I may lose all of my revenue because of COPPA and i dont know what to do. this feels like a nightmare.

[Windows95]

I have been working for the past 5 years in growing an animation channel in youtube. Its made with a videogame, I use characters from mario, sonic, minecraft, and other games. I was doing better than ever, finally out of depression. Since I learned about how it may all be gone by next year I have been crying and feeling sick. Im 30 years old and with no job experience due having depresion most of my life and i was finally making money doing something i enjoy. I have no following outside of youtube, since im anonymous, people just watch the videos, no one cares about me on other websites, so no patreon and so on. It just doesnt work unless you are a big personality, or you cater for older audiences, or you an huge channel with an original character like odd1isout or something. So i cant really do nothing but ad revenue and it will be gone soon.

I just dont know what to do. I cant sleep. Even if none of my videos got flagged as "for kids" by youtube, im supposed to choose between two options:

 

a) select the content as "for kids" and kill your channel since you will have no notifications for subs, no comments, no community tab, no endscreens, no playlists (which will screw up all of my animated series with episodes), no proper ads, no views because the content will not get suggested. its over basically, who wants to work in a dead channel with no community or anything. it warms my heart when i read someone say it was fun or something, and it will all be gone

 

b) mark is at not for kids, and risk $42,000 per video by FTC if they think its for kids. even if my content sometimes has some inappropiate stuff like gun fights, characters killed with a sword, middle fingers, some inappropiate memes like that "what the f**" sund clip etc, none of that really matters, on the surface it looks colourful, and has no dialogs (since i wanted a global audience), its fun/derpy content, so im at high risk that they sue me. what I dont know if they have jurisdiction outside the US to sue me? im in europe. but still, its not a nice feeling. even if they cant sue me, they could file a dmca and delete my channel, and all of a sudden, all my work would be gone.

 

so im f*cked either way, it doesnt matter what i do. i dont have motivation to even wake up anymore. i got lucky with this, , these things dont happen many times in your life. the algorithm picked up my videos, i grew my channel so much, i was on a good track now, and its all over all of a sudden. and youtube puts the onus on its own users when we cannot even collect any private data from anyone, they get rid of any responsabilities doing this, and puts it on regular people, when COPPA is a law that only applies to corporations (which can pay those fees). just a single mistake and you are ruined for life. how im suposed to stay creative like this, i cant work or get anything done. im constantly thinking about this and im just having a mental breakdown. and again dont tell me "just get a patreon bro", "just diversify bro", believe me it doesnt work with this type of channel. i can give you examples, this guy for instance

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCeHnMjq-57OMVKj9Rqb9lA/videos

 

has 300k followers and 44 instagram followers, patreon would be useless. alan becker the king of that content with near 10 milllion subs has 200 bucks per month in patreon only, so yeah, you can scale it back to smaller channels and get an idea. like i said only people with cult followings, or big animation channels with original characters get big outside of youtube. this is why this coppa thing is so damaging for us, we are all going bankrupt with this. the worst part is that this law kills any incentive for anyone ever to create content that could be anywhere near being considered "for kids" which means kids will end up watching inappropiate content since theres no kid-friendly content anymore. forget about dumb elsa and spiderman videos or toy reviews, 99% of kids watch roblox, minecraft, fortnite etc, so when they search for that content, all kid friendly content will be gone, so what will show up is inappropiate roblox, minecraft, fortnite etc with pewdiepie talking about adult inappropiate stuff if not straight swearing. i cant believe the FTC is even considering passing this insanity. this is clearly a job by lobbying corporations which hate that people like the guy i posted gets more watchtime than their expensive studio creations, they want us all gone from the platform so they get all the watchtime. but what will happen is that, once again, kids when they are around 8 or so, dont want to watch their dumb peppa pig etc shows, they want roblox, minecraft, fortnite etc, and all the kid friendly channels of said niches will be gone, thus exposing them to inappropiate content of said niches as thats the only content that will remain since there are 0 incentives to create kid friendly takes on them, or anywhere near it, not even PG, the further you from being considered "for kids" the better. and still, its just crazy, no one is really safe anymore, unless the topic is 100% adult, like business, finance, politics, repairing cars... i dont know, those are the few niches i can think of.

im just devastated all of this and have no answers. i cant either go to fiver or something and be a freelancer. im not that good, just amateur, but good enough to entertain in youtube, but i cant work for someone else, it sucks, being your own director is whats so cool about this. having to take orders to get paid peanuts per work, and when you arent even that good, it just sucks, specially in a niche as frustrating as animation, where it takes SO MUCH TIME to do a 5 minute video. i would earn peanuts at that rate. the only reason i stay profitable in youtube is due the passive income i get from past videos. getting paid per-work just doesnt cut it, not worth it unles you are working for huge projects and im just an amateur making derpy animations, and still, the amount of hours and hard work ive put on this is inmense. i cant take this anymore. please help ups stop this insanity before its too late. we have until december 9th to leave comments. this guy is a lawyer and explains the situation and how to leave a comment to the FTC:

 

 

 

i dont have much hope, but its the only thing we can do at this point. if nothing changes, its over. f*ck, i was so motivated and earned enough money to finally move from my old ass q6600 into a 3900x. i have been working in animation in a 10+ year old computer, struggling and saving, now that i was ready to take it to the next level i got destroyed, i just have no motivation again if i lose the channel. i always hated i worked so hard per video while gamers and streamers sit on their ass for a minute every day racking up tons of views while i had to work 1+ month for 5 minutes of footage. it was rewarding because after a while i had luck and the algorithm picked it up, if that never happened i would have given up, this niche is SO FRUSTRATING if the algorithm of the platform you are using doesnt properly promote you. and now the entire animation niche is at risk. and they want to include "attractive to kids" in the rule, so not only "directed to kids". so you can't say "just make it for adults". if i start adding swearing and blood on it, it stil is attractive to kids because of the aesthetics and characters i use, they are colorful, and they are known characters from videogames. if i had to work in serious animations i would: 1), not get any views, because its near impossible without using known characters that people like. 2) be impossible, because i dont have the skills to do it, I can only do cartoony stuff/3d stuff but it doesnt look serious = automatically at constant heart attack of an FTC guy seeing your videos and ruining your life. i was finally going to show my family my channel for this xmas because ive been working on it secret and celebrate my big subscriber goal im about to hit. it came in the worst moment. i cant believe im going to lose it all within weeks. PLEASE make this nightmare stop now.

[LogicalDrm]

If you are having personal issues, please seek for professional help instead of using forums.

***

 

Few things. The playlists thing is misunderstanding from your part. You can still make playlists. It's just that viewers can't as they could relate your kid-friendly video to non-kid-friendly videos.

 

There are other things here, but this is law, and Google will soon notice both that this won't change anything for better, and that they may have killed the platform.

[Kilrah]

6 hours ago, Windows95 said:

I have no following outside of youtube, since im anonymous, people just watch the videos, no one cares about me on other websites, so no patreon and so on.

Why no patreon? That's exactly how most channels that are too small to rely on advertising run. Much easier to get revenue from that, and if people like your videos they'll well enough understand why you need that if you do an explanation video and support you.

[RonnieOP]

Google has to protect itself in the eyes of the law. I know that sucks for you. But if you were in their position you would do the same. 

 

I think anyone relying on youtube should have a backup plan always. Youtube ad revenue can go away in a heartbeat.

 

Thats how life works. Its not fair but its life.

 

The only thing you can do is move on and find another job.

 

 

[spartaman64]

better put more swears and blood in your videos so the FTC wont think its for kids then 

[redbread123]

Fuck youtube, they've gone to shit, fuck them all they're such fucking greedy bitches. Smh, they have AI reporting and take downs, and they're too incompetent and think they're "the leading edge of AI" to fix it and admit they were wrong, they value advertisements over creators, the more and more restrictions to be monetized (wonder why there are so many memes about being demonitized in videos) just honestly youtube has gone to shit, I'll be glad if they lose a big amount of their viewer base if most creators move offsite and youtube learns their lesson.

[Zando_]

10 minutes ago, redbread123 said:

Fuck youtube, they've gone to shit, fuck them all they're such fucking greedy bitches. Smh, they have AI reporting and take downs, and they're too incompetent and think they're "the leading edge of AI" to fix it and admit they were wrong, they value advertisements over creators, the more and more restrictions to be monetized (wonder why there are so many memes about being demonitized in videos) just honestly youtube has gone to shit, I'll be glad if they lose a big amount of their viewer base if most creators move offsite and youtube learns their lesson.

This isn't YouTube, this is the FTC. The government boyes. YT already payed their whatever million dollar fine, the FTC themselves have decided to go after creators. 

In general YT is oof, but in this specific case it really isn't their fault. 

[redbread123]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

This isn't YouTube, this is the FTC. The government boyes. YT already payed their whatever million dollar fine, the FTC themselves have decided to go after creators. 

In general YT is oof, but in this specific case it really isn't their fault. 

well they should change TOS and have above 13 be able to use it, and other with parental advisory imo, we can get rid of the retarded commenters on fortnite videos also 

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, redbread123 said:

well they should change TOS and have above 13 be able to use it, and other with parental advisory imo, we can get rid of the retarded commenters on fortnite videos also 

You're not allowed to sign up for YouTube if you're under the age of 13 lmao. Kids still do. Same as how Pornhub and other X rated sites are for 18+ only but I'm preeeeeetty sure a lot of the viewers aren't quite 18.

The FTC doesn't care if you label it as not for kids or only 13 and up are even allowed on the platform, they know there's still kids on there and if they think it appeals to children, they'll flag you for it. The issue isn't so much with the law as it is with how they define what's appealing to children. A lot of stuff, comics, Star Wars and many other IPs, Legos, RC Cars, alllll sorts of stuff appeals to both children and adults. What they need to be stopping is the stuff you can tell is purposely created to appeal to and manipulate very young and impressionable children (see all the reeeeally creepy pedo filled "kids" channels). Their current definitions are much too vague. 

Two good vids on it: 

 

 

[redbread123]

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

You're not allowed to sign up for YouTube if you're under the age of 13 lmao. Kids still do. Same as how Pornhub and other X rated sites are for 18+ only but I'm preeeeeetty sure a lot of the viewers aren't quite 18.

The FTC doesn't care if you label it as not for kids or only 13 and up are even allowed on the platform, they know there's still kids on there and if they think it appeals to children, they'll flag you for it. The issue isn't so much with the law as it is with how they define what's appealing to children. A lot of stuff, comics, Star Wars and many other IPs, Legos, RC Cars, alllll sorts of stuff appeals to both children and adults. What they need to be stopping is the stuff you can tell is purposely created to appeal to and manipulate very young and impressionable children (see all the reeeeally creepy pedo filled "kids" channels). Their current definitions are much too vague. 

Two good vids on it: 

 

 

That's kind of dumb, so an adult site has to have stuff that ONLY appeals to adults, no one younger. WTF that is so stupid smh that is actually painful to hear how dumb that shit is. So even if I mark my video on youtube adult viewers only, and my video isn't full of guns killing, sexuality,etc. then I get fined by the FTC?? that is the dumbest shit I've heard my life, that is so god damn retarded it hurts...

 

[redbread123]

9 minutes ago, Caroline said:

why? that's where they belong

 

 

lol, your right if you watch fortnite than you belong with the commenters.

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, redbread123 said:

That's kind of dumb, so an adult site has to have stuff that ONLY appeals to adults, no one younger. WTF that is so stupid smh that is actually painful to hear how dumb that shit is. So even if I mark my video on youtube adult viewers only, and my video isn't full of guns killing, sexuality,etc. then I get fined by the FTC?? that is the dumbest shit I've heard my life, that is so god damn retarded it hurts...

Yeah, the vagueness of the definitions is pretty fuckin stupid. They literally list cartoons and bright colors as appealing to children. How many adult channels have animated intros in bright, poppy colors? Most do, it's just good eye-catching stuff and appeals to their target audience, which usually isn't kids. If you follow the links in the vids though, you can sign various petitions or actually send feedback directly to the FTC about why you think the law is an issue. It hasn't actually gone into effect yet, doesn't till January next year IIRC. They have until then to rework it. 

[redbread123]

3 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Yeah, the vagueness of the definitions is pretty fuckin stupid. They literally list cartoons and bright colors as appealing to children. How many adult channels have animated intros in bright, poppy colors? Most do, it's just good eye-catching stuff and appeals to their target audience, which usually isn't kids. If you follow the links in the vids though, you can sign various petitions or actually send feedback directly to the FTC about why you think the law is an issue. It hasn't actually gone into effect yet, doesn't till January next year IIRC. They have until then to rework it. 

As a wise man said on this forum "Petitions are as effective as snake oil"

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, redbread123 said:

As a wise man said on this forum "Petitions are as effective as snake oil"

Thus:

5 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

send feedback directly to the FTC

 

[RonnieOP]

2 minutes ago, redbread123 said:

lol, your right if you watch fortnite than you belong with the commenters.

Why do you care what others watch and like?

 

You think watching someone play death stranding is better then watching someone play fortnite?

 

Is watching linus build a pc better then watching someone play a game?

 

People like different things. No need to hate on what others like. Theres literally nothing forcing you to watch videos you dont like. I dont like watching people play games....so i dont visit twitch. But i dont care if others do.

 

You might wanna look in the mirror and see who the "retarded commenter" really is in this situation.

 

I dislike youtube for alot of reason. But as a parent i dont have anything bad to say about anyone trying to protect kids. Tbh you only have us alll to blame. For every dumbass rule/law/policy out there you can point to a group of idiots who are responsible for it going into place. People ruin everything.

[spartaman64]

4 minutes ago, RonnieOP said:

 

I dislike youtube for alot of reason. But as a parent i dont have anything bad to say about anyone trying to protect kids. Tbh you only have us alll to blame. For every dumbass rule/law/policy out there you can point to a group of idiots who are responsible for it going into place. People ruin everything.

there should be proper identification of what is and isnt for kids. animations with swearing and blood obviously isnt for kids.

[Kawaii Koneko]

22 minutes ago, RonnieOP said:

I dislike youtube for alot of reason. But as a parent i dont have anything bad to say about anyone trying to protect kids. Tbh you only have us alll to blame. For every dumbass rule/law/policy out there you can point to a group of idiots who are responsible for it going into place. People ruin everything.

You're making a judgement based on intent instead of the means.

 

The fact is this is going to hurt content creators and put people in legal jeopardy because the government is once again overstepping its bounds when in reality parents should actually just do some damn parenting. 

[Arika]

2 hours ago, RonnieOP said:

I think anyone relying on youtube should have a backup plan always. Youtube ad revenue can go away in a heartbeat.

This.

 

Never put all your eggs in one basket.This is why a lot of big creators also have their own websites since if something happens to youtube they can still exist 

 

22 hours ago, Windows95 said:

I have no following outside of youtube, since im anonymous, people just watch the videos, no one cares about me on other websites, so no patreon and so on

How do you know? you may have fans out there willing to donate a few dollars to a patreon

 

22 hours ago, Windows95 said:

how im suposed to stay creative like this

not everything you make has to be put on youtube or even published anywhere. I'm a hobby artist and i only "upload" maybe 10% of what i draw I show it to friends and i get their opinions on it.

 

 

As @LogicalDrm said, If you feel like this will ruin your life or that you're as helpless and depressed as you're making yourself out to be in this, and your other posts; seek professional help.

You have to be incredibly lucky to make it on youtube and you always need to be prepared for that to be stripped away at a moments notice. Also remember you're not the only one going through this situation.

[Praesi]

 

[AndreiArgeanu]

The FTC is full of crap, thank god that they can't do anything in Europe. 

[dizmo]

While unfortunate, this is part of life; you can either fight it and probably lose, or pick up and carry on to something else. There are other platforms you can move your video to, and if you don't have enough of a following that it makes sense to do that, I'd say you're probably not big enough for it to make that much of a difference anyway.

 

You should never put all your eggs in a single basket when it comes to something like this. You're not part of any protected group, and you're at the whim of a larger corporation. While it's unfortunate, it's something you should have seen coming, as many, many channels have mentioned this.

 

Considering it's animated, using video games, etc I'd almost guarantee that your videos would be seen as directed towards children. So. I wouldn't even risk the however-many-tens-of-thousands in fines you'd stand to risk. Even if they didn't have grounds for suing you since you're not a US resident, YouTube would shut down your channel since it'd be in violation; either way you'd be out of luck content wise. You're right in the aspect that COPPA is largely directed at corporations, however what do you think you're hosting your videos on? Who's paying you? That's right. A corporation.

 

Are you allowed to use those characters? It's a legitimate general question; I honestly don't know, but if they're protected in any way, if you got bigger then you might see yourself in legal trouble on that front.

 

Saying other content creators don't put in as much work is pretty disingenuous. They have to go through hours of gameplay to pick out the clips they want to show, they have to structure it in a way that's appealing, and they have to hope that out of the hundreds of other people doing game content, they have enough either sick shots or personality to stand out. Also, a lot of these content creators have college or university degrees; do you? You make it sound like YouTube owes you something for you posting content on their site, but this couldn't be farther from the truth.

 

I think what you really need to grasp is this: You are hosting your content on someone else's private network. YouTube was never made as a way for people to become rich, or for them to make money. That came about because of Google, and as a result, you must abide by Google's rules. They got caught targeting children for advertising, and yes, as a result you're going to have to put in more work, or not get paid. However, that was never the goal for Google. Their goal was to deliver advertisements, not create jobs.

This video might help you a bit, however, based on what we know of the content you produce, it'd certainly fall under the for-children moniker.

 

Have you tried contacting legal councel at all? Sure, might be a little expensive, but if you're serious about having a channel, it's a cost you'll have to incur. It's also a tax deduction, if you make enough to claim anything.

 

I'd say you should seek counseling, however I'm pretty sure you're already doing that; if not, you should be.

Life is what you make of it. If you don't go out and keep trying, you'll never get anything in return.

 

 

1 hour ago, spartaman64 said:

better put more swears and blood in your videos so the FTC wont think its for kids then 

I wonder if that'd even work given it's video game characters. I also wonder what would happen if you put a parental advisory at the beginning, something like "this video is rated PG-13" or something like that. It works for the film industry, and would lay out what your intended audience is pretty definitively.

25 minutes ago, redbread123 said:

Fuck youtube, they've gone to shit, fuck them all they're such fucking greedy bitches. Smh, they have AI reporting and take downs, and they're too incompetent and think they're "the leading edge of AI" to fix it and admit they were wrong, they value advertisements over creators, the more and more restrictions to be monetized (wonder why there are so many memes about being demonitized in videos) just honestly youtube has gone to shit, I'll be glad if they lose a big amount of their viewer base if most creators move offsite and youtube learns their lesson.

What would you say if they pulled ad revenue entirely?

Would that annoy you?
I'm always blown away that people think they're entitled to money from YouTube. That's not even how it started. People should be happy they get money at all from Google.

11 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

This isn't YouTube, this is the FTC. The government boyes. YT already payed their whatever million dollar fine, the FTC themselves have decided to go after creators. 

In general YT is oof, but in this specific case it really isn't their fault. 

Well. YouTube's fault, but yes. These requirements are part of their "punishment", though they never should have been collecting it in the first place. There was probably a lot of back room discussion about how it would play out. I can see the arguments from both sides, but I think in the end the end result is what matters most. Curiously, I wonder why this doesn't affect television. Those ads are clearly targeted to children.

[RonnieOP]

25 minutes ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

You're making a judgement based on intent instead of the means.

 

The fact is this is going to hurt content creators and put people in legal jeopardy because the government is once again overstepping its bounds when in reality parents should actually just do some damn parenting. 

Yes because a parent can instinctively know that a simple my little pony video isnt going to next autoplay a video where yoshi is raping peach? or that there isnt going to be grown ass men in the comments trying to talk to little kids? disguising links to where they think they are clicking on something to do with frozen and instead they get redirected to two girls one cup. Do you expect us parents to never let our kids out of our sight and sit next to them everytime they want to watch a video on youtube? You are woefully ignorant on what "parenting" is and how complex it is.

Going by your logic of "parenting" then content creators should be held responsible to monitor their comments section right? Of course not. its an asinine expectation to think people can monitor everything all the time.

 

Again...you only have people to blame for this. Dont complain about youtube or the government. complain to the sick freaks who ruin everything for everyone.

 

Yes its going to hurt content creators. thats life. its not fair. Im sympathetic to an extent but someone having to get a different job outside of making youtube videos is not the end of the world for them.

 

 

[jones177]

When my Son was young I only allowed him to watch anime that showed the consequences of violence like Robotek.

Without those lessons in stories you get an unbalanced society or what we are seeing now.

This will only make things worse. 

 

Hail the Nanny society. 

 

[Kawaii Koneko]

18 minutes ago, RonnieOP said:

Yes because a parent can instinctively know that a simple my little pony video isnt going to next autoplay a video where yoshi is raping peach? or that there isnt going to be grown ass men in the comments trying to talk to little kids? disguising links to where they think they are clicking on something to do with frozen and instead they get redirected to two girls one cup. Do you expect us parents to never let our kids out of our sight and sit next to them everytime they want to watch a video on youtube? You are woefully ignorant on what "parenting" is and how complex it is.

Going by your logic of "parenting" then content creators should be held responsible to monitor their comments section right? Of course not. its an asinine expectation to think people can monitor everything all the time.

 

Again...you only have people to blame for this. Dont complain about youtube or the government. complain to the sick freaks who ruin everything for everyone.

 

Yes its going to hurt content creators. thats life. its not fair. Im sympathetic to an extent but someone having to get a different job outside of making youtube videos is not the end of the world for them.

 

 

Having them get a job outside of YouTube because parents want excuses not to have to do their job. Just screw all the hardship and economic burden this will place on people. As long as it means parents don't have to make the decision to take YouTube away. Seems legit.

 

If you are concerned about the content on YouTube or any other platform, then you need to make the decision as to whether your kids will be allowed to use it or not. Expecting the government to intervene and put even more regulation in place that will stifle innovation and creativity is not the answer.

[redbread123]

1 hour ago, RonnieOP said:

Why do you care what others watch and like?

 

You think watching someone play death stranding is better then watching someone play fortnite?

 

Is watching linus build a pc better then watching someone play a game?

 

People like different things. No need to hate on what others like. Theres literally nothing forcing you to watch videos you dont like. I dont like watching people play games....so i dont visit twitch. But i dont care if others do.

 

You might wanna look in the mirror and see who the "retarded commenter" really is in this situation.

 

I dislike youtube for alot of reason. But as a parent i dont have anything bad to say about anyone trying to protect kids. Tbh you only have us alll to blame. For every dumbass rule/law/policy out there you can point to a group of idiots who are responsible for it going into place. People ruin everything.

They're protecting kids, in a half assed way paradox, that goes against the creators, plus since google make money off youtube through data and cookies to send you ads, having youtube "adult only videos" should be disabled for kids. and if they can access it, then that is kind of stupid, if it appeals to kids is not the matter, if it's an adult labeled video on youtube than it should be adults can only view it, even if it has barby princess dinosaur what not in it.