YouTube policy change, ‘Made for Kids’

Not sure what to make of this, any legal types here who can tell me if the mandolin is ‘made for kids’? And what that even means?
Do we have to sign in or sign out?
Will YouTube go to what it was like in it’s first five years? Or will there be two YouTubes?

Hi Sunrise,
Important changes that may impact your monetisation and content discoverability are coming.
From today, all creators are required to tell us if their content is Made for Kids in order to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other applicable laws. To help you comply, we are introducing a new audience setting in YouTube Studio.
Depending on the amount of Made for Kids content on your channel, you can set your audience at either the channel level or the video level. For those who are setting it at the channel level, it is just one click.
Potential Audience Settings
These changes are required as part of a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and NY Attorney General, and will help you to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other applicable laws.
We know that these changes won't be easy for some creators, and that this required change is going to take some getting used to. But these are important steps to take to ensure compliance with the law.
Please read more below to understand your legal obligations and the impact that these choices may have on your channel.
What is changing?
From today, all creators are required to mark their content as Made for Kids or Not Made for Kids in YouTube Studio.
From January, we will limit the data that we collect on Made for Kids content to comply with the law. This means that we will disable personalised ads on this content (which affects revenue for creators making content for children), as well as certain features like comments, notifications and others. Note: You may see some small changes as we experiment and refine our systems over the next few months.
See a list of affected features here.
Why is this happening?
These changes are required as part of a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and NY Attorney General, and will help you to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other applicable laws.
Regardless of your location, we are required to ask you to set your videos as Made for Kids if they fall into that category. Please amend these settings as soon as possible.
We'll also use machine learning systems to help us find content that is clearly Made for Kids. But do not rely on our systems to set content for you – like all automated systems, they're not perfect.
If you don't set your content or if we detect error or abuse, we may set your audience for you. If you fail to set your content accurately, you may face compliance issues with the FTC or other authorities, and we may take action on your YouTube account.
What is Made for Kids content?
We cannot provide specific legal advice, but according to the FTC's guidance on COPPA, a video is child directed (which we call Made for Kids) if:
• It is directed to children as the primary audience (e.g. videos for young children).
• It is directed to children but children are a secondary audience (e.g. a cartoon video that primarily targets teenagers but is also intended for younger children).
Learn more about the factors that determine if your content is considered as Made for Kids here.
We know that this won't be easy for some creators, and that this required change is going to take some getting used to. While we cannot provide legal advice, we are committed to helping you through this transition.
You can learn more about your own obligations under The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the tools that we are building to support you here.
The YouTube Team

I don't think anybody knows what the consequences are and how it will be enforced at this stage -- Youtube are deliberately trying to push the responsibility for classifying the videos onto the uploader, and the legal responsibility in case of FTC fines with it.

Basically, as I understand there are two choices for mandolin music uploaders - Youtube will force you into choosing one of them:

1. Either you declare your channel as "not made for kids", in which case everything will remain as it is. However, if the FCC decide that kids are a "secondary audience", then they can in principle fine the uploader (not Youtube) for breach of COPPA. Nobody knows how the FCC will decide this.

2. Alternatively, you can declare your channel as "made for kids", in which case you definitely won't get sued by the FCC. However, this will disable all user channel subscriptions, reduce contextual Youtube recommendations and (for those that monetise video views, which I personally don't), there will be less money as Youtube won't be allowed to personalise ads shown to the viewer.

For now, I have set my channel to "not made for kids" as I don't want to lose my subscribers. However, I will monitor the situation and if it becomes clear that the FCC considers homemade music videos as "made for kids" (e.g. on the grounds that kids may want to learn the mandolin and look for instructional videos), I may need to change the setting.

Martin

It's not that big a deal as the vast majority of content won't fall into the kid's category.

If the show is something like "Sesame Street" that will be playing in a daycare facility with programming like learning the alphabet, etc., then it's specifically for kids and should be marked as such. Everything else falls into "family" and up.

I've done work for children's educational videos and for adult-themed theatricals and have both on my channel. My channel level is set to "let me choose" with the individual videos set to their appropriate settings.

YouTube is the second largest search engine so if nothing else this change will allow kids programming to be isolated and hopefully monitored to avoid abuse and theft like what has been going on.

I have just uploaded a video to the SAW group earlier today and, like Martin, I marked the video as NOT for children. It seems a way of passing the buck to the individual rather than the corporate body that is YouTube, and as someone who does not use the monetarisation options (not enough subscribers, but not interested in this anyway) I will not be affected by the loss of revenue that seems to be part of the new setup. Also, as Martin points out, we will probably have to wait and see how it all develops. My latest upload seems to have been uploaded without problems (so far).
Watch this space!

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Originally Posted by John Kelly

It seems a way of passing the buck to the individual rather than the corporate body that is YouTube.

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And herein lies the fundamental problem with "social media."

To put this in perspective (I've run ad agencies and edited publications in the old days) "media" (i.e. publications, radio, TV) sell advertising around "editorial" that is targeted to specific audience groups (who advertisers hope to sell to). Editorial is a cost of doing business - they have to pay creators and etc. - whereas the advertising is the revenue. Old-school media have to vet the editorial they offer whereas with social media anything goes (until they're forced to change like in this instance).

What social media has done is remove the cost of acquiring and managing "editorial" to focus exclusively on revenue. While nice-while-you-can-get-away-with-it, it has given them an unfair and unsustainable advantage that is driving traditional media out of business to everyone's detriment.

This is part of the "move fast and break things" culture that's destroying commerce. Prior to this tech wave viable and sustainable businesses developed and endured providing a balance to the various interest groups. These days it's all about destroying what was to replace it with something that doesn't work and isn't sustainable. Look at the taxi industry as an example - taxis have been running for years and have provided incomes to those that work in the biz and a service to those that need it whereas companies like Uber have never made a profit and project they never will make a profit while paying the drivers rates that don't allow them to work profitably and feed families.

It's crazy and YouTube is a big part of the problem. This current move is part of lawmakers attempts to [slowly] bring these new companies in line with market realities, albeit too little too late IMHO.

I just got a message from YouTube and the FCC . . . they have been monitoring my 30-second mandolin videos and demanded that I label them as 'Not Suitable For Listening'.

YouTube's policy sounds reasonable to me. The creator of a video knows whether they made it for kids or not, teenagers included. These videos are obvious to me.

I am afraid this whole thing will get so far from mandolinning as to be blocked. It really really needs to be discussed, I agree, but I am not sure it really really needs to be discussed here.

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Originally Posted by MikeZito

I just got a message from YouTube and the FCC . . . they have been monitoring my 30-second mandolin videos and demanded that I label them as 'Not Suitable For Listening'.

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That's too funny. Lol. I could appreciate seeing such a warning, though. I've seen a few videos of people showing off their instruments that sounded like cats scratching chalk boards. I've often wondered if the instrument manufacturers thought of sending out cease and desist letters because the videos no doubt tarnished their reputation and cost them sales. Haha.

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Originally Posted by MikeZito

I just got a message from YouTube and the FCC . . . they have been monitoring my 30-second mandolin videos and demanded that I label them as 'Not Suitable For Listening'.

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Its that "Late Night Trashy Mandolin Music" all over again. :))


FYI https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/t...Mandolin-Music

Im confused. You guys are saying you can make your channel MADE FOR or NOT MADE FOR KIDS. But I get the option when I upload. So far, I havent clicked either box and I have uploaded just fine. My stuff is not made for kids, its just guitar or music related. But I dont know if a kid is going to ever watch it, right? Very confused with this.

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Originally Posted by Verne Andru

It's not that big a deal as the vast majority of content won't fall into the kid's category.

If the show is something like "Sesame Street" that will be playing in a daycare facility with programming like learning the alphabet, etc., then it's specifically for kids and should be marked as such. Everything else falls into "family" and up.

I've done work for children's educational videos and for adult-themed theatricals and have both on my channel. My channel level is set to "let me choose" with the individual videos set to their appropriate settings.

YouTube is the second largest search engine so if nothing else this change will allow kids programming to be isolated and hopefully monitored to avoid abuse and theft like what has been going on.

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What is the abuse and theft that was happening with kid content?

Seems pretty simple. Do you aim your videos at kids? Is your intention to have kids as an audience? If not then it’s not for kids.

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Originally Posted by cap217

What is the abuse and theft that was happening with kid content?

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FWIK this issue came to a head because YT wasn't monitoring who was viewing what and ads etc. that were inappropriate were being shown to kids and some peeps were taking users (kids) info without consent from a parent or guardian and etc.

My channel has animation work I've done specifically for kids (children's educational videos) as well as animation I've done on adult-themed feature films. YT's algorithms just see it all as animation and I guess some of the adult stuff has ended up in kids streams simply because the system only sees animation as for kids.

While the changes don't have an impact on 99% of uploaders, this change allows me to set specific videos for-kids that are for them, and others not-for-kids in the hopes YT will keep those away from young minds, so for me the changes help making sure things are going where they should and if it screws up it's YT's fault, not mine.

The big losers are those with channels specifically targeting kids as I believe they will no longer qualify to have ads shown thereby losing their monetization capabilities.

Maybe this will help explain things. Here are 2 videos from my channel. Both are animated. One is specifically intended for an adult audience while the other is specifically intended for kids. See if you can figure which is which.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJa0...ature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bg6wXWOlNyc&feature=youtu.be

Here's another of my videos done specifically for kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi2s3dAsNkI&feature=youtu.be

While this one is benign, imagine if somebody did a spot in this style that encouraged kids to click a link on the page, which YT allows, that drains their parents bank account. YT doesn't know who's clicking links and there have been many cases of kids playing with parents devices that click things they shouldn't (to parents detriment).

By flagging videos as specifically for kids, YT can use that filter to determine what displays on their YT kids-only channel and disable any links in the descriptions/comments from being clickable. That's the sort of thing that's going on here. It's not about your mandolin videos.

I've been on YT since early days. It started as a very tech-focused solution to the really big problem (early low-bandwidth internet days) of how to get video working. It has now become a media/publishing company that has the luxury of getting their content provided for free. As such, they have no roots in the publishing side and no infrastructure to deal with those business complexities. As with many aspects of the "move fast and break things" mentality that has driven tech, it's taking legislation to force them to comply with the rules everybody else has had to all along. They are also very poor at communication, which only exacerbates their problems by alienating their user community. They claim a "partnership" approach, but in reality it's a very top-down driven business model.

The Mandolin Cafe is an excellent example of how to do it right. This place is essentially an electronic newsletter they monetize by selling advertising to their demographic (us). While they also get their content for free courtesy of us posting, they actively monitor what gets posted to ensure the quality of the content is consistent with the demographic they're selling. They provide an easy and friendly way for us to communicate with them and have built a solid community and business as a consequence proving there is a right way and contrary-wise.

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Originally Posted by cap217

Im confused. You guys are saying you can make your channel MADE FOR or NOT MADE FOR KIDS. But I get the option when I upload. So far, I havent clicked either box and I have uploaded just fine. My stuff is not made for kids, its just guitar or music related. But I dont know if a kid is going to ever watch it, right? Very confused with this.

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I should have said there are three options: you can either mark your entire channel "Made for kids" or "Not made for kids", or you can choose at each individual upload to allow you to have some content for kids and others not for kids. At the moment, Youtube say you must choose, but it looks like they're not yet enforcing it (probably because their new upload module is still in beta). They also say you must go through all your past uploads and classify them, but they're not yet enforcing that either. Marking your entire channel "Not made for kids" will mark all your past uploads accordingly, so it does it all in one step. You will find the setting in "Youtube Studio">"Settings">"Channel">"Advanced Settings" (yes, they haven't made it obvious).

I don't want to take up too much space here, but I should say that my understanding from the announcement and the background reading I've done is that the question of how to classify content is not quite as straightforward as as in the examples posted in this thread. This is because the FTC defines "kids" as everybody below age 13 and because it includes "general audience" content if it is likely to appeal to adults as well as kids. Youtube's official guidance is here: Link. Unfortunately, the key phrase is "You should also consider consulting a lawyer if you aren’t sure whether your content should be designated as made for kids." Because of the added threat of prosecution if you get it wrong, this has made some people online rather jumpy. It seems unlikely that the FTC would come after us poor mandolin music uploaders because 12-year olds may like the tunes, but the rules could do with being made much clearer.

Martin

PS: Also, Youtube's official video explaining the changes is here. To say that's it's unpopular is an understatement.

This is taken from Martin's link above and seems pretty clear to me.

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As the creator, you know your content best. If you intended to reach a kid audience, it’s likely that your video is made for kids. If you’re not sure about your audience, take a look at the features of your video - does it have actors, characters, activities, games, songs, or stories that kids are particularly attracted to? If so, your video may be directed to kids. The key is to balance all the COPPA specified factors that apply to this analysis. For example, the fact that a kid is featured in a video does not necessarily mean that the video is made for kids. You will have to look at all other attributes of the video like the intended audience, whether the video uses language that is intended for kids to understand, and the subject matter of the video (a medical video versus a play video).

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When you make a video you make it with intent and you know who your video is intended for or you wouldn't be doing it. If you are making videos for kids you know it. Like I said above, this isn't about children's content being mistakenly fed to adults, it's about monitoring and managing the content that's being put in front of children and for what reason. This is all about child protection so govern yourselves accordingly.

As with all things, time will tell how it plays out.

Thanks for spelling out where to find the choice. It was my first time going into YouTube Studio. Looks like they had it pre-set at Not Made For Kids, which was what I wanted.