There's a weird mix of regulation and Youtube action that mean no-one (parents, youtubers, regulators) are happy with the current result. We want to protect ch

There's a weird mix of regulation and Youtube action that mean no-one (parents, youtubers, regulators) are happy with the current result. We want to protect children from predatory data harvesting, so we have laws like COPPA (in the US). YouTube's answer to COPPA was to just forbid children under 13 having their own account and launching Youtube Kids. Children under 13 want to watch youtube, and the content they want isn't always on YTKids, so they watch using a parent's account. They do this because they also want the like and subscribe buttons. But because YT doesn't know if it's a child or adult watching they serve ads for horror films or gambling or alcohol. But they also try to guess if it's a child watching the video and they'll serve ads for toys. Regulators were unhappy. Youtube tried to say to the regulators "we comply with coppa and we definitely do not target children for ads", but they were going to the potential advertisers and saying "we have the largest child audience and we know how you can reach them". Faced with further regulation Youtube bunted this onto the creators, and (weirdly, IMO) the regulators agreed and said that the creators (not Youtube) were responsible for ads placed against their content. Now you have content that is clearly, unambiguously, aimed at children where the Youtuber has to say the word "fuck" three times a video so they can tick the "not for kids" box to get decent ad revenue. There's a bunch of content that was fine for kids that now has to include tediously edgy shit just to avoid that "aimed at kids" classification. Youtube has no idea who is watching videos so the ad serving is awful. The regulators don't talk to each other but are clearly unhappy that unsuitable ads are pushed at kids. And parents are left not knowing if this content aimed at children actually is aimed at children or if it's going to include jokes about anal rape[1]. [1] On the off-chance that anyone from YouTube is reading this this is a real fucking example, but there's no way to tell you.