Why I think the AgeGate is great.

[Niels Cornelissen]

Hello everyone!

For all of you who don't know about the AgeGate yet: it is a program that YouTube is testing, which appearantly caused the unsub-bug. The idea of the program is that Youtube labels certain videos as 'restricted', which can not be viewed when the viewer is browsing in 'restriction mode'. This mode is optional and can be toggled on and off at will, unless it is locked on purpose (by parents, for example).

A lot of creators have been complaining about this function, because it makes it harder for their videos and their channels to be found on Youtube. I personally think AgeGate is a great initiative though. It does indeed hide certain videos from certain users, which can significantly shrink the potential audience of a channel. What people seem to forget about though, is that this mode needs to be manually turned on and is not on by default.

A good thing it brings along too, aside better viewer discretion, is that I think it shifts responsibility. In the past, creators have often been accused of 'influencing' their viewers in a bad way. A solid argument against that accusation is that parents are responsible for what their children watch. What AgeGate does, is give parents the opportunity to control what their children watch. And because of that, Youtubers need to worry less about their content and how they might (accidentally) influence children, because now the parents have a viable way to control their childrens access.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this upcoming function!

~Niels

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

I don't like it because if you can just turn on a feature, then parents will be less inclined to actually pay attention to what their child is watching. YouTube should not be a babysitter. But on the other hand, so any parents use it as a babysitter and they already don't pay attention, so it will at least make YouTube better for this kids. So it's hard to decide.

 

[GucciCarry]

I think it's completely useless just like 85% of the things they've added in the past year have been.

 

[Niels Cornelissen]

I don't like it because if you can just turn on a feature, then parents will be less inclined to actually pay attention to what their child is watching. YouTube should not be a babysitter. But on the other hand, so any parents use it as a babysitter and they already don't pay attention, so it will at least make YouTube better for this kids. So it's hard to decide.

I think you strike a very good point there, as it might indeed cause parents to pay even less attention to what their children watch. Hadn't thought of that yet!

I think it's completely useless just like 85% of the things they've added in the past year have been.

For someone on a forum centered around YouTube, you don't seem to like the platform so much xD

 

[Bethanyjbee]

If its anything like what a lot of the Youtubers I follow at the moment have found - it's restricting a lot of videos that have no need at all to be restricted and is affecting a lot of people wrongly. Also I agree with above comments that YouTube shouldn't have to babysit peoples children for them. Parents should be aware of what their children are watching no matter what and thats their job to do so, not YouTube's.

 

[ItsBecky]

I have a friend who does LGBT videos and apparently this feature is causing havoc amongst that community as it blocks all their videos, so they cant get their videos out there to viewers just because they are talking about LGBT subjects, and a lot of gaming videos are affected too, but I keep reminding people it does need to be turned on first, however I don't understand why LGBT videos are being restricted that's pretty bad on youtubes part

 

[KatyAdelson]

They used to already have age-restricted content. Did that go away at some point? I remember running into a warning that went something like "You're not 18 yet, and therefore you cannot view this restricted video." That must have been over 10 years ago, so I'm sure things could have changed since then. It might be nice if they broke things out into age brackets, but I don't know who would decide the appropriate audience ages. I remember running into that warning a lot on videos that were perfectly fine, and people were abusing the "flag video for mature audiences only" button.

It would be nice to be able to toggle the restrictions off! I remember getting frustrated at it lol.

 

[TylersMagic]

They used to already have age-restricted content. Did that go away at some point?

I think it still exists. I thought that is what AgeGate was. You used to be able to turn it on in advanced settings and if you weren't logged in a message would pop up saying "the creator of this video enabled AgeGate video restrictions, please sign in to continue" or something like that. Unless I'm mis-remembering the name of what it was/is called.

 

[Niels Cornelissen]

They used to already have age-restricted content. Did that go away at some point? I remember running into a warning that went something like "You're not 18 yet, and therefore you cannot view this restricted video." That must have been over 10 years ago, so I'm sure things could have changed since then. It might be nice if they broke things out into age brackets, but I don't know who would decide the appropriate audience ages. I remember running into that warning a lot on videos that were perfectly fine, and people were abusing the "flag video for mature audiences only" button.

It would be nice to be able to toggle the restrictions off! I remember getting frustrated at it lol.

I'm pretty sure AgeGate is an expansion of the already existing age-restricted content.

 

[Crown]

It's an interesting discussion but what is the link between "AgeGate" and this alleged "unsub bug" ? Have YouTube made an announcement about this? Could you link to a source please? I'd be interested in reading it, thanks.