Thoughts on the adpocalypse 2020?

[MarkRodriguez2012]

I read that there were three other Child protection acts that were deemed unconstitutional and this one now probably is as well. At least I hope. I also feel like the courts don't have the time for this either. Imagine if 20,000 youtubers got fined sent to court etc all in the same day lol

True but where is this money coming from. I, for one, cannot randomly afford a lawyer, and I bet you the vast majority of those 20,000 can't either. Plus a lawyer will probably run (or laugh) if you're telling them you're planning to go after Google and the FTC.

 

[Jungle Explorer]

so if I have no ads whatsoever I'm fine? What if I have no ads and set my videos to non kids? Some guy over on legal advice subreddit says that what they mean by kids it anywhere from 4 and up. that doesn't make since anyone under 13 can't use youtube correct or am I wrong?

The issue is now, that you don't have a choice anymore. You can mark your videos whatever you want, but the YouTube system is still gonna look at it and classify it. Also, the FTC is now going after content creators for not marking their content appropriately, even there is no person on earth that can define what appropriate is in regards to COPPA. So, essentially, the "New" crime in the eyes of the FTC is, not marking your video appropriately. Failure to classify your videos appropriately, is now a violation of COPPA, REGARDLESS of whether YT plays ads on them or not.

Confused yet? Don't feel bad. Everyone is. The only thing for certain is that there is nothing for certain.

 

[Jungle Explorer]

True but where is this money coming from. I, for one, cannot randomly afford a lawyer, and I bet you the vast majority of those 20,000 can't either. Plus a lawyer will probably run (or laugh) if you're telling them you're planning to go after Google and the FTC.

LOL! A lawyer will laugh, but still take your $500 an hour to tell you that they have no clue, just in fancier words.

 

[Jungle Explorer]

deleted

 

[offbeatbryce]

The issue is now, that you don't have a choice anymore. You can mark your videos whatever you want, but the YouTube system is still gonna look at it and classify it. Also, the FTC is now going after content creators for not marking their content appropriately, even there is no person on earth that can define what appropriate is in regards to COPPA. So, essentially, the "New" crime in the eyes of the FTC is, not marking your video appropriately. Failure to classify your videos appropriately, is now a violation of COPPA, REGARDLESS of whether YT plays ads on them or not.

Confused yet? Don't feel bad. Everyone is. The only thing for certain is that there is nothing for certain.

I honestly don't think this will work. It's going to fail and the government will realize they can't fine the number they think they can.

 

[Jungle Explorer]

I honestly don't think this will work. It's going to fail and the government will realize they can't fine the number they think they can.

I agree. I watched a video by a lawyer and he said something really powerful, that I think will be the downfall of this ruling. It boils down to the term, "Appealing to kids". He said that what this amounts to creating a guidelines based on the feelings of a third party. This cannot be used as a standard, because nobody can know what the feelings of a third party are.

Essentially, the FTC has told use to mark videos as For Kids, or Not For Kids, based on standard that some kids, out of tens of millions of kids, none of which we know personally, might find our content appealing. It's making a standard based on a fluctuating intangible that we have no access to.

So, what the FTC needs to do is ask the Kids what they find appealing. Since the kids are the standard, they are the only ones that can tell us what they find appealing or not.

I believe now more than ever that this will quickly fail in court.

 

[offbeatbryce]

exactly. Also I just found this. https://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_Am8.html this isn't the whole text of it but this seems like COPPA along with YouTube is against the 8th amendment I'm no lawyer or have studied the constitution fully but perhaps the fines the FTC are talking about goes against the 8th amendment. Could be wrong but just something I noticed

 

[Smartie]

Quoted from my post earlier in this thread.

"
Here is the issue guys. It has nothing to do with WHY you made the video or WHO your target audience is. The rule applies to all content that is "Attractive or Appealing" to kids up to the age of 13 years old. The only question you have to ask yourself is,

"Will kids up to the age of 13 be attracted to my video (content)?"

If the answer to the above question is, YES!, then you had better mark that video as kid's content. This is not something you want to mess with guys. A single mistake can cost you a $42,530 fine per video. There is no video that makes enough money to make it worth taking a risk of that kind of fine to keep it marked as "Not for kids".

But there is another problem. Marking videos as For Kids, that is not for kids, could also get you in trouble. Here is why. If you mark a video that is not for kids, as being for kids, YT will now start recommending that video on YouTube kids. So kids will start seeing it in their suggested videos. If that video contains "Objectionable Content" parents are going to be infuriated that this kind of content is on YouTube Kids, and report your channel. This could get your video banned, and if it happens enough, your channel deleted.

Guys, there are no CLEAR answers as to what to do. Not even lawyers can help you with this one because nothing is clear about anything. It's a "You're screwed if you do, and you're screwed if you don't" situation. The best you can do is try to just be honest with yourself and do your best.

At the end of the day, the only people that are serious danger are channels that make "Family Friendly" content. People that make mature content and those that make kids content have a clear path to follow, but people that make Family Friendly content are really screwed here, and YouTube has become a very dangerous place for them. "

So what happens when you mark all your content as "not for kids"? when it's acutally all for adults. I'm just hearing this new rule now and don't know whats going on.

 

[MarkRodriguez2012]

So what happens when you mark all your content as "not for kids"? when it's acutally all for adults. I'm just hearing this new rule now and don't know whats going on.

Um.... Not for kids is the same as actually for adults. If your stuff is like, politics, lectures, modern day relationship advice, idk whatever kids would consider boring, you're good. It's you're reviewing games, cartoons or movies with say... Batman that might get a kids attention, then you run the risk of the FTC thinking it's a kids channel and you're trying to pull a fast one.

 

[Min/Max Munchking]

Personally, I don't even care about ad revenue, I had Patreon since December 2018 and even though I had less than 1k subs at the time, it quickly shot to a couple hundred bucks a month. Still, I enabled ads 3-4 days ago after first hearing about this "commercially unviable" nonsense. Nobody can convince me that ads don't hurt small channels' growth in the long run. They force viewers to wait and jump through more hoops just to get to the actual content of the video. This definitely increases the bounce rate because out of 1000 people, at least a few would get p****d off and leave the video immediately after seeing the same ad for the 17th time in the past 10-60 minutes of their YT rabbit hole session.

I haven't noticed any significant changes after enabling ads other than the recent weirdness with YT removing dozens, hundreds of my real-time views. I don't do midrolls - just the beginning and end ads, and I unchecked Non-skippable ads - I don't want to force my viewers to sit through the ad for more than 5 seconds.

However, the biggest issue with COPPA is that not only do you lose ads if you get tagged as "child appealing" channel, you lose comments and other useful community-building features and get removed from the algorithm completely. Effectively, the channel doesn't exist any more, even though it's still technically active. You can't be found via search, via recommendations and suggestions - that's the real problem, not the loss of ads. At least for small channels like mine.

I just posted a poll on my Community tab. YT reports that 0.1% of my viewers are underage. Even though the sample size is low, my poll says otherwise

2019-11-21_1925

Shared from Screencast.com

www.screencast.com

I marked all my vids as Not-for kids. I make D&D theorycrafting content that's clearly beyond kids interests and even their capability to understand wtf I'm talking about. However, I fear if my channel keeps growing and gets to a point YT automated tools and bots review it, due to the fact how faulty machine learning and narrow-AI still is, I might actually get into trouble.
I highly doubt actual people, officials in FTC will be reviewing these automated-flags. Instead, they'll just rely on them and issue penalties.

Even though I'm from EU and not a US citizen, never been to US, I know how US government likes to throw their weight around internationally. Heck, just a few years ago, FBI/CIA joint operation went after an underground group of hackers that operated from the city just a few hundred kilometers away from where I live. Crime? They gained access to some bank's database and unknowingly stole money from a high-ranked US government official. Talk about bad luck...