YouTube says it will crack down on bizarre videos targeting children

pioneer1

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Hi all,

What is your take on the following with kids channels?

Videos that violate policy will now be age restricted


"Earlier this week, a report in The New York Times and a blog post on Medium drew a lot of attention to a world of strange and sometimes disturbing videos on YouTube aimed at young children. The genre, which we reported on in February of this year, makes use of popular characters from family-friendly entertainment, but it’s often created with little care, and can quickly stray from innocent themes to scenes of violence or sexuality.

In August of this year, YouTube announced that it would no longer allow creators to monetize videos which “made inappropriate use of family friendly characters.” Today it’s taking another step to try and police this genre.

“We’re in the process of implementing a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged,” said Juniper Downs, YouTube’s director of policy. “Age-restricted content is automatically not allowed in YouTube Kids.” YouTube says that it’s been formulating this new policy for a while, and that it’s not rolling it out in direct response to the recent coverage."
 
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pioneer1

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So its the end for Elsa X Spiderman X Joker videos?
Yes, Looks like it. Not just those superhero / elsa frozen type videos. But any crude type videos like poop, farting etc.

Parents will flag videos and videos / channels will be age restricted.

So it looks like revenue will drop for kids genre channels. Unless it is clean family friendly content.
 
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Switchbox

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Or, you know, don't click on those kinds of videos if you are easily offended.
I feel like YouTube is hindering creative freedom more and more as the years pass.
 
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MentallyGames

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The only part I don't get is why it is being demonetized. I don't think most content creators purposely use family friendly characters to lure in kids to watch their content, so no need to demonetize the entire genre of videos. I do agree with them that age restriction is logical, as you can argue that channels that make inappropriate use of family friendly characters are not kid friendly to begin with.
 

pioneer1

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Or, you know, don't click on those kinds of videos if you are easily offended.
I feel like YouTube is hindering creative freedom more and more as the years pass.
Yes I agree, creative freedom is important ...

News channels were censored / creative freedom hindered / opinion ... games channels ... weapons channels etc.

Now they clamping down on kids channels. Interesting indeed. What next?[DOUBLEPOST=1510566050,1510563273][/DOUBLEPOST]
The only part I don't get is why it is being demonetized. I don't think most content creators purposely use family friendly characters to lure in kids to watch their content, so no need to demonetize the entire genre of videos. I do agree with them that age restriction is logical, as you can argue that channels that make inappropriate use of family friendly characters are not kid friendly to begin with.
True, not all kids channels are bad.

But it looks like the whole Youtube ecosystem is getting more tighter and regulated. Other genres too like gaming, gun channels, LBGT channels etc.
 

Lightsen

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They need to be clear on what their guidelines for "violence" are.
I make cartoons that feature pokemon characters, with lots of tom & jerry style slapstick. is that violent? I wouldn't go as far to say they are unsuitable for children, but of course, YouTube uses algorithms not people, so what's it going to look for?
 

EVO

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Is this about the dodgy Peppa Pig videos that claimed to be the real innocent ones but turned out to be evil videos? Thankfully I /my children (that I know of) have not come across these.
They do watch Mr Bean videos on YT and they are standard videos but not standard thumbnails. They look like the real deal but the thumbnail could be Mr Bean looking like he is going to kill / have sex etc. Pretty wrong for my children to see but thankfully standard/real cartoon proceeds.
 

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Or, you know, don't click on those kinds of videos if you are easily offended.
I feel like YouTube is hindering creative freedom more and more as the years pass.
As much as I agree with that, this is one of the few times I'm actually on YouTube's side. The reason why they had to come out with this was because of these sexual videos appearing on the YouTube Kids App. Kids were being exposed to Spiderman and Elsa getting it on, and parents were, understandably, upset about that. They're age-restricting it because it's sexual. That's nothing new. They've age-restricted Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life and other sexual videos for a while now. Spiderman x Elsa was able to avoid that because they market it like it's for kids.

That being said, though, YouTube actually even acknowledged using family friendly characters for edgy content. To quote an article I read about this " It doesn’t want to outright ban the use of family-friendly characters by creators who aren’t the original copyright holders across all of YouTube. There is a place, the company is arguing, for satire about Peppa Pig drinking bleach, however distasteful you might find it. But YouTube is acknowledging that YouTube Kids requires even more moderation."

This specific instance is actually a good thing for YouTube, in my honest opinion. But they ARE definitely hindering creative freedom in general, and I've noticed that firsthand.
 

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As much as I agree with that, this is one of the few times I'm actually on YouTube's side. The reason why they had to come out with this was because of these sexual videos appearing on the YouTube Kids App. Kids were being exposed to Spiderman and Elsa getting it on, and parents were, understandably, upset about that. They're age-restricting it because it's sexual. That's nothing new. They've age-restricted Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life and other sexual videos for a while now. Spiderman x Elsa was able to avoid that because they market it like it's for kids.

That being said, though, YouTube actually even acknowledged using family friendly characters for edgy content. To quote an article I read about this " It doesn’t want to outright ban the use of family-friendly characters by creators who aren’t the original copyright holders across all of YouTube. There is a place, the company is arguing, for satire about Peppa Pig drinking bleach, however distasteful you might find it. But YouTube is acknowledging that YouTube Kids requires even more moderation."

This specific instance is actually a good thing for YouTube, in my honest opinion. But they ARE definitely hindering creative freedom in general, and I've noticed that firsthand.
While I sort of agree with you on that one ,and doing that for Youtube kids. But , Youtube as of late was doing some questionable things (mainly with demonetization ) and for me it seems that this thing gives them ability to demonize most parody videos that use characters from kids shows. Heck I saw some nice Pokemon animations where there was blood in it - By following that logic it should be demonetized.

TL;DR: I agree on using it on YT kids , but not on normal YT.