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With COPPA set to roll out on Youtube on or around January 1st, 2020** & the FTC preparing to levy fines of UP TO $42,000 per video, many channels are now at risk of being fined(or at the very least losing a good chunk of ad revenue). Because of this some are either starting petitions to send to the FTC/YT or even considering leaving the site, as the current COPPA changes seem to make most such content that was once "ad friendly" and ok to post now in an area that's uncertain at best and fine worthy at worst.....including game reviews and let's plays, and anything else that might appeal to children for some reason(including using bright colors, showing toys, showing animation, using some terms like "cool" or "whatever", etc).

So what do you guys think of all this? Will people be leaving YT en masse over this or be forced off due to potential fines, or something else? Will you be singing the petitions or just heading for other sites if this leads to many creators leaving YT?

I myself love many creators who might get hit by this, and hope some of them will be able to continue somehow or move on to another site and continue there at the very least.
=============================== (Warning: Video has some swearing/rude language, is a bit loud in places, and has a few instances of flickering images)
(There is also a cute cat at around 15:45-15:50, for cat lovers out there)

Addition/Edit: (Watch the first little bit then skip to 1:42 to skip the advertising)

2nd addition: (There's a good bit about Mrs. Fields & how COPPA acts insanely towards "data collection of minors" at 1:45, and at 5:00 the current quagmire creators find themselves in is mentioned.)
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BIG UPDATE in Post 42: If this lawyer is to be believed, YT is not implementing the proposed COPPA changes/current guidelines correctly, either accidentally due to confusion or intentionally to push creators off the platform.
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(Note: For anyone making a habit of low rating my stuff, I ask you nicely to please instead hit another thread or AT LEAST leave the Op post here untouched so people can read this/weigh in....there are plenty of other posts I don't mind being low rated across the forums)

Some relevant comments that are funny yet poignant:
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"Animated"
"Bright colors"
"Bold graphics"
>Looks at Binding of Isaac videos in sidebar
oh no
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FTC: sees Doom Eternal
FTC: Welp, throw it in the kids pile
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Youtube Pre-2020: CHILD FRIENDLY
Youtube 2020: NEVERMIND NO CHILDREN
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Inmate: so how are you here?

Brett: said "cool"
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FTC: THIS MAN EATS FOOD, CHILDREN EAT FOOD, THIS VIDEO IS FOR CHILDREN. $42K
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3:53 That is when you show them Sausage Party and say “So is this kid friendly!?”

Speaking as a father (and gamer) with one young kid starting to show an interest in youtube, there sure is a whole load of 'nasty' stuff aimed at kids specifically. I can't just let them get on and browse the site, i have to constantly monitor what they are clicking on. And one problem in how youtube works is once they have found one nasty kids video, youtube 'helpfully' offers more of the same for them to watch next, so they can get stuck in a 'zone' of inappropriate video's very quickly.

I've had to rapidly click away from 'kids' content talking about suicide, death, horror, physical abuse and violence. It seems to me that the platform is being used to damage young kids in some cases and i have had to flag/report many of these things as i've come across them. Many seem to be russian in origin, but often american also.

So there is that.

The majority of stuff is great, and a great learning resource for young kids, there just has seemed to be an increase in 'nasty' stuff over the last few years in particular, so probably this is a reaction to all that, and in truth something does need to be done about it. Really i've seen some messed up stuff AIMED at young children, pretending to be child friendly when it is anything but.

I have no idea about COPPA, but am aware many 'kids' channels are going to find it hard, so i suspect there will be a period of transition and balance to find the right way to deal with all the nasty kids content currently floating around.

First off, I have to commend you for actually being a proper parent and not letting the internet raise your children.

That said, there is/was a YT section YT was trying out called YT Kids, with only kid friendly content, but they apparently would rather not bother making an effort and harm the incomes of a bunch of content creators so they don't have to do any work/get fined instead for any problems on-site.

(Also imo creators and/or users who watch videos could age gate some content to keep kids from watching it as well...it worked in the past, at any rate.) I hope so....for now it seems the future of many good channels is in question.

I hope this will just be nothing to worry about in the end, but YT has been making some stupid decisions lately which have me wondering/worried.

I suspect the response will be heavy handed from Youtube and many creators will see a fall in earnings through no fault of their own.

Still this has happend (twice iirc?) before and people adjusted and mostly managed to make do, or moved to Twitch! etc.

I can just hope that the disruption is as short-lived as possible and we end up in a place where parents can feel ok about children using youtube (as it does have so much postivie content for young minds to grow on!).

We are in a transition period in terms of how we all view the massive (and rich!) tech companies that have grown to dominate the world around us, and like all 'new' technology we have yet to reach the right balance where making money and doing so responsibly is the norm.

YouTube has a responsibility in exchange for the wealth we all generate for it, it has to learn (it seems) how to take that seriously?

When it happened before it was just minor changes on what was ok on the platform and there were no potential massive fines per video for infractions/etc. Now a video can be made un-searchable/un-commentable & not make the user much money(up to 80% reduction via YT ad money) if it violates one of the guidelines(which are very vague) and possibly get the creator a big fine.They had such a system before, with youtube kids....and before that kids could use the site while not logged in to watch non-age gated material.

I hope this blows over and many don't suffer because of this, at any rate.And the FTC needs to keep itself out of what we watch online to such a degree, imo.....parents need to parent(like you do).

I just wish another service had a video player as good as YouTube's.

COPPA is just the latest SOPA/Net Neutrality issue of the month.

We all know from basic children memories/knowledge that the coopa troopas are always making an ass of themselves, or the very least setting themselves up to be laughed at by the hero :P

Seriously, these so-called protectionistic "acts" often does more harm that good, same goes for any copyright acts against "theft and misuses", but it's something we all have to weigh on: How can we protect our children without stampede our culture? In security, only a very stupid person would use 100K to secure a lousy peanut...

How about those age verification that we see on Steam among others? The only thing those does is to discern who's intelligent to figure it out or not. Even an intelligent 6 year old can figure out how to bypass it and just select a lower number on the year, and the whole "security measurement" falls in a crack. So, net result, high enough intelligence is enough for a child to see certain things on the internet... On the other hand, if a 40 year old isn't intelligent enough to bypass it, he/she/it might be better of - seeing a video of DOOM can be quite damaging to the unintelligent/immature mind :P

Another thing is parents who absolutely just don't give a shit what a child does or sees on the internet. I do subscribe to the fact that protecting a child too much makes the child too naive and too scared, but if parents don't care then all kinds of hell brakes out when the child is getting older without guidance. Proper guidance is a better solution than these half-baked protection acts.

"COPPA imposes certain requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age". That's partly debatable... Youtube aren't directed solely at those under 13, but for all people of every age.

But yes, coppa, sopa... different names but the same soap coming to "cleanse the world". Too much soap leaves a bad taste :D

--------------------------------------------- Another thing if YT gets abandoned and perhaps decides to close... I'm not in love with either Youtube nor Google, however, Youtube does have a considerable chunk of human history logged in their systems, everything from art to essential knowledge and engineering, and not so trivial side of our culture.

F. ex. IMBD had ALOT of information gathered for almost 20 years. Knowledge that people around the world shared freely and are/was invaluable.

What if the Smithsonian in the US, or the Natural History Museum in London decided to trash and burn everything? I fear we don't realize how much we are loosing (also when we are not allowed to share) when we erase digital data since all we do and say is digital.

To a limit of course, but, I still believe "Sharing is caring" is like breathing O2 - you can't live without it. I'd hate to see Gopher quitting his typical "British styled" let's play videos :)

Perhaps, but I don't think we should let our guards down regardless.

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First off, kudos for the well written and good reply....that said:

This is true....kids will find a way around such things(laws/software) somehow....I think the best way to stop kids from seeing such when they might not be ready is proper parenting and parents keeping an eye on their kids/teaching them what's(objectively) right and wrong & how to handle various things in life.

Agreed....parents need to parent and not pass the buck to an Ipad, TV, or PC.

Well said.

That is why I back up stuff I like, even if it is against TOS/etc....as Yt can decide tomorrow that someones content is suddenly "rule breaking/bad" and get rid of it.

Thanks for the semi-recommendation. :)

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Added new video on YT above with TheQuartering talking about YT's response to COPPA concerns

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Me too, and I feel we need to. Once I came over a beautiful mashup between Max - GetAway and Delta Goodrem and just a few months after it was taken down. I'm glad I saved it and later found https://promodj.com/ :)

I use YouTube Video and Audio Downloader (Dev Edt.) to save to *mp4 or *opus, and then https://file-converter.org (foss and context based) to batch convert them to *ogg.


Or https://www.gophersvids.com for a better organized and structured list(s). Youtube is like Facebook, plumped with poor design choices :)

When you hear him you can tell he actually does role-playing and tries to live into the character.

Yeah, this is actually on Youtube. They're the ones serving targeted ads that violate children's privacy. Essentially, if you fail to mark your content as targeted at children, and then target yourself at children... Well, that's on you. It means large amounts of revenue (THAT THESE CHANNELS SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAD SINCE THEY WERE EXPLOITING CHILDREN, I MIGHT ADD) will be lost for many channels. I'm ok with that. Maybe the large portions of drek on YT will be cut down some. But as of now, it seems the options are to be child friendly, or to be rich (as one can be from youtube that is).

Well, this likely won't be policed by Youtube's automatic content triggers, at least not for issuing fines and such. A real person will have to review those cases. Actually, Jim Sterling (I know, many here hate him) made a good video on it and the panic feels a little over blown, to be honest.