Massive drop in views on kid channels

Redterrors said:
To be clear, I was not suggesting that anyone at Youtube has altered CTR for specific channels. They did this on a massive scale and it started in July. Even channels that were getting 5 million plus on every video they uploaded is nowhere near that now.
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So I I wonder where all the traffic went to ? because even big channels' new videos are not getting that many views. And I doubt kids just stopped watching
 
Redterrors said:
That is the million dollar question. I believe Youtube has conspired to alter the algorithm in furtherance of violating COPPA and the order signed by the Honorable Beryl A. Howell. Kristin Krause Cohen represented the FTC (plaintiff) in the lawsuit against Youtube and Clark P. Russell represented New York (the other plaintiff). It is important for us to continue to closely watch the situation and conduct tests on the algorithm in order to provide those attorneys with hard facts that Youtube is in direct violation of the order. The FTC lawsuit was officially closed out on November 4th, 2019 with the permanent injunction ordered and stipulated by all parties. If Youtube was truly just classifying videos as children directed and turning off "personalized" ads, where did all the views go? Did the viewing habits of billions of children across the globe coincidentally correlate to the filing of a lawsuit against Youtube? Of course it didn't! Youtube has found a way to keep showing content to kids while at the same time fully able to show personalized ads in January. Youtube can't say they don't know children are watching when the channel is obviously directed at children, but they can easily throw teenager and up content at kids and keep the money flowing.

The only way to truly comply with the law is to separate the content and properly invest in curated children's content. The law is violated equally whether the "child" is watching pewdiepie or baby shark. Youtube needs to do more to determine the age of the viewer watching the content and passing the buck onto the creator is just absurd. While I have immense respect for the FTC, DOJ, and our federal courts, they are vastly ignorant in the realms of Youtube and they have not done enough to ensure that Google complies with the laws of our great country.
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Personally, I believe the greatest crime in the world is the atrocity of a government using its power to punish innocent people for crimes they are not guilty of. And, finning a content creator for the ads that an ad company plays on their content, that they have no control over, is exactly that kind of atrcity level crime.

While I respect the rule of law, laws themselves must be respectable in order to be respected. You can make people fear the law and obey it, but that is not the same thing as respecting the law.

The FTC overstepped the bounds of being respectable when they said they would fine content creators if ad companies placed targeted ads on their content. At that point, the FTC stopped being a just and fair arm of the government and became a tyrannical enforcer of injustice. If I were a lawyer, I would immediately file a lawsuit against the FTC for violating the 1st Amendment of the Constitution by trying to suppress freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech and expression is what is truly on the line here and what the FTC is doing to content creators is an immeasurably far greater crime than kids see some targeted ads. COPPA is not of greater importance than the Constitution of the United States of America! Anyone who thinks it is, I will buy you a one-way ticket out of our country if you will renounce your citizenship.
 
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Redterrors said:
That is the million dollar question. I believe Youtube has conspired to alter the algorithm in furtherance of violating COPPA and the order signed by the Honorable Beryl A. Howell. Kristin Krause Cohen represented the FTC (plaintiff) in the lawsuit against Youtube and Clark P. Russell represented New York (the other plaintiff). It is important for us to continue to closely watch the situation and conduct tests on the algorithm in order to provide those attorneys with hard facts that Youtube is in direct violation of the order. The FTC lawsuit was officially closed out on November 4th, 2019 with the permanent injunction ordered and stipulated by all parties. If Youtube was truly just classifying videos as children directed and turning off "personalized" ads, where did all the views go? Did the viewing habits of billions of children across the globe coincidentally correlate to the filing of a lawsuit against Youtube? Of course it didn't! Youtube has found a way to keep showing content to kids while at the same time fully able to show personalized ads in January. Youtube can't say they don't know children are watching when the channel is obviously directed at children, but they can easily throw teenager and up content at kids and keep the money flowing.

The only way to truly comply with the law is to separate the content and properly invest in curated children's content. The law is violated equally whether the "child" is watching pewdiepie or baby shark. Youtube needs to do more to determine the age of the viewer watching the content and passing the buck onto the creator is just absurd. While I have immense respect for the FTC, DOJ, and our federal courts, they are vastly ignorant in the realms of Youtube and they have not done enough to ensure that Google complies with the laws of our great country.
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Only because RedTerrors said it, and because he's one of the few level-headed people on here - our camp has been testing for some time now and we're afraid that your beliefs are true. It is part of what is fueling my pessimistic attitude (which seems to frustrate many) and prompting me to recommend a change in niche in most of my posts on this forum (which is easier to do than explain all of this). The major view fluctuation since July is just yet another indicator (outside of the obvious openly communicated ones) that the golden era of the kids niche is over. I believe that Susan Wojcicki's comment on this having a significant business impact on kid creators coincides with purposeful and significant decisions made at YouTube which impact the algorithm, and are not in our favor.

We're afraid that the turbulence we are experiencing has a dual purpose:

- The first is to discourage kid creators from developing a million dollar enterprise based on kids content as has been done quite easily in many cases (in some cases at the cost of a normal livelihood for the children - which even many kid creators do not like the idea of). Why would they not want creators to feel confident that they can make money in the niche? We feel that there is going to be a shift, not a hard port to YT Kids as many are viably saying is impossible, but a very firm shove in that direction. How? You are all in the process of identifying your content as for kids or not for kids right as we speak. Are you not? YT Kids is highly curated, highly safe, not nearly as popular (for the reasons I have stated), and not nearly as monetized. In plain English, they're getting us ready to not expect much. This is is also part one on what is fueling my perspective on YT main not changing (no age gate, pay gate, or otherwise).

- Our speculation on the second purpose of the turbulence, and also influencing my perspective on YT main not changing is that there is an encouragement for us to produce COPPA compliant content above the age bar. There's is an obvious but dangerous benefit to behavioral advertising and walking the 13+ line. Melissa Hunter's argument only holds true for existing established channels who are trying to game the system, not for channels attempting a pivot or for those restarting from scratch. We think that they want us to follow the advertising - to follow where those views are going. That's a dangerous path, and we think only a temporary one. How is that legal you might say? How can YouTube sustain that methodology you might say?

We fear that they may not plan to. Just before things boil over and everyone is lawyered up, YT kids will get its promised facelift, an application process to become a part of the app will become available, a persistent notification will go up to download YT Kids (that will probably be widely ignored) on devices that are red flagging for "probably a kid on here" and we'll all be asked to be happy on our new desert island. Some people in the process might even get excited with the changes and think that they care about the niche. Natural patterns of traffic will still flow through YT main for those who choose to ignore the prompt to download YT Kids, and those users will be served 13+ content. Ludicrous you might say, but as many of you have stated, we don't REALLY know who is on that mobile device. And with this new dynamic, YT has even further exacted a reasonable effort to comply with COPPA.

We think that there's a relatively untraceable random distribution of what was once fairly distributed to us going to borderline 13+ channels and to the top well known channels - just distributed over more of them than before - imitating a loss (which makes the small guys feel like this is fair) on the most major of channels. We think that the fluctuations (the good moments) that many of you are experiencing is a residual sporadic distribution of traffic to a larger subset of relatively popular channels.

We think that identifying kids content is a precursor to somehow an even worse situation. Many are complaining about YouTube not being able to fairly determine what is and isn't kids content while not realizing that they themselves are doing it for YT as they speak. Decide to not manually classify and let the algorithm do it? Well get ready to consult that lawyer that YouTube has been talking about.

The site will remain as it was. The revenue loss will be minimal because of the not-so-gentle nudge to YT kids and the reconfiguration of the views to 13+. Anything residual is but a mere ding in the wallet of Google.

That's our speculation at least.......
 
NYT article

"To offset some of the expected losses, YouTube said it would funnel $100 million to creators of children’s content over the next three years. It said it would also heavily promote YouTube Kids, its child-focused app, to shift parents away from using the main YouTube app when allowing their children to watch videos. "

www.nytimes.com

Google Is Fined $170 Million for Violating Children’s Privacy on YouTube (Published 2019)

As part of a settlement, YouTube said it would also institute new privacy measures on children’s videos. Critics said the changes did not go far enough to protect children.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
 
ilikeswords64 said:
Only because RedTerrors said it, and because he's one of the few level-headed people on here - our camp has been testing for some time now and we're afraid that your beliefs are true. It is part of what is fueling my pessimistic attitude (which seems to frustrate many) and prompting me to recommend a change in niche in most of my posts on this forum (which is easier to do than explain all of this). The major view fluctuation since July is just yet another indicator (outside of the obvious openly communicated ones) that the golden era of the kids niche is over. I believe that Susan Wojcicki's comment on this having a significant business impact on kid creators coincides with purposeful and significant decisions made at YouTube which impact the algorithm, and are not in our favor.

We're afraid that the turbulence we are experiencing has a dual purpose:

- The first is to discourage kid creators from developing a million dollar enterprise based on kids content as has been done quite easily in many cases (in some cases at the cost of a normal livelihood for the children - which even many kid creators do not like the idea of). Why would they not want creators to feel confident that they can make money in the niche? We feel that there is going to be a shift, not a hard port to YT Kids as many are viably saying is impossible, but a very firm shove in that direction. How? You are all in the process of identifying your content as for kids or not for kids right as we speak. Are you not? YT Kids is highly curated, highly safe, not nearly as popular (for the reasons I have stated), and not nearly as monetized. In plain English, they're getting us ready to not expect much. This is is also part one on what is fueling my perspective on YT main not changing (no age gate, pay gate, or otherwise).

- Our speculation on the second purpose of the turbulence, and also influencing my perspective on YT main not changing is that there is an encouragement for us to produce COPPA compliant content above the age bar. There's is an obvious but dangerous benefit to behavioral advertising and walking the 13+ line. Melissa Hunter's argument only holds true for existing established channels who are trying to game the system, not for channels attempting a pivot or for those restarting from scratch. We think that they want us to follow the advertising - to follow where those views are going. That's a dangerous path, and we think only a temporary one. How is that legal you might say? How can YouTube sustain that methodology you might say?

We fear that they may not plan to. Just before things boil over and everyone is lawyered up, YT kids will get its promised facelift, an application process to become a part of the app will become available, a persistent notification will go up to download YT Kids (that will probably be widely ignored) on devices that are red flagging for "probably a kid on here" and we'll all be asked to be happy on our new desert island. Some people in the process might even get excited with the changes and think that they care about the niche. Natural patterns of traffic will still flow through YT main for those who choose to ignore the prompt to download YT Kids, and those users will be served 13+ content. Ludicrous you might say, but as many of you have stated, we don't REALLY know who is on that mobile device. And with this new dynamic, YT has even further exacted a reasonable effort to comply with COPPA.

We think that there's a relatively untraceable random distribution of what was once fairly distributed to us going to borderline 13+ channels and to the top well known channels - just distributed over more of them than before - imitating a loss (which makes the small guys feel like this is fair) on the most major of channels. We think that the fluctuations (the good moments) that many of you are experiencing is a residual sporadic distribution of traffic to a larger subset of relatively popular channels.

We think that identifying kids content is a precursor to somehow an even worse situation. Many are complaining about YouTube not being able to fairly determine what is and isn't kids content while not realizing that they themselves are doing it for YT as they speak. Decide to not manually classify and let the algorithm do it? Well get ready to consult that lawyer that YouTube has been talking about.

The site will remain as it was. The revenue loss will be minimal because of the not-so-gentle nudge to YT kids and the reconfiguration of the views to 13+. Anything residual is but a mere ding in the wallet of Google.

That's our speculation at least.......
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Completely agree.
 
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Redterrors said:
The only thing left is justice and justice we shall receive.
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What is justice in your opinion?

For me, justice must be fair and balanced in order for it to be Justice. I don't see a problem here with what YouTube did when it served ads to children. Even behavioral-based targeted ads. All ads are ultimately served based on behavioral analytics. You don't think Walt Disney invest hundreds of millions into child behavioral analytics to target children? Get real!

For what the FTC is doing to YT and Content Creators to be justice, the FTC must now shut down every other niche that targets children based on behavioral analytics. Goodbye Walt Disney World! Goodbye toy manufacturers. Goodbye, EVERYTHING targeted at children.

To those that keep clanging the Child Labor bell. Go jump in a lake. Unless you want to outlaw ALL child acting and involvements with competitive sports, you have no argument. If you truly believe that it is wrong for parents to force thier kids to work everyday making videos like a job, then I suggest we outlaw parents forcing kids to go to school for eight hours a day and do homework on the weekends, as CRUEL and UNUSUAL Slavery.

There is no JUSTICE here anywhere. No common sense either. The COPPA law originally only prohibited the collection of personally identifiable information on children like Names, Age, Address, Social Security numbers, etc. I agree with that. This whole Expanded Definition crap is idiocy and has nothing to do with protecting children's privacy.

At the end of the day, no matter how many people argue that children are MORE influenceable, it does not matter. CHILDREN DO NOT MAKE BUYING DECISIONS! Their PARENTS do! It does not matter how influenceable kids are, it is still their parent (guardian) that has to buy things for them and they are the ones who make the buy decision, not the kids.

I agree with protecting kids, but this ruling does not do that. It just unjustly targets innocent YT creators that are trying to earn a living using their talents, while completely ignoring the utter hypocrisy of going after content creators and not huge children's corporations like Disney, which have been doing the same thing since before any of us were BORN!!!!!!!!
 
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Jungle Explorer said:
What is justice in your opinion?

For me, justice must be fair and balanced in order for it to be Justice. I don't see a problem here with what YouTube did when it served ads to children. Even behavioral-based targeted ads. All ads are ultimately served based on behavioral analytics. You don't think Walt Disney invest hundreds of millions into child behavioral analytics to target children? Get real!

For what the FTC is doing to YT and Content Creators to be justice, the FTC must now shut down every other niche that targets children based on behavioral analytics. Goodbye Walt Disney World! Goodbye toy manufacturers. Goodbye, EVERYTHING targeted at children.

To those idiots that keep clanging the Child Labor bell. Go jump in a lake. Unless you want to outlaw ALL child acting and involvements with competitive sports, you have no argument.

There is no JUSTICE here anywhere. No common sense either. The COPPA law originally only prohibited the collection of personally identifiable information on children like Names, Age, Address, Social Security numbers, etc. I agree with that. This whole Expanded Definition crap is idiocy and has nothing to do with protecting children's privacy.

At the end of the day, no matter how many people argue that children are MORE influenceable, it does not matter. CHILDREN DO NOT MAKE BUYING DECISIONS! Their PARENTS do! It does not matter how influenceable kids are, it is still their parent (guardian) that has to buy things for them and they are the ones who make the buy decision, not the kids.

I agree with protecting kids, but this ruling does not do that. It just unjustly targets innocent YT creators that are trying to earn a living using their talents, while completely ignoring the utter hypocrisy of going after content creators and not huge children's corporations like Disney, which have been doing the same thing since before any of us were BORN!!!!!!!!
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Whether an investigation occurs or not, I just want an objective party to look at the facts. I am not advocating for any potential action unless an objective investigation produces evidence beyond speculation that certain actions are occurring. My personal opinion and frustration at Youtube's handling of the situation is irrelevant to the truth. Out of full disclosure, I admit that my speculation could be wrong and if so I will stand corrected. I also firmly believe that any investigation be devoid of any conflicts of interest. I used justice improperly by insinuating that justice can only be served based on a predetermined outcome. Everyone deserves due process of law and conclusions based on conjecture and speculation is not appropriate.

We have been fortunate to benefit from Youtube and it was a nice experience while it lasted. While I disagree with some policy implementations by Youtube, I should not hastily conclude nefarious intent and suggest criminal liability. Although I remain frustrated, I will wait for the facts.
 
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