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Whatever the intent here was, it's having a completely bonkers outcome, and a real chilling effect on content creators who have done no harm. Content creators,

Whatever the intent here was, it's having a completely bonkers outcome, and a real chilling effect on content creators who have done no harm. Content creators, who are not intending to target children with their videos, are taking steps to ensure they're not ensnared by the onerous definitions the FTC has given for "children's content." The FTC has indeed explicitly said that the content creators, not YouTube, are responsible for flagging their videos as "for kids," and the content creators are personally liable to pay a $40,000 fine if the FTC thinks they made a mistake [0]. So videos where adults dress up in costumes, producing videos for other adults, but that a kid might like? Yeah, they don't wear those costumes anymore, because the FTC might consider it targeted-to-kids. Meanwhile, actual garbage aimed specifically at children, like Elsa-gate and animated shorts with instructions for viewers to commit suicide, go untargeted by this non-fix. [0]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/the-ftcs-2020-coppa-rules-have-youtube-creators-scared/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/the-ftcs-2020-coppa-r...

jdlyga 7y ago
They're trying to automatically detect content that's aimed for kids. So creepy Elsagate stuff should end up being flagged.
- akersten 7y ago
  I'm assuming you're referring to this [0]. Looks like the two options are either the video is removed, or put behind an age gate. Isn't the FTC's issue here that they simply don't believe YouTube when it comes to an account's age? A kid could be watching the targeted-to-kids content and still be on their older sibling's account, or they may have lied about their birthday (who didn't?) - either way, their argument is that YouTube and content creators are violating COPPA if the content itself is what they consider targeted to kids, and a kid watches it - regardless of what YouTube claims their account age to be. So, putting the creepy videos behind an age gate - seems to not be a valid defense in light of the FTC's reasoning that age gates are not reliable. Which is why their silence on this side of the issue is confusing to me. Unless there's some kind of tunnel vision going on here, and they're worried about the ad metrics or whatever that YouTube is generating from minors - and the FTC just doesn't care about the actual content of the videos, so long as you're very careful about what data you collect and how you monetize videos a kid might watch. [0]: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/11/5-ways-were-toughening-our-approach-to.html https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/11/5-ways-were-toughenin...
ShamelessC 7y ago
>The FTC has indeed explicitly said that the content creators, not YouTube, are responsible for flagging their videos as "for kids," and the content creators are personally liable to pay a $40,000 fine if the FTC thinks they made a mistake Can you clarify on this? So, you're saying that the FTC will punish content creators who _don't_ flag content as "for children" if it winds up being "targeted-to-children" via some subjective notion regardless? Those videos wouldn't show up on YT Kids, correct? So they're not going to show up for kids anyway...right? That sounds like the way things should work.
- akersten 7y ago
  The FTC is specifically targeting videos on the main YouTube site, not YT Kids, (because they claim kids might be on the main site anyway, regardless of the ToS forbidding children) and their criteria for whether they consider it children's content is a set of fairly broad guidelines outlined in the article in the post above.
- danShumway 7y ago
  My take is that the FTC is operating from a perspective that if you create content that's designed for children, and you put it on normal Youtube without labeling it, you're sort of "tempting" children to come into an unsafe environment. In the Ars video, the FTC chairman says the following (16:30): > "On the Internet though, you don't know who your users are. So what the COPPA rule more specifically does, is, 'where the content is directed to children, we are presuming the users are 12 and under.' [...] If however you are a general-audience platform like Youtube, you don't know what the content necessarily on your platform is. [...] That's what we mean when we talk about strict-liability for content creators." To me, I interpret this quote (as well as the rest of the video) to say that the FTC does not care whether or not the platform is directed towards children. Keep in mind that Youtube is already officially designated as not directed towards children under 12. If your child is using Youtube, you are violating their TOS. My personal interpretation of this video is that the FTC is saying, "we don't care if the platform is for children, if the content is for children, the rules apply -- no matter where you put it." As to whether or not content creators should be liable for Youtube collecting data that the creators don't even have access to, that's another question. But the FTC doesn't seem interested in asking that question. It's pretty clear to me that the chairman views creators purely as a means to getting at Youtube, regardless of what the consequences are to the individual uploaders. Creators are the "fish in a barrel."
taurath 7y ago
Think about how little actual user value that youtube itself provides, except from the network effect. Its nothing but rent seeking. IMO if they're going to be landlords, they need to fix the appliances.
- wilg 7y ago
  Well aren't the bandwidth costs for hosting a video that gets like a million views or whatever reasonably expensive?
  - taurath 7y ago
    Sure, but their revenue running ads is quite high to compensate.
- gundmc 7y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is a bad take. Of all the free services available online, YouTube is maybe the single worst example you could pick as far as "offering little actual user value". The fact that any user across some 76 languages can upload any number of up to 12 hour videos that are then transcoded, captioned, and shareable FOR FREE is absurd. If those videos never get a more than 10 views, it's still hosted and accessible FOR FREE. If they blow up and get billions of views, the service scales to serve that FOR FREE. If you get really popular, you can CHOOSE to show ads on your videos and get paid for views while still taking advantage of the free hosting and infrastructure. It's a goddamn miracle that individuals creating and publishing their own web videos has become a viable occupation. That didn't exist before YouTube. Even more impressive is spending money and resources hosting all of the videos that will never be viewed. A user here posted a website that randomly played a continuous feed of never before viewed videos[1]. It's astounding. All this while also operating the second largest search engine in the world to help viewers find your content for free and being so reliable as to make global news when it goes offline for some users for an hour[2]. I can understand criticizing some of YouTube's policies or interactions with mega creators, but I legitimately can't comprehend calling their contribution "little actual user value". [1] - http://astronaut.io/ http://astronaut.io/ [2] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-cloud-outage-hits-youtube-gmail-snapchat-apps-services-today-2019-06-02-live-updates/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-cloud-outage-hits-youtub...
fencepost 7y ago
This is going to be ugly for people who do (did?) family-friendly content such as a lot of gaming-related stuff. I'll use as an example Trainer Tips, which is an intentionally noncontroversial channel about Pokemon Go. As I understand it, if he marks his videos as being for kids, they end up effectively demonetized and comments aren't allowed. If he doesn't mark them as being for kids, he's at risk of massive fines. If he marks them as adults-only (or just starts swearing or the like), they're also effectively demonetized. Guess this explains all the push by a lot of creators towards Patreon and the like - the simple solution is to have your videos on YouTube marked as for kids, but to push for people to support you on Patreon to get access to discussions, a channel-specific Discord, etc. for the kinds of things that would previously be in comments. Edit: Oh, and no notifications when new kid-friendly content is posted, so if you want notifications 'Support me on Patreon'
- dilap 7y ago
  they’re just signing up to get fucked all over again if they move to patreon. we need good decentralized platforms, no?
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Honestly the issue is how do you pay for a YouTube without ad dollars or it being the pet project of some billionaire benefactor? Youtube itself is reportedly "roughly break-even" even with all the ads and monetization without having any proper support for the people making the content. [0] [0] The number of creators I've heard get within a few days or a week of permanently losing their account because of some weird combination of things and only got it back because a friend of a friend, not their official YT liaison even, was able to find out what was wrong and how they needed to fix it.
  - fencepost 7y ago
    It's not so much Patreon as some sort of outside discussion, notification and possibly discovery platform with YouTube reduced to serving media instead of discovery. That outside platform would likely need to be membership based or paid, probably both, because that "paid" bit may provide a lot of cover against children getting access - at least on the basis of T&C that say something like "as part of this membership you agree to not allow access by any persons under 13 and agree to cover fines and legal expenses we may incur as a result of you violating these terms or as a result of collection attempts." That would be a combination of "get us in trouble and you're in it too" and "as you can see Your Honor, we've made strong attempts to enforce keeping children out of the community."
apple4ever 7y ago
I've already had two channels my kid likes to watch stop offering kid content. They've totally changed their content, and its nothing he enjoys. It sucks.

jdlyga 7y ago

They're trying to automatically detect content that's aimed for kids. So creepy Elsagate stuff should end up being flagged.

akersten 7y ago
I'm assuming you're referring to this [0]. Looks like the two options are either the video is removed, or put behind an age gate. Isn't the FTC's issue here that they simply don't believe YouTube when it comes to an account's age? A kid could be watching the targeted-to-kids content and still be on their older sibling's account, or they may have lied about their birthday (who didn't?) - either way, their argument is that YouTube and content creators are violating COPPA if the content itself is what they consider targeted to kids, and a kid watches it - regardless of what YouTube claims their account age to be. So, putting the creepy videos behind an age gate - seems to not be a valid defense in light of the FTC's reasoning that age gates are not reliable. Which is why their silence on this side of the issue is confusing to me. Unless there's some kind of tunnel vision going on here, and they're worried about the ad metrics or whatever that YouTube is generating from minors - and the FTC just doesn't care about the actual content of the videos, so long as you're very careful about what data you collect and how you monetize videos a kid might watch. [0]: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/11/5-ways-were-toughening-our-approach-to.html https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/11/5-ways-were-toughenin...

ShamelessC 7y ago

>The FTC has indeed explicitly said that the content creators, not YouTube, are responsible for flagging their videos as "for kids," and the content creators are personally liable to pay a $40,000 fine if the FTC thinks they made a mistake Can you clarify on this? So, you're saying that the FTC will punish content creators who _don't_ flag content as "for children" if it winds up being "targeted-to-children" via some subjective notion regardless? Those videos wouldn't show up on YT Kids, correct? So they're not going to show up for kids anyway...right? That sounds like the way things should work.

akersten 7y ago
The FTC is specifically targeting videos on the main YouTube site, not YT Kids, (because they claim kids might be on the main site anyway, regardless of the ToS forbidding children) and their criteria for whether they consider it children's content is a set of fairly broad guidelines outlined in the article in the post above.
danShumway 7y ago
My take is that the FTC is operating from a perspective that if you create content that's designed for children, and you put it on normal Youtube without labeling it, you're sort of "tempting" children to come into an unsafe environment. In the Ars video, the FTC chairman says the following (16:30): > "On the Internet though, you don't know who your users are. So what the COPPA rule more specifically does, is, 'where the content is directed to children, we are presuming the users are 12 and under.' [...] If however you are a general-audience platform like Youtube, you don't know what the content necessarily on your platform is. [...] That's what we mean when we talk about strict-liability for content creators." To me, I interpret this quote (as well as the rest of the video) to say that the FTC does not care whether or not the platform is directed towards children. Keep in mind that Youtube is already officially designated as not directed towards children under 12. If your child is using Youtube, you are violating their TOS. My personal interpretation of this video is that the FTC is saying, "we don't care if the platform is for children, if the content is for children, the rules apply -- no matter where you put it." As to whether or not content creators should be liable for Youtube collecting data that the creators don't even have access to, that's another question. But the FTC doesn't seem interested in asking that question. It's pretty clear to me that the chairman views creators purely as a means to getting at Youtube, regardless of what the consequences are to the individual uploaders. Creators are the "fish in a barrel."

taurath 7y ago

Think about how little actual user value that youtube itself provides, except from the network effect. Its nothing but rent seeking. IMO if they're going to be landlords, they need to fix the appliances.

wilg 7y ago
Well aren't the bandwidth costs for hosting a video that gets like a million views or whatever reasonably expensive?
- taurath 7y ago
  Sure, but their revenue running ads is quite high to compensate.
gundmc 7y ago
I'm sorry, but this is a bad take. Of all the free services available online, YouTube is maybe the single worst example you could pick as far as "offering little actual user value". The fact that any user across some 76 languages can upload any number of up to 12 hour videos that are then transcoded, captioned, and shareable FOR FREE is absurd. If those videos never get a more than 10 views, it's still hosted and accessible FOR FREE. If they blow up and get billions of views, the service scales to serve that FOR FREE. If you get really popular, you can CHOOSE to show ads on your videos and get paid for views while still taking advantage of the free hosting and infrastructure. It's a goddamn miracle that individuals creating and publishing their own web videos has become a viable occupation. That didn't exist before YouTube. Even more impressive is spending money and resources hosting all of the videos that will never be viewed. A user here posted a website that randomly played a continuous feed of never before viewed videos[1]. It's astounding. All this while also operating the second largest search engine in the world to help viewers find your content for free and being so reliable as to make global news when it goes offline for some users for an hour[2]. I can understand criticizing some of YouTube's policies or interactions with mega creators, but I legitimately can't comprehend calling their contribution "little actual user value". [1] - http://astronaut.io/ http://astronaut.io/ [2] - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-cloud-outage-hits-youtube-gmail-snapchat-apps-services-today-2019-06-02-live-updates/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-cloud-outage-hits-youtub...

fencepost 7y ago

This is going to be ugly for people who do (did?) family-friendly content such as a lot of gaming-related stuff. I'll use as an example Trainer Tips, which is an intentionally noncontroversial channel about Pokemon Go. As I understand it, if he marks his videos as being for kids, they end up effectively demonetized and comments aren't allowed. If he doesn't mark them as being for kids, he's at risk of massive fines. If he marks them as adults-only (or just starts swearing or the like), they're also effectively demonetized. Guess this explains all the push by a lot of creators towards Patreon and the like - the simple solution is to have your videos on YouTube marked as for kids, but to push for people to support you on Patreon to get access to discussions, a channel-specific Discord, etc. for the kinds of things that would previously be in comments. Edit: Oh, and no notifications when new kid-friendly content is posted, so if you want notifications 'Support me on Patreon'

dilap 7y ago
they’re just signing up to get fucked all over again if they move to patreon. we need good decentralized platforms, no?
- rtkwe 7y ago
  Honestly the issue is how do you pay for a YouTube without ad dollars or it being the pet project of some billionaire benefactor? Youtube itself is reportedly "roughly break-even" even with all the ads and monetization without having any proper support for the people making the content. [0] [0] The number of creators I've heard get within a few days or a week of permanently losing their account because of some weird combination of things and only got it back because a friend of a friend, not their official YT liaison even, was able to find out what was wrong and how they needed to fix it.
- fencepost 7y ago
  It's not so much Patreon as some sort of outside discussion, notification and possibly discovery platform with YouTube reduced to serving media instead of discovery. That outside platform would likely need to be membership based or paid, probably both, because that "paid" bit may provide a lot of cover against children getting access - at least on the basis of T&C that say something like "as part of this membership you agree to not allow access by any persons under 13 and agree to cover fines and legal expenses we may incur as a result of you violating these terms or as a result of collection attempts." That would be a combination of "get us in trouble and you're in it too" and "as you can see Your Honor, we've made strong attempts to enforce keeping children out of the community."

apple4ever 7y ago

I've already had two channels my kid likes to watch stop offering kid content. They've totally changed their content, and its nothing he enjoys. It sucks.