ilikeswords64
Well-Known Member
I think that all of us agree with you on all points Jungle Explorer, but the key issue which you might not have heard yet is that YouTube was openly expressing to advertisers in closed-door meetings their ability to market to children under 13, and delved into those specific abilities quite a bit until they were caught. There was an understanding and acknowledgement of the issue - that is the biggest problem. Anyone with an understanding of behavioral advertising (there are many on this forum) knows that it operates based on the collection of user-specific data. There's a visible layer to us on the analytics side, and an even more in-depth layer on YouTube's side. YouTube is owned by an internet marketing behemoth, and this isn't a situation where kid creators were by any means the bread and butter of the company (Google makes most of their money through their search engine ad revenue and products). They can take a hit in profit. Complying with the law is more important and I think that we see it evidenced by the throttling we are experiencing. I think that they are trying to shake us off - it is a precursor to January. Ryan just made some serious channel adjustments, many kid creators (except Ryan and other diversified channels) are ramping down on new video frequency, and many have changed niche. It is time to be realistic. If you care about the money, perk up your ears to algorithmic trends outside of the kids niche and start fresh with the knowledge you have gained (they can't take that away from you). If you care about the kids, continue to produce content at greatly reduced profit, and take a second job to put food on the table. It sounds harsh but I'm trying to encourage this mindset so that creators aren't going to be devastated in January.I read the article. It's about a lawsuit, not about some new FTC regulation. So, I am still at a loss for what people are talking about that is changing children's channels on YT. The lawsuit itself is stupid as well. The lawsuit is about the collection of "Personal" information on children. It is stupid because, the only way Google can collect personal data on children, is if someone manually inputs this personal information. Google does not know the age of the person inputting the information, so how is it going to know that a child is inputting it? DUH! Telling google that they need to differentiate between data that is input by a child from that input by an adult is absurd. The only way google could achieve this is if they required a biometric facial scan to validate the age of the person inputting the data, and this would be a far greater breach of personal information, the potential abuse of which could be catastrophic.
This lawsuit is about one thing and one thing only. It is about parents not wanting to be responsible for managing, disciplining and teaching their children how to be safe online. Parents should not allow their kids to have unrestricted access to the internet. Any parent that does, should have their kids taken away for child abuse. I raised three kids in the last 20 years and still have a teenager at home. I taught my kids about the dangers of the internet and NEVER allowed them unsupervised access to it. They did not get smartphones until they were 16 and I had parental controls installed that restricted what they could do with their phones, and their phones had no data plans. They could not have a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social media account. They could only use internet access for educational purposes and I monitored every single communication. Any attempt to subvert my restrictions was met with indefinite bans from all forms of technology. If an account needed an account to be created, I created it using an alter ego that I invented for such purposes. At no point in time was their personal information EVER put out on the internet.
This mother that is suing, is a bad mother. She wants other people to be responsible for her kids. She does not want to accept the responsibility of protecting her kids, she wants everyone else to be responsible for protecting them. I have known so many lazy irresponsible parents like her. They just throw their kids out on the internet superhighway with no restrictions or training. They might as well give their kids the keys to their car and tell them to go drive on the interstate and expect nothing bad to happen to them.
But I still do not understand what everyone is squawking about. People keep referring to some new FTC ruling, but I can't find anything new that has happened.
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