YouTube Implements COPPA For Creators After Being Fined by FTC

[jiyeon]

Source: Myself

 

YouTube have given an email to all creators to tell YouTube if their content is made for kids or not made for kids, in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

 

From the email I recevied:

Quote

Important changes that may impact your monetization and content discoverability are coming.

 

Starting today, all creators are required to tell us if their content is made for kids in order to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other applicable laws. To help you comply, we are introducing a new audience setting in YouTube Studio.

 

Depending on the amount of made for kids content on your channel, you can set your audience at either the channel level or the video level. For those who are setting at the channel level, it is just one click.

 

What YouTube is saying is that creators are required to tell YouTube if their videos are made for kids or not made for kids, and with each option, there are obviously downsides, the biggest of which will affect creators who mark their videos as made for kids.

 

For creators that mark their content as Made For Kids:

• Will not show personalized ads
• Comments, info cards, and end screens are disabled
• Channels will not have stories, community tab, notification bell, & viewers will not be able to save to Watch Later & Playlists

 

View the update video that goes in-depth about the new changes below:

 

I'm a newbie YouTuber, hosting a small channel with 11 subscribers, but this new change potentially means that my discoverability on videos that other creators mark as made for kids or not will dip quick.

I've personally marked my own channel as not made for kids as I do not want to lose the features above. The Made For Kids mark will be a huge blow to any channel that caters to kids, and as defined by the US, anybody under 13. I get why they are doing this, but this is a critical blow and segments creators drastically and additionally still leaves YouTube For Kids out of the picture.

[vanished]

related I guess?

 

[amdorintel]

18 minutes ago, sowon said:

kids

what the age range for "kids" ?

[AndreiArgeanu]

15 minutes ago, amdorintel said:

what the age range for "kids" ?

According to the FTC, it's directed to children under the age of 13

1

 

[vanished]

29 minutes ago, amdorintel said:

what the age range for "kids" ?

The way YouTube handles it the split happens at 13, though if you look at the kind of content you see above and below the line you might think it's more like 7

[Salv8 (sam)]

9 hours ago, sowon said:

-snip-

this will be a blow to creators that target all ages but it will stop psychopaths like logan paul from interacting with their audience and to make it harder for him to make his kind of videos. (if you don't know who he is, a. have you been living under a rock for over 20 years? and b. where did you hide, i want to use it.)

but creators like "Ryans World" (it's a real thing, look it up, the fucking cunt has a racing game, A!!!! RACING!!!!! GAME!!!!!) will be fucked over SIGNIFICANTLY due to these changes.

i wouldn't be surprised to see these channels die very quickly regardless of how many viewers they get.

[Bramimond]

30 minutes ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

b. where did you hide, i want to use it.

Adblocking, not using any social networks and not reading any news go a long way, I guess.

Don't tell me who he is. I don't care.

[vorticalbox]

25 minutes ago, Bramimond said:

Adblocking, not using any social networks and not reading any news go a long way, I guess.

Don't tell me who he is. I don't care.

Another sane person ignoring the rubbish put out to the general population. 

 

[spartaman64]

1 hour ago, Bramimond said:

Adblocking, not using any social networks and not reading any news go a long way, I guess.

Don't tell me who he is. I don't care.

you are using a social network right now

[Taf the Ghost]

1 hour ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

this will be a blow to creators that target all ages but it will stop psychopaths like logan paul from interacting with their audience and to make it harder for him to make his kind of videos. (if you don't know who he is, a. have you been living under a rock for over 20 years? and b. where did you hide, i want to use it.)

but creators like "Ryans World" (it's a real thing, look it up, the fucking cunt has a racing game, A!!!! RACING!!!!! GAME!!!!!) will be fucked over SIGNIFICANTLY due to these changes.

i wouldn't be surprised to see these channels die very quickly regardless of how many viewers they get.

The very interesting effect is that YT is basically being forced to kill off their most profitable (for the platform) creators. At the rate YT is going, they should just start charging for access to the Algo and treat it like FCC licenses. It's basically become Radio 2.0, as the business model for anyone to make a career off of it is already the same.

[Anomnomnomaly]

1 hour ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

(if you don't know who he is, a. have you been living under a rock for over 20 years? and b. where did you hide, i want to use it.)

 

 

I've heard the name mentioned, but I've never seen a single one of his videos and wouldn't recognise him if you shoved a picture in front me with his name written on it. The same applies to all of these so called 'influencers' whose names you keep hearing thrown around.  I'm not interested in the shallow, vapid, ravings of the self obsessed and those that are... I feel sorry for.

 

It's like the Kardashians... I've heard of them... but have no fucking clue what they look like really.

 

 

[porina]

While it might impact those who do target at younger children specifically, I'm not sure there will be that much impact to the wider base of YT.

 

There's one person I follow who might be impacted. Not sure how it happened but he went from doing game videos (I found him for FO4 and stayed for GTAV content) but one day he was making mostly boxfort builds. That could arguably be for a younger audience.

[Doobeedoo]

Oh yes, separating stuff like it with like "sign in to confirm age" always worked. 

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, sowon said:

Source: Myself

 

YouTube have given an email to all creators to tell YouTube if their content is made for kids or not made for kids, in compliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

 

 

There is a catch-22 in the entire "verify that someone is over 13" since that requires personal information, the very information you're not supposed to have.

 

The problem here is the US rules for COPPA never made sense in the first place. It should have been simple:

1) If you target kids, you may only target the fact that they are kids, and not acquire any private information from them. For Youtube, this information is acquired at time of account creation, and thus 

 

2) You need consent from the legal guardian for under-13's, and this just simply never happens in practice, anywhere. No site wants to vet anyone under 19 year old, so they just auto-ban anyone who says they are 12 or under and if your birthdate entered falls between todays date minus 19 years you get sent the "COPPA Consent" form, which nobody fills out.

 

When I was running the forum for a site, exactly zero times did anyone fill out a COPPA form, and maybe a dozen times out of 30,000 people accidentally hit the wrong button and made an account with the form and then emailed later going "I made a mistake, can you fix it?" 

 

It doesn't matter if it's a lie, and the first time I kid does this, they don't make the mistake a second time, the next time they just say "yes I'm over 18" and never get bothered by this stuff again.

 

When really they should have done something more like:

1) All sites that allow signup by all, but must verify the age of users before presenting them with content (akin to the V-chip) 

1A) Under 13, Under 18, General, and Adult-Only sections of the site must be clearly labeled, and those who are under age must have these sections hidden and unsearchable.

1B) Search Spiders may index such content provided they abide by the same labeling, and must not show or link to content without verifying the age.

 

In which a technical provision for verifying the age of someone must be used, which might be easier done with sampling a users voice, since kids and adults sound different, I don't think the AI is there yet, and might discriminate against women unintentionally.

 

2) All public-facing sites that are reachable by all and do not keep state of their guests must instead must voluntarily provide the PICS (basically a ratings meta header/tag) token on a per-content basis telling the client and intermediaries how to deal with age-restricted content.

2A) Sites that do not use PICS tags will be considered Adult-Only and treated as such

2B) Sites that mislabel their content will be considered Adult-Only and treated as such

 

Now this is all a "technical" means to solve a problem that really is a social problem of trying to use the internet as a babysitter.

 

Not all kids are complete idiots however, and way to get popular at school would be knowing how to circumvent any technical solution that requires supervision instead.  But I think we're going down a slippery slope here where the internet gets treated like smoking rather than like drinking coffee.

[HarryNyquist]

Man maybe if they didn't collect so much data in the first place none of this would be a problem.

 

I kid of course. COPPA is extremely broad.

[Kisai]

Just now, HarryNyquist said:

Man maybe if they didn't collect so much data in the first place none of this would be a problem.

 

I kid of course. COPPA is extremely broad.

It's too broad, because it's trying to solve two problems that are mutually exclusive:

1) Places where kids hang out (which ends up driving them to places that don't require accounts, like 4chan, and turning them into little trolls)

2) Places where kids are the product, such as youtube, disney, cartoon network. 

 

Now I grew up in the 80's, and the kinds of ads you saw on kids shows were things like McDonalds, Wendys, toys from Mattel and Hasbro, and occasionally things that were clearly targeted at kids because they featured kids in the ads.

 

There is no confusion there.

 

However THERE ARE NO BABYSITTERS ON THE INTERNET. When you visit sites like CN, Disney and so forth, there are no comments. In fact the Canadian version of these sites are little more than a TV schedule. That's how they work around the moderation and verification problem, they just make it so that there's no way for kids to communicate with each other in an unmoderated fashion. If there are forums on "kids" sites, they are moderated, and people are paid to moderate it.

 

The thing is, kids use things like Discord too, and they know if they admit to being under 13, they will get insta-banned, and the channel may get in trouble too.

 

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions

 

Quote

2. Provide direct notice to parents and obtain verifiable parental consent, with limited exceptions, before collecting personal information online from children;

 

This is essentially as impossible as GDPR rules are in the EU. When you start asking for consent to collect data, without creating an account, you have to collect data even if the answer is no. Thus people who answer no, are berated with "this site stores cookies" until they decide that using an ad-blocker is less annoying.

 

There is no process that exists to verify parental consent or age. Having a credit card doesn't verify someone's age, only that they they have access to a credit card. And seeing how many times "my kid bought $10,000 in smurfberries" type of stories exist, clearly kids have access to credit cards, even if that was not the intention.

 

You would think, after 20 years that content creators and governments and ISP's would have figured out a non-invasive way of verifying that someone is over 18, let alone 13.

 

[Animal901]

This thread caused me to Google Logan Paul.. this thread sucks. Bye

[Bramimond]

4 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

you are using a social network right now

How does this site fit the definition?

 

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/social_network

Quote

1. A network of personal or business contacts, especially as facilitated by social networking on the Internet.
2. (Internet) A website allowing users to manage and interact with their network of friends or contacts.

None of the users here are my personal or business contacts.

[Taf the Ghost]

5 hours ago, porina said:

While it might impact those who do target at younger children specifically, I'm not sure there will be that much impact to the wider base of YT.

 

There's one person I follow who might be impacted. Not sure how it happened but he went from doing game videos (I found him for FO4 and stayed for GTAV content) but one day he was making mostly boxfort builds. That could arguably be for a younger audience.

The problem is YT is extremely vague about what they mean, beyond literal children's shows. And their machine-learning systems and someone is a data center at some location across the globe will decide whether you run afoul of the system with no explanation. The gravest issues are that YT is generally incompetent at managing their systems and it's going to ruin channels (along with potentially expose them to large legal fines).

[amdorintel]

8 hours ago, Salv8 (sam) said:

if you don't know who he is, a. have you been living under a rock for over 20 years? and b. where did you hide, i want to use it.)

ya sorry i have a life offline

 

 

[CarlBar]

Surprised it's taken this long to get to tech news here. I actually assumed i'd missed the thread on it. Bear in mind the OP doesn't hit the worst part. The FTC has stated they will be enforcing the rules against individual content creators. What that means is that if you mark your youtube as not for kids and the FTC takes a look at it and decides actually it is for kids they will come after and fine the creator in question.

 

A youtuber i watch covers the hole thing better than i can starting at the 15:00 mark:

 

 

[goodtofufriday]

Seems you can decide this on a Per Video Basis

 

 

 

[Trik'Stari]

My take away from this is that @LinusTech is going to have to drop an F-bomb in each video to avoid being viewed as child friendly content.

 

Why? Because Child Friendly Content will, henceforth, be less "commercially viable" and likely end up getting the channel deleted.

 

Or mainly because I find the idea of him having to randomly insert an F-bomb into a video, to be utterly hilarious.

[Trik'Stari]

So, just an idea.

 

I'm not sure what regulatory body within the US would be able to mandate this, but public education institutions should require the installation of adblock on all of their devices.

 

I work for a MSP that services a few school systems, and right now NONE of them implement any form of adblocker on their devices. Chromebook, or Windows machines (we don't do Apple, because none of the school systems in our state are dumb enough to hand Apple devices to children).

 

This seems like a security flaw to me. It could also potentially be a problem in what exactly ends up getting advertised to children.

 

(because f**k google and f**K advertising. I HATE what they have done to Youtube and I want it to fail now because they made it terrible.)

[RejZoR]

Why won't someone think of the children! I still wonder how we managed to grow up and be normal people without this stupid babysitting by the government and all the stupid regulators for all the nonsensical things we have today...