Massive drop in views on kid channels

One would think the simple solution would be having a "Kids Tube" separate from youtube. Is this what the YouTube kids app is about?

I sometimes enjoy watching some of the cocomelon type channels with my 1 year old and yes they have lots of ads. We also use Netflix for kids.

I don't understand how any of this is supposed to work. Given that youtube started out being mostly adult content around 2005 without monetization and has now evolved into one big mess what does 2020 look like?

I have been out of the loop on this thread for a while and tried to make sense of some of what's going on. The only thing I've made sense of so far is from the Darrel Eves video saying this December is going to be the end for alot of channels.... Kids channel and non kids channels
 
IceDog said:
SAVE Family-Friendly Content on YouTube
chng.it

Sign the Petition

SAVE Family-Friendly Content on YouTube
chng.it chng.it

Hello

I just signed the YouTubers and Viewers UNITE Against FTC Regulation petition
We want to collect 50,000 signatures, and we really need your support.

Here you can learn more about this campaign and also sign the petition: http://chng.it/qMr2CgDcSY

Thank you!
Click to expand...


I signed it, but I think it is the wrong solution. I am starting my own campaign pushing for congress to pass the "Small Home Based Business Protection Act". This act will protect small home-based businesses that make less than 100K a year from having to comply with the same burdensome regulations and red tape that large multimillion corporations have to comply with, and will restrict fines levied against small home-based businesses to no more than 10% of their total annual net profits.

The idea that FTC is not shifting the burden on to small youtube creators to regulate which ads are displayed on their content is ridiculous and an extreme example of government overreach. That they would levy a fine fo $42K for every single video against a channel that makes a less than a $1,000 a month is nothing short of Communist Tyranny. These types of burdens some regulations and insane fines is just them putting the same regulations on the small home-based business as they do for large corporations. It does nothing but discourages entrepreneurship and creativity. This goes way beyond just what is happening here. I can't tell you how many times I have tried to start a new business, to only have the government step in and squash it with massive regulation and threats of fines that made it impossible to continue. Let give you some examples.

I once had a job doing in-home loan closings for home improvement loans. Banks would send me the loans and I would set up the appointments and go to the people's house and close the loans. The current law at the time only required that I be a notary public to be able to perform this function. About a year after I started my business, the State government changed the law and required that home improvement loans be closed in a Tile or Lawyers office. In one second, my whole business was destroyed and I was left jobless. I later went to college and studied to be a State Home Inspector. I passed the State exam and became a Home Inspector. It was really rough to start from scratch and I worked for peanuts and made $7k gross profits my first year in business. I scratch and worked my fingers to the bone to grow that business. I was just getting to a place where I was thinking of hiring a helper when the State passed a new law. This new law required that a home inspector carry E&O insurance. Previously all inspectors paid into a fund managed by the Stae Real Estate commission that provided liability insurance for all the inspectors. Each inspector paid $300 into the fund annually. When the State changed the law required each inspector to buy their own liability insurance from private insurance companies, I went looking for E&O (Errors and Omissions) insurance. The cheapest I could find was $5k a MONTH! My company was only earning 40k annually at the time, so I could not afford the insurance. I lost my license and my company once again because of government regulation that was geared to eliminate the little guy, and only leave room for big companies, like Title companies, Lawyers, and huge Inspection firms.

I could you a library full of examples of how government regulation has killed millions of legitimate small home-based startups, but you get the point. You guys see this as a potential loss of revenue on child content. This is way bigger than that. This is once again placing unreasonable burdensome regulation on the little guy, making it impossible for us to continue to function profitably. The FTC is holding the content creator liable for the interest-based ads that GOOGLE puts on their content!!!!! Does anyone else see how ridiculous this is? It is utter INSANITY! We have no control over the ads that Google places on our content. The only we can stop it, is by not letting Google place ads at all, which KILLS our business!!!

We don't need to beg the FTC to let continue like the starving people begging for food from the ship's captain in WaterWorld. We need Long Term Protection. Small home-based business startups should not immediately be saddled with the same regulations and massive fines that are placed on large multimillion-dollar corporations. We need to make sure they are free to work and grow in an environment that ENCOURAGES creativity and innovation, not punishes it with unrealistic burdensome regulations and the insane threats of life-destroying fines. We all need to fight to get congress to pass the "Small Home-Based Business Protection Act".
 
just Moto said:
One would think the simple solution would be having a "Kids Tube" separate from youtube. Is this what the YouTube kids app is about?

I sometimes enjoy watching some of the cocomelon type channels with my 1 year old and yes they have lots of ads. We also use Netflix for kids.

I don't understand how any of this is supposed to work. Given that youtube started out being mostly adult content around 2005 without monetization and has now evolved into one big mess what does 2020 look like?

I have been out of the loop on this thread for a while and tried to make sense of some of what's going on. The only thing I've made sense of so far is from the Darrel Eves video saying this December is going to be the end for alot of channels.... Kids channel and non kids channels
Click to expand...

Here is what going on to the best of my understanding in as simple and as short form as I can put it.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is an American Government organization that has the power to regulate all forms of communication in the United States. They passed a law called the "Child Online Privacy Protection Act" known as COPPA for short. This law requires that all internet companies not use personal information to deliver ads to children under the age of 13 years old. Google owns YouTube and Google has an algorithm called "Google Brain" that learns what people want and delivers ads to them based on what they have learned about that person. Google Brain delivers the ads on YouTube that make the money creators receive when they monetize a video. The FTC found that YouTube was allowing Google Brain to deliver "Targeted ads" to children on YouTube videos. The FTC fined YouTube 170 Million dollars for violating the COPPA law.

Okay, now YouTube is afraid. YouTube does not want the responsibility to make sure that children are not watching videos that have targeted ads, so now YouTube is passing this responsibility of making sure that kids are not being targeted on to the CREATORS. We, the Creators, are now responsible for making sure kids are not being targeted. How YouTube is going to do this is by providing video creators with two options to define each video as "Child-Directed" or Not Child-Directed. This will be the creator's choice. But there is a catch. If you choose "Child-Directed" YouTube will take all interest-based ads off the video. Interest-based ads make the overwhelming majority of the revenue creators get paid. Taking them off will basically be almost the same thing as demonetizing the video.

So, what happens if you choose the option of designating the video as "Not Child-Directed"? At this point, YOU assume the liability if interest-based ads are shown on the video. So if the FTC comes to YouTube to complain about your video, YouTube will just point them to you because you told YouTube that the video was not Chid-Directed. Then the FTC will come after you. YouTube has washed their hands of it by giving you the choice. If the FTC determines that children are watching your videos and YouTube showed them interest-based ads, the FTC will fine you $42,000 dollars for each and every video on your channel that they determine to be Child-Directed. This could amount to MILLIONS of dollars depending on how many videos you have that the FTC decides are "Child-Directed"

It is also very important to understand that the FTC does not care whether you made the video to be targeted to children. That is not what they define as Child-Directed. They define Child-Directed as any video that children might be attracted to watch, whether you made it for children or not.

This extremely serious and goes way beyond just protecting kids. Just listen to these words straight from the FTC and if you don't wet your pants, watch it again!

 
Little Big Kids TV said:
It's a shame everyone here isn't actively trying to help everyone else out. Instead they complain or insult others for their "greed" or because they're being hurt "more" since they aren't a much larger channel. If someone is trying to make a positive change for the community as a whole, we should all be backing it regardless of how "greedy" they may seem, what's good news for them SHOULD be good news for us as well.
Click to expand...
This is my last post for a while. I think that I am working people up (I don't know how I can help anyone else out of a situation that we can't really control, nor does this have anything to do with jealousy) but I find this situation so interesting. I'm trying to stay objective and unbiased and warn those in this niche of the obvious dangers that I see coming (especially long-term). Much of the petitioning is misdirected. The FTC enforces laws. The law was the same law before YouTube got sued and was the same law after. What changed? YouTube broke the law and expressed knowledge of preteens using their platform to Mattel and Hasbro. So many people are ignoring that, and are picking and choosing the points they want to make while not holistically looking at the situation. Why are you being throttled? Because YouTube is throttling you. Why are they throttling you? Because they are probably disinterested with your niche because of the situation. Who has not spoken publicly on the incident and their plans for now over a month? YouTube. Terrors, myself, and many others who feel the same way as you do at an emotional level are right on the same page with you guys with your concerns for parenting, the state of the niche, what will happen to kids content, etc. The points that I am raising are my distaste with the creators who have latched onto the pocket.watch's of the world - built by former executives of (greedy and now dissolved) MCN's who would rather see your child be a living breathing dollar bill. It is totally a relevant and valid point, and has stoked the flames in this niche to the suffering of many who have been around here for quite some time trying to do things right. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of the lack of educational content. Of the blurred lines between entertainment and education for kids. There's no effort here anymore. Creators try to get something rainbow in their thumbnail and then make sure their characters say that going to Carl's Jr. is what kids do for fun. Fred Rogers would absolutely not approve!

YouTube is powered by one of the most technologically advanced companies in SEM in the world. They practically invented it. They are immensely wealthy and can totally shift digital advertising as we know it by executing adjustments in the system. Can they find a solution? Absolutely. Do they seem to be interested in that? No. A mysterious 100M dollar fund and a clear message from the CEO that you will be impacted financially. Is Google keeping this division quiet? Sure seems like it. We got a clear signal from the FTC sessions that their stance on this matter is with the privacy advocates. It wasn't explicitly stated, but go watch the sessions - all of them please. Then tell me what you think. It turns this commenting phase into a joke, and they've done it before without action. It's a self-therapy session, and I'm certainly not going to just pat my fellow creators on the back and ignore an obvious sinking ship. Nor am I going to go yell at the FTC off of the starboard side. YouTube needs to allocate internal resources to resolving the issues around the kids niche, and most importantly, communicate them. There is very little actual factual information confirmed by channel managers or otherwise that we have to go off of. Do I hope I am wrong? Absolutely. You can hope too, but don't ridicule us for being level-headed due to your own emotions or impact on your family. I'm just the guy who made sure the lifeboats didn't have holes in them.
 
Jungle Explorer said:
Here is what going on to the best of my understanding in as simple and as short form as I can put it.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is an American Government organization that has the power to regulate all forms of communication in the United States. They passed a law called the "Child Online Privacy Protection Act" known as COPPA for short. This law requires that all internet companies not use personal information to deliver ads to children under the age of 13 years old. Google owns YouTube and Google has an algorithm called "Google Brain" that learns what people want and delivers ads to them based on what they have learned about that person. Google Brain delivers the ads on YouTube that make the money creators receive when they monetize a video. The FTC found that YouTube was allowing Google Brain to deliver "Targeted ads" to children on YouTube videos. The FTC fined YouTube 170 Million dollars for violating the COPPA law.

Okay, now YouTube is afraid. YouTube does not want the responsibility to make sure that children are not watching videos that have targeted ads, so now YouTube is passing this responsibility of making sure that kids are not being targeted on to the CREATORS. We, the Creators, are now responsible for making sure kids are not being targeted. How YouTube is going to do this is by providing video creators with two options to define each video as "Child-Directed" or Not Child-Directed. This will be the creator's choice. But there is a catch. If you choose "Child-Directed" YouTube will take all interest-based ads off the video. Interest-based ads make the overwhelming majority of the revenue creators get paid. Taking them off will basically be almost the same thing as demonetizing the video.

So, what happens if you choose the option of designating the video as "Not Child-Directed"? At this point, YOU assume the liability if interest-based ads are shown on the video. So if the FTC comes to YouTube to complain about your video, YouTube will just point them to you because you told YouTube that the video was not Chid-Directed. Then the FTC will come after you. YouTube has washed their hands of it by giving you the choice. If the FTC determines that children are watching your videos and YouTube showed them interest-based ads, the FTC will fine you $42,000 dollars for each and every video on your channel that they determine to be Child-Directed. This could amount to MILLIONS of dollars depending on how many videos you have that the FTC decides are "Child-Directed"

It is also very important to understand that the FTC does not care whether you made the video to be targeted to children. That is not what they define as Child-Directed. They define Child-Directed as any video that children might be attracted to watch, whether you made it for children or not.

This extremely serious and goes way beyond just protecting kids. Just listen to these words straight from the FTC and if you don't wet your pants, watch it again!

Click to expand...
This law will apply to US citizens. And if I am not a US citizen and do not live in the USA? How will they write me a fine?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top