Serious FTC, COPPA, YouTube and You

[Alan]

I came across this video, and just finished it so I haven't had time to review the stuff said, but I had only just heard about COPA, and it looks like it could have some damaging effects on the broader YouTube "creator community" for lack of a better word.

YouTube would be better off just banning children from the site (best they can do is use your birthdate, which is easy enough to bypass, but gives them plausible deniability) but that would mess with their revenue stream (they still make hella money from kid advertised videos, creators just make less).

Video spells out a pretty grim picture. Get ready for YouTube brough to you by Coca-Cola because this shits about to corporate as fuck. (I am probably over-reacting)

Please try to discuss civilly.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

It's simple: you gotta pay for YouTube

To explain my position: I've been a paid user of YouTube for about two years now. YouTube premium as its now called is $8 a month or something and removes ads, gives you offline playback on your phone, and comes with Google music. For every minute you spend watching a channel, your time is added to a bank of that creator. At the end of the month,, all YouTube premium money is divided up and given to creators in accordance with watch time.

The result of this is that, as a paid YouTube member, your view is 10-50x more valuable than one who is ad supported. YouTube creators regularly talk about this in analytics. You also support channels who cannot be monetized (politics aside, a lot of "violent" video games are also auto-demonitized, csgo for example). This also pays to keep YouTube's servers up. This is a win for everybody, especially content creators who are at the mercy of advertisers deciding what's going on.

You also get a spotify clone bundled in. What is the downside here? Wow, you have to pay to support a product that has coasted on vc money for a decade and a half, but has no doubt been the single greatest contribution to online education and instructional content. I watch at least 2 hours of videos a day while cooking or relaxing. I can broadcast on my tv without ads. I can support creators. I never see corporate ads take over. Why do more people not pay for YouTube? The only roadblock seens to just be "well its always been free...and I use adblock!". The higher adblock usage gets, the more power the advertisers hold to get the cash to the platform to stay up. If we're going to break free from advertisers, we need to start supporting YouTube directly.easy as that

 

[tcr]

Can the OP explain the issue and his stance a bit better? The video linked is a terrible source on it. I spent 10 minutes watching the video and for all of it the youtuber was just fearmongering about how "this is a meteor coming to destroy Youtube." His main points seem to be based around the wording of the law which will fine anyone who doesn't correctly label their content (in the event it is targeted towards kids). I fail to see how this is a bad thing. If you, as a content creator, are not curating the material presented to your audience (especially if a chunk of your audience is below COPPA-compliance) then it should be your duty to create age appropriate content for the kids. I deal with this at my work all the time, as my client loves to watch Youtube videos but the ones chosen are definitely not appropriate for the age, but yet are clearly still marketed towards children. I think it's especially funny in the video when the youtuber goes over the reasons for this law, citing Elsagate, child pedo comments (??), and the inappropriate Youtube Kids stuff, as not reasons for the law.

better yet don't try to make your living off of Youtube content creation. Being an influencer isn't a real job

 

[Alan]

Can the OP explain the issue and his stance a bit better? The video linked is a terrible source on it. I spent 10 minutes watching the video and for all of it the youtuber was just fearmongering about how "this is a meteor coming to destroy Youtube." His main points seem to be based around the wording of the law which will fine anyone who doesn't correctly label their content (in the event it is targeted towards kids). I fail to see how this is a bad thing. If you, as a content creator, are not curating the material presented to your audience (especially if a chunk of your audience is below COPPA-compliance) then it should be your duty to create age appropriate content for the kids. I deal with this at my work all the time, as my client loves to watch Youtube videos but the ones chosen are definitely not appropriate for the age, but yet are clearly still marketed towards children. I think it's especially funny in the video when the youtuber goes over the reasons for this law, citing Elsagate, child pedo comments (??), and the inappropriate Youtube Kids stuff, as not reasons for the law.

The issue is with the broad scope of the law, and yes, admittedly the video does get a bit fearmongery. I would assume that in a perfect world common sense would be in use, but in our world, it rarely is.

To summarise (poorly) the problems presented in the video:

the new COPPA guidelines force creators to label their videos as "kids only" -- at a loss of 90% of revenue from all videos labeled thusly, with no comments, doesn't come up in suggest videos, cant be searched, and don't provide notification to subscribers. This also comes with very broad scope guidelines for what might be construed as "for kids" examples such as: having cartoon characters, using slang or trendy terms, flashy title screens, bright colours, featuring toys, or "products primarily purchased or consumed by children such as snack foods and cereal. There are plenty of videos on youtube featuring some or all of those things that are in no way intended to be created for children. Again, I don't know the specific language of the law, and am kind of putting a lot of faith in the YouTuber for having done his due diligence, but these are pretty big implications. Videos are reviewed by a third party (not sure if it's stated to be independent or not) and violations can result in fines of up to $42,000.

As far as my opinion, coming at it from a view point very critical of corporations and their greed, this seems like a way to consolidate power (power equating to videos and media presence in this case) where the left and right limits will be so thin that only people who can afford to have legal teams will be able to comply or defend themselves. Seems like a way to screw over a lot of youtubers and make more difficult the barrier to entry into the creator marketplace.

better yet don't try to make your living off of Youtube content creation. Being an influencer isn't a real job

ok boomer

 

[Ancient_Heaven]

better yet don't try to make your living off of Youtube content creation. Being an influencer isn't a real job

Kinda interesing how in my area, there are high schools being made that focus on media and content creation. It’s quite popular iirc. I think it’s safe to assume that it is in the process of being recognized as a real job.

 

[EV]

Here's a better video:

(Some context: the FTC considers YouTube channel owners as "operators," and YouTube as a "host.")

Really, the heart of this controversy:

7:49 "A folk narrative has evolved among users where they have come to believe that they are potentially liable to the FTC for anything as small as incidental inclusion of children's characters in their videos or a mere cosmetic overlap in interests."

This is especially relevant for any Poketubers who stream Let's Plays, open packs of Pokemon cards/products, or even narrate over their replays from Pokemon Showdown. However, as Folding Ideas states earlier, a lot of the panic stems from conflating YouTube's incredibly vague definition of "for kids" with the FTC's definition, for which YouTube has yet to clarify. Here's why:

9:12 "I want to explicitly acknowledge that channel owners absolutely bear some responsibility in compliance. The solution the FTC mandated--requiring channel owners to self-identify child-directed content--is a reasonable burden. However, YouTube has additionally passed much of their burden of compliance onto channel owners as well, and have done so without giving channel owners the appropriately granular mechanisms or educational resources to make informed, conscious decisions about how data is collected from and utilized on their channels.

This burden is being borne mostly not by corporate channels such as Mattel, Hasbro, or Disney, who do not rely on YouTube for substantial revenue, nor by unarguably child-directed independent YouTube channels, but by channels producing all-ages content that they have monetized with a good-faith assumption that YouTube was telling the truth about COPPA compliance, that their channels and the ads on them were being served to an audience aged thirteen plus.

While YouTube could simply remove child-directed advertising from their behavioral ad model entirely or use their clearly demonstrated ability to discern under-thirteen viewers and disable behavioral advertising selectively at the user level, they have instead chosen to structure their system to place the burden and consequences overwhelmingly on channel operators. YouTube is in effect trying to build a scenario where they are still allowed to gather and utilize children's data in serving targeted, behavioral ads with the blame falling on channel owners for allowing them to gather that information and serve those ads."

YouTube was fined because the FTC found out they were able to collect kids' data and direct ads toward them, so we already know that YouTube is able to discern which viewers are twelve or younger. Rather than blanket restrict their access to the site or shut off all behavioral advertising to this age group, the platform is requiring the channel owners police the data collection, of which the channel owners have very little control over.

As inept as YouTube's flagging mechanisms and community-driven policing has been in the past (specifically, regarding copyright protection), I can see why content creators are scared about losing money to false-positives. However, when it comes to the even scarier aspect of being fined by the FTC ($42,000!), I don't think the content creators need to worry as much. Any complaint reviewed by the FTC will be by human analysts, not bots. Realistically, a person will be able to distinguish the difference between an all-ages channel with content that happens to also appeal to children and one that is clearly just for kids but that hasn't properly flagged itself.

Per usual, the hysterics are in full effect (see OP's video). What will actually happen will undoubtedly be nothing near the apocalyptic catastrophe foretold by clickbait artists, but rather another headache for the independent, online content creator trying to earn a few bucks on the side.