11 ms·
YouTube starts to require a credit card or ID to verify the age in EU (2020)
- iruoy 5y agoThis is a blog post from last year. Is there any news on this?
- ginko 5y agoGuess I won't be watching any adult only youtube content then, because I definitely won't give them my ID
- kitkat_new 5y agoyou can't even watch all non-adult content, such as Kung Fury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg
- solarkraft 5y agoThe problem is miscategorization. A lot of videos I like (and swear are not pornographic or whatever) are now inaccessible.
- anshorei 5y agoI already use Odysee, Rumble, Bitchute over yt whenever possible, this just pushes me away from yt even more.
- mvdwoord 5y agoRan into this last week with a throwaway. Bummer.
- fionnoh 5y agoMy Youtube account is 15 years old. I wonder if I'll still have to verify my age in 3 years time.
- cbg0 5y agoYou will, they can't simply assume the owner has never changed.
- AlexAltea 5y agoThen why wouldn't the owner change after verification? Maybe they should verify every day, just to be safe? Such nonsense just ruins the Internet, maybe we should find better approaches than "yet another banner": accepting cookies, accepting privacy policy, verifying age, registering, logging-in, etc. all to watch some dumb 10 second video... Yet, porn and violence are to this day still a Google search away. So, what is YouTube exactly trying to stop here?
- rowanG077 5y agoThat makes little sense. Does this require reverification every time you log in? After all you can't simply assume the owner has never changed.
- cbg0 5y agoIf the verification has never been done, and to comply with any regulatory requirements, they will likely perform the check once. Just because your account is 18 years old is most likely not going to pass various regulations which they need to comply with.
- zinekeller 5y agoNote, this is EU AVMSD regulation we're talking about. Even companies who you think wouldn't need to comply with it do require this (notably Microsoft, because of Xbox, Microsoft Family and related stuff). At least EU just requires a credit card, in Korea you basically need your digital equivalent of an ID ("For customers in South Korea, use I-PIN [ed note: https://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/38540152.pdf https://www.oecd.org/sti/ieconomy/38540152.pdf] to provide parental consent or verify your age.", https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/parental-consent-and-microsoft-child-accounts-c6951746-8ee5-8461-0809-fbd755cd902e https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/parental...).
- ldjb 5y agoDifferent countries are at different stages of transposing this directive into national legislation [0], so if you're in an EU country and haven't come across this yet, you will probably encounter this in due course. Note that the directive also applies to the UK, where it has already been transposed into legislation. [0] https://www.obs.coe.int/en/web/observatoire/avmsd-tracking https://www.obs.coe.int/en/web/observatoire/avmsd-tracking
- hocuspocus 5y agoThe Korean way makes more sense, it's akin to OAuth and Google never sees your ID (or gets a chance to collect more personal data if you use your credit card instead). And yes i-PIN was annoying when I lived there but I assume most issues have been ironed out. The EU is working on its own digital ID for that very reason.
- zinekeller 5y ago> And yes i-PIN was annoying when I lived there. Unfortunately it still is. It has improvements though, so at least it wasn't stagnated like, I don't know, EU's APIs for VAT exemption queries. Technically speaking, you can still access certain details (like name and gender) on the i-PIN system, but on the other hand Korean PIPA is very strict (stricter than GDPR except in certain religious activities, pointed out on the draft adequacy decision) and is actively enforcing the law.
- ycuser2 5y agoAny ideas how to by pass this? I don't want to give Google my ID or credit card info.
- lord_and_xavier 5y agoFreetube https://freetubeapp.io/ https://freetubeapp.io/ gives a private youtube browsing experience and shows age restricted videos
- amq 5y agoHere are quite a few workarounds: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ljp02h/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/ljp02h/ I imagine all of them will eventually stop working though.
- zinekeller 5y agoSome methods don't work inside the EU. The only way to bypass this is to proxy to a country outside EMEA (like Canada) and use the methods listed there.
- MCTemp12 5y agohttps://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restriction-Bypass https://github.com/zerodytrash/Simple-YouTube-Age-Restrictio...
- cdiddy2 5y agoDoes a VPN not work?
- dspillett 5y agoDoes youtube-dl or one of its variants get the content or is that somehow blocked by the age check? If the former then you can skip the adverts that way too. Though it would be a bit of manual faf (open page, copy URL, wait, play video from resulting local file) compared to just streaming direct from the youtube page.
- 5y ago
- eptcyka 5y agoI don't understand, as a child I circumvented most if not all age restrictions and consumed whatever media I wanted, except for when my parents saw me play GTA. What kind of deficiency am I experiencing that isn't obvious to me?
- andrepd 5y agoI don't like this requirement at all but this is a very weak argument. Anecdotal experience shouldn't yield any conclusions.
- eptcyka 5y agoYes, but where's the real, proper evidence that shows that watching age restricted youtube videos is detrimental to children? I think unsupervised access to age restricted parts of youtube may well be detrimental too. I feel like most of these changes are there only because troubled parents feel like they're powerless to control their children.
- andrepd 5y agoOh absolutely. Here's an hypothesis: turbo-consumerist videos targeted at children are far more harmful that much of the "age restricted" content of nudity and profanity. I just mean we should be careful and work in an evidence-based way rather than a moral panic-based way or a "I turned out fine"-based way (this latter, a common defense worldwide of child beating for instance)
- eptcyka 5y agoI do agree that anecdotes shouldn't inform policy.
- malfist 5y agoOkay, how about this. This requirement for age verification is because someone is asserting that profanity or whatever youtube decides is "adult only" is harmful to children. Since you can't prove a negative, e.g. profanity isn't harmful to children, the question here is can you prove profanity harms children. Yes anecdotes aren't evidence, but what can be asserted without evidence (profanity is harmful) can be dismissed without evidence.
- amq 5y agoCame across this when opening some random youtube video with profanity. This is how it looks: https://imgur.com/a/4K6ehFw https://imgur.com/a/4K6ehFw
- raxxorrax 5y agoGuess that may mean the will fix the URL trick that allowed to circumvent the check. Don't know if it still works, but I used it from time to time because I use youtube without account.
- silverpepsi 5y agoSerious the world is slowly becoming a nightmare for those of us who travel, roadblocks EVERYWHERE. When I was in Poland, I couldn't use a rental bike because you have to have a Google Account tied to the Polish Playstore to be able to install the app. For this exact reason I couldn't collect Starbucks points or pay conveniently while in Mexico for 6 months. Google and Apple expect you to buy 1 phone per country. This comes up again and again and again. In South Korea, I couldn't even watch my own YouTube playlists. Some Chinese music videos I watch were age restricted and you have to become a long term legal resident to be able to verify. Oh, and they might not sell size 46 shoes commonly there either but I sure couldn't order them. You need the same ID just to be able to receive a package Fedex'd from overseas. And on and on and on... Currently in Ukraine, at least 2 of my banks block me from any access to my finances both my phone app and any web access. A favorite travel news website I read also blocks access. Multiple Texas government agencies actually block any overseas access, preventing my from cancelling my highway toll pass or paying the bill. I think I had trouble accessing some tax sites too. God forbid anyone ever go on vacation. You have a WWW site? You mean CWW, right? There are a whole list of other problems worldwide, I wish I'd written them all down. Amazon is 100% nationalistic anti- the existence of other countries. All I can say is god bless Netflix, they're the most reasonable of any company or government by a wide wide margin. I see no need to play with VPNs for Netflix.
- joshgoldman 5y agoFirst world problems
- Tenoke 5y agoIt's pretty annoying but you can switch your country as long as you don't do it too often - I have. Also at one point you could still install them if you started the instalation in the browser (e.g. on your computer) but I think that might not work for a while. You can presumably switch your main account, too but that might be even more hassle.
- silverpepsi 5y agoGoogle allows one change a year. That doesn't do me any good, I switched to Mexico for said Starbucks app and instantly regretted it (for the next 12mos). I've spent 3-7 months in too many other places since
- sneak 5y agoPretty soon you won't be able to do anything online without providing identifying information strongly tied to government ID. No anonymity will be permitted by big tech, because having everything linked forever to your history allows for more revenue from advertisers. Big tech becomes default choices for businesses and society, so no anonymity will be permitted in society.
- nness 5y agoI don't even think its advertisement revenue, an more. I think its entirely a fatigue with political and social pressure. Its so much easier to let go of your beliefs when it just becomes far too painful to keep fighting politicians and public scrutiny. Scares investors, hurts your staff, and I guess hurts revenue. If you're YouTube and you're facing a barrage of inquiries about inappropriate content, this is the easiest way forward.
- melomal 5y agoYup, had this little gem appear for me on a very random video. So much so that I had to suspect that it was more of a requirement so that your credit card is locked and loaded for spending.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoAlso what makes a video marked as adult content is becoming absurd. Last month, a french youtuber was required to put pixels on a doom 1 screenshot. Pixels on pixels. Even more absurd when the ads are not censored the same way, and hence can be way more adult oriented than the video. I never though I would see the day where internet services would do something worse than TV. But as a lot of youtubers reported, there is not much alternative since youtube: • is the only place where you'll get such a big audience, and with powerful discovery mechanisms in place to make people discover your content • is one of the few players actually giving you money for your content • can handle millions of viewers in the first 5 minutes a popular video is released • has a very low barrier of entry for consumers
- solarkraft 5y agoThe situation has luckily gotten a bit better during the last years. I see LBRY and Floatplane slowly, but steadily picking up momentum. So far the breadth of content on Youtube is unparalleled, but there is some hope that may change. Maybe Twitch will eventually get more into hosting video, but I wouldn’t exactly say they’re much better.
- busymom0 5y agoOdysee (LBRY) is a pretty good alternative and has a good UI plus variety of content. What's floatplane?
- colejohnson66 5y agoA video subscription service created by Linus Media Group (LinusTechTips). Creators put their content ad-free on Floatplane, but can also put it other places (such as YouTube, and with ads). The users pay for the ad-free videos.
- BiteCode_dev 5y agoHonestly, Linus is a seal of trust by itself at this point, so if they manage to keep up, they may gain traction.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- einarfd 5y agoIf they want to verify my age, that is fine. But I'm not fine with using credit cards, they where never meant for that and that is a hackish solution. Not a fan of photo id's either, I've used that once, and it was a ridiculous blast from the past. We have proper electronic id's where I live, so used that or nothing.
- nottorp 5y agoGoogle has no business having my credit card or ID. Because I don't trust them. Catch 22.
- themaninthedark 5y agoDoes Google require US accounts to verify age too? I ask this because I set up my phone's google account when I was living in Japan. When I moved back I had to switch my app store county in order to use locally purchased Play gift cards. Soon after I stated getting notifications to "Verify my age on my Google account to help them comply with the law". So far ignoring it has seemed to work, has anyone else experienced this? Also what law are they trying to comply with?
- dspillett 5y ago> Not a fan of photo id's either I lost a lot of mass over the period 6-to-8 year ago, so since than until recently my passport had a photo that didn't look terribly like me. Oddly this was never questioned at all at airports, though was when using it as ID for picking up an order at Tesco.
- solarkraft 5y agoThis has been an issue for some months now and has led me to think that it’s already almost too late to save content worth saving from the siloization of YouTube (age restriction also kills youtube-dl). Is there such a thing as a distributed Youtube archiving project? There’s no chance content on Youtube will ever be more accessible again.
- donatzsky 5y agoIt doesn't seem to work for everyone, but YouTube-dl should be able to download age-restricted videos, if you supply it with some fresh cookies.
- selfhoster11 5y agoSadly, I think you may be right. The ship has sailed on a great many channels and videos I had bookmarked. Rescuing whatever we can from this fire and pulling the plug on our own consumption on the platform seems like the wisest course of action.
- pokstad 5y agoThe priorities we have are so whack. We should be verifying age for social media usage. Minors shouldn’t be allowed to destroy their digital personas with incriminating posts.
- anshorei 5y agoBack in the day parents used to say "don't reveal any personal information on the internet", no verification necessary. But the ad giants destroyed that.
- josephcsible 5y agoAny EU lawmakers/regulators who could have done something about this but chose not to do so are lying when they claim to care about your privacy, no matter how many cookie consent banners they mandate.
- Mindwipe 5y agoThey mandated it, not just "didn't do anything about it."
- josephcsible 5y agoRepealing the mandate would be doing something about it.
- jjgreen 5y agoOld people just need to ask a kid how to circumvent this: they have the time and motivation.
- thejackgoode 5y agoA godsend, now I will be finally able to use it less
- nonameiguess 5y agoUnless they also require you to turn on a webcam and give them control of it, there is no way for them to verify you don't have someone else underage in the room watching with you. At some point, a country has to decide what level of possibly illegal behavior is acceptable to avoid the panopticon police state required to prevent any and all possible violations.
- dmix 5y agoThat’s the parents job not something we need to outsource to every random tech company who dares to offer kids programming.
- danielscrubs 5y agoRemember when Google+ tried to make people use their real names[0]? Having data is one thing. Having data with a real name handed to you is something else completely. [0]: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/google-plus-finally-ditches-its-ineffective-dangerous-real-name-policy.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/google-plus-finally-dit...
- garaetjjte 5y agoHow they came up with conclusion that persons younger than 18 years cannot have credit cards?
- nyjah 5y agoThis isn't specifically about the article, but generally, does anyone know what the heck is going on with the YouTube App? Recently they took away anyway to refresh the videos on the home screen. So I have to login as a guest, then back into my account to get refreshed videos. There is no way to tell youtube from the app to not show me a video or a channel. I can't join a channel from the app, or look at the community stuff or any of the comments. From mobile you can do that stuff but the experience is horse shit. I love youtube, I just can't for the life of me understand why their app on apple tv and android is absolute garbage compared to even what it used to be 6 months ago.
- rightbyte 5y ago> I love youtube, I just can't for the life of me understand why their app on apple tv and android is absolute garbage compared to even what it used to be 6 months ago. Resume driven rewrites? Missing functionality is a tell tail.
- __coaxialcabal 5y agowho are they using for ID verification?
- TechBro8615 5y agoYou'll be happy to know they've partnered with Google Pay and can conveniently save your card for the next time you want to rent a movie for €15.99 (just make sure to watch it within 24 hours of starting it, you know – before the bits expire).
- dylan604 5y agoI'm shocked that Googs does not already have enough information collected and linked to your account that this is necessary. Maybe FB can create a service where you can submit an email/phone number, and then return the age of the user. You know between the Googs and FB, they have linked to your profile multiple emails so I'm betting it would be a pretty robust service. Of course returning the user's age would be the lowest tier offered. For a higher service fee, you could then gain more access to the user. CASH COW
- dekken_ 5y agoDeath by bureaucracy. Useless people making useless rules.
- cblconfederate 5y agoif this will push some content outside of youtube, it's a good thing. Youtube itself is only getting more and more draconian, we ve sacrificed diversity of content for convenience.
- dtx1 5y agoVote with your wallet! Don't buy iToddler Devices, instead go for custom rom'ed Android devices. Don't pay for Shitflix and co just buy a VPN and torrent stuff. I can't get my mom to do this but almost everyone on this website has the technical capability to do it. If they don't want your buisness don't give it too them.
- fsflover 5y ago> instead go for custom rom'ed Android devices Those are very restrictive, too. Consider GNU/Linux smartphones instead, Librem 5 and Pinephone.
- cblconfederate 5y agoUse any device on the web. apps are digital chains
- dtx1 5y agobrowsers are apps. everything is a chain.
- cblconfederate 5y agoyou can find your web app in any other phone/tablet/laptop/desktop/tv though, it s not tied to a brand or to your credit card, and crucially competition is not regulated by 2 gatekeepers.
- smaryjerry 5y agoDoes anyone else find it disturbing that per this post any content considered advertiser friendly has to be also be kid friendly and that any videos for 18+ are already receiving near zero ad revenue by YouTube. Get this, the age group that both has the least spending power and is smaller than the 18+ group of people is determining the videos that make money and therefore also get promoted and shared the most. Just look at all the top videos on YouTube they are for 5 year olds or younger now. We are turning into a society that considers everyone a child that can’t handle the truth of the world.
- AshamedCaptain 5y agoThat is not entirely true; what's being censored is let's call it "NSFW" stuff. I mean, you can have obviously not kid-friendly videos about FPGA HDL development and they will not be censored, can get advertising money, etc. Although do note that I have seen one such video about Verilog get flagged as +18 by Google. Dunno why.
- cblconfederate 5y agoTVs shows are marked with ratings in europe , but it's not like it's enforced, it s just a recommendation , and i guess there is some rule not to play adult stuff in the early hours. None of this is enforcement, and can very easily be circumvented. On the internet, it's hard-enforced
- smaryjerry 5y agoI think advertiser friendly on YouTube typically means much much safer content than NSFW. Content creator’s videos are demonetized for even swearing once or discussing the wrong topic. One example I can think of was a video that was demonetized for saying “thou shall not kill” because YouTube said it involved discussions of killing.
- snet0 5y agoIf they had the least effective spending power, they wouldn't be targeted. The number of debit card owners in the Fortnite demographic is probably quite low, but the number of effective owners, i.e. debit card owners that can be manipulated to cede control (parents), is high.
- baud147258 5y agoone weird implementation of the age verification is how unevenly it is applied: I remember a trailer for a video game (the new Disciple game, I think), where the video on the developer's channel was age-restricted, but not the copies on video game news channels
- MiddleEndian 5y agoThe laws are definitely backwards here. It should be illegal to collect this info unnecessarily instead of mandatory.
- t0bia_s 5y agoJust excuses for data collection and more surveillance.