurt."

CONCERN ABOUT LASTING REPUTATIONAL HARM

But their main concern was lasting reputational damage from the government's description of YouTube's harm to children.

"Parents will get the jitters and stay away from YouTube in droves," Mark Harris said.

"Maybe that's hyperbole, we just don't know."

Initially exempted from the ban, Alphabet-ownedYouTube was added later at the urging of Australia's internet regulator, which said 37% of minors reported seeing harmful content on YouTube, the worst showing for a platform.

The ban "does a disservice" to creators of high-quality content for children, said Shannon Jones, who runs Australia's largest YouTube channel, Bounce Patrol, with more than 33 million subscribers.

Byron Bay creator Junpei Zaki, 28, whose output is mostly drawn from interactions with 22 million followers across TikTok and YouTube, expects the ban to cause a "guaranteed drop" in likes and comments from Australia.

"It ... does feel like I'm ignoring my Australian audience that helped get me here, because they can't interact."

HIT MAGNIFIED FOR SMALLER CREATORS

Zaki estimates he will lose 100,000 followers to the ban, a blip in his global reach, but warned that smaller creators with domestic audiences would be hit harder.

At the House of Lim food stall in Sydney's west, 15-year-old owner Dimi Heryxlim has built a following by posting vlogs of his routine running the kitchen after school.

Losing access to his TikTok and Instagram accounts "will be a bad thing", he said, as some customers recognise him from his videos, but he plans to return as soon as he turns 16.

"If I can't get my account back, I'll just get a new account and start everything from scratch," said Heryxlim.

Source: TradingView

Source: Reuters

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President Donald Trump is weighing whether to allow Nvidia Corp to sell advanced artificial intelligence chips to China and will be the one to make a final decision on the matter, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said.

The president is hearing from "lots of different advisers" in deciding on the potential exports, Lutnick said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Monday, noting that Trump understands Chinese President Xi Jinping "the best." Bloomberg News had reported on Friday that US officials are having early discussions on whether Nvidia can sell its H200 artificial intelligence chips to China.

"That kind of decision sits right on the desk of Donald Trump," Lutnick said in the interview. "He will decide whether we go forward with that or not."

At the same time, Lutnick acknowledged the tensions between promoting economic expansion and protecting national security. "Do you want to sell China some chips and keep them using our tech and tech stack, or do you say to them, 'Look, we're not going to sell you our best chips. We're just going to hold off on that, and we're going to compete in the AI race ourselves,'" he said.

Allowing H200 sales to China would mark a significant easing of restrictions first imposed in 2022 to prevent Beijing and its military from accessing the most powerful US technologies. Any move to sell a higher-calibre processor to China would provoke sharp opposition from national-security hawks in Washington, where some lawmakers are backing legislation to prevent such a move.

Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang, who has forged a close relationship with Trump and calls him often, is eager to sell his products to China. The company remains shut out of the Chinese market for AI chips after authorities in Beijing told local companies not to buy the less-advanced H20 chips that Trump approved for sale earlier this year.

Lutnick said on Monday that Huang has "good reasons" for wanting to sell to China, adding that there are an "enormous number of other people" who agree it should be considered.

"It's a really interesting question," Lutnick said. "He's got all the information. He's got lots and lots of experts talking to him, and he's going to decide which way to go forward."

Source: Theedgemarkets

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For most of her life, 59-year-old farmer Tip Kamlue has irrigated her fields in northern Thailand with the waters of the Kok River, which flows down from neighbouring Myanmar before joining with the Mekong River that cuts through Southeast Asia.

But since April, after authorities warned residents to stop using the Kok's water because of concerns over contamination, Tip has been using groundwater to grow pumpkins, garlic, sweet corn and okra.

"It's like half of me has died," Tip said, standing by her fields in Tha Ton sub-district, and looking out at the river that she is now forced to shun.

Across mainland Southeast Asia, more than 2,400 mines - many of them illegal and unregulated - could be releasing deadly chemicals such as cyanide and mercury into river water, according to research from the U.S.-based Stimson Center think tank released on Monday.

"The scale is something that's striking to me," said Brian Eyler, senior fellow at Stimson, pointing to scores of tributaries of major rivers, like the Mekong, the Salween and the Irrawaddy that are probably highly contaminated.

Thomson ReutersToxic mines that threaten Southeast Asia's river systems

The Stimson report marks the first comprehensive study of potentially polluting mines in mainland Southeast Asia. Researchers analysed satellite imagery to identify mining activity including 366 alluvial mining sites, 359 heap leach sites and 77 rare earth mines draining into the Mekong basin.

Most alluvial mining sites are gold mines, though some also extract tin and silver. Heap leach mining sites include those for gold, nickel, copper, and manganese extraction.

The Mekong is Asia's third-largest river and supports the livelihood of more than 70 million people as well as the global export of farm and fisheries products. It was previously perceived to be a clean river system, said Eyler.

"Because so much of the Mekong Basin is essentially ungoverned by national laws and sensible regulations, the basin is unfortunately ripe for this kind of unregulated activity to occur at a high level of intensity and the huge scale that our data reveals," he said.

Thomson ReutersMining sites across the Mekong basin

The toxic chemicals released through unregulated rare earths mining include ammonium sulphate, and sodium cyanide and mercury that are used for two different types of gold mining, according to Stimson researchers.

That exposes not only the millions of people who live along the Mekong in Southeast Asia to health risks, but also consumers elsewhere.

"There is not a major supermarket in the U.S. that doesn't have products from the Mekong Basin, including shrimp, rice and fish," said Eyler.

The emergence of new China-backed rare earth mines in eastern Myanmar, not far from the mountainous border with Thailand, initially set off concerns among researchers of the danger of downstream pollution along the Kok River, including areas like Tha Ton.

Thomson ReutersPage title for search: Rare earth mines seen via satellite images in Laos

The contamination pattern on samples from the Kok River shows the presence of arsenic - linked to rare earth and gold mining - alongside heavy rare earths like dysprosium and terbium, said Tanapon Phenrat of Thailand Science Research and Innovation, a Thai government research agency.

"It has only been two years since the rise of rare earth and gold mining in Myanmar at the Kok River's source," said Tanapon, who conducted testing of the waters this year and warns of a sharp rise in contamination levels unless mining is stopped. Tanapon was not involved in the Stimson study.

Myanmar, which erupted in conflict after the military seized power in 2021, is one of the world's largest producers of heavy rare earths, critical minerals infused into magnets that power the likes of wind turbines, electric vehicles and defence systems.

From mining sites in Myanmar, the raw material is transported for processing to China, which has a near-monopoly over production of these vital magnets, with Beijing deploying rare earths as leverage in its tariff war with the U.S.

Thomson ReutersPage title for search: Visible deforestation from alluvial mining

Mines across Myanmar and Laos use in-situ leaching for rare earth elements that was initially developed within China, according to Stimson's Eyler.

"In general, Chinese nationals work on these mines as managers and technical experts," he said.

In response to questions from Reuters, China's foreign ministry said it was not aware of the situation.

"The Chinese side has consistently required overseas Chinese enterprises to conduct their production and business operations in accordance with local laws and regulations, and to adopt stringent measures to protect the environment," it said.

The Thai government has established three new task forces to coordinate international cooperation, monitor the mines' health impact and secure alternative supplies for communities along the Kok, Sai, Mekong and Salween rivers, said Deputy Prime Minister Suchart Chomklin.

In northern Tha Ton, signs still hang on a bridge over the Kok River, calling for authorities to shut down the rare earths mines upriver, and farmers like Tip are desperate for an intervention.

"I just want the Kok River to be the way it used to be - where we could eat from it, bathe in it, play in it, and use it for farming," she said.

"I hope someone will help make that happen."

Source: TradingView

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