YouTube Is About to Change their Privacy Rules for Kids’ Content (For Better or Worse)
For many kids, YouTube has replaced the TV as their main source of entertainment. They can spend hours watching videos and this has resulted in a massive success for channels that make content specifically tailored for them.
Take “Ryan Toys Review” for example, now known as “Ryan’s World”, a channel where an 8-year-old kid showcases different kinds of toys and shares vlogs along with his parents. This channel has over 20 million subscribers and is among the top-earning creators on the entire platform. But apparently things are about to change for kids' content on YouTube.
Back in September, YouTube had to pay a whopping $170 million fine to the FTC for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Here’s the thing, all those YouTube videos directed to kids were making so much money because they contained personalized ads and if that seems kind of fishy, well it is. Collecting the online data of kids who don’t know better is actually illegal and it has been for quite some time.
Given the situation, YouTube had to take some action and they recently announced their plan. A plan that has caused outrage among the vast majority of content creators.
Is this the End for Kids’ Content on YouTube?
Not really, at least not directly. Starting in January 2020, every channel must state if their videos are made for kids or not. If they are, they will not receive personalized ads and will lose access to relevant features like comments and notifications. This will avoid more issues with the law as kids’ data will no longer be collected, however, it will affect creators by taking away their visibility on the platform.
Furthermore, this also will affect their earnings, reducing their monthly income significantly because personalized ads are the ones that pay the most. If you add that to the decrease of views that these channels are expecting, you could understand why so many YouTubers are getting discouraged to keep making kid-friendly content.
Then why don’t they mark their videos as “not made for kids”? Problem solved, right? That won’t be the case because YouTube will use an algorithm to find out if a video is being misplaced in the wrong category and creators who are found guilty could get fined with up to $42,000 per video.
At the end of the day, this is a good thing for the privacy of children online, however, it might not have been the best way to handle the situation for all parties involved. Especially because this is YouTube’s fault, to begin with, and it seems that the creators have to deal with all the consequences.
Leaving that behind, this is not the only cause of concern among the YouTube community. It seems that this regulation has a pretty vague description of what counts as “made for kids” content. According to the FTC’s guidance on COPPA, a video is child-directed if:
- Children are the primary audience based on the factors described below.
- Children are not the primary audience, but the video is still directed to children based on the factors below.
When deciding whether or not your channel or video is made for kids, you should consider various factors, including:
- The subject matter of the video (e.g. educational content for preschoolers).
- Whether children are your intended or actual audience for the video.
- Whether the video includes child actors or models.
- Whether the video includes characters, celebrities, or toys that appeal to children, including animated characters or cartoon figures.
- Whether the language of the video is intended for children to understand.
- Whether the video includes activities that appeal to children, such as play-acting, simple songs or games, or early education.
- Whether the video includes songs, stories, or poems for children.
- Any other information you may have to help determine your video’s audience, like empirical evidence of the video’s audience.
In some cases, child-directed videos seem pretty obvious to notice like the case of “Ryan Toys Review” or nursery rhymes, just to name a few. But what happens when a video falls right in the middle? What if the target audience isn’t kids, but it could be enjoyed by them as there’s a lot of content that is suited for all ages? What if a video uses cartoon characters that kids may recognize, but it also uses foul language? Will this be taken into consideration? All we can do is wait and see.
There are some loopholes that are still unclear, which has made it difficult for creators to classify their videos and since the announcement was made, it seems like creating kids’ content on YouTube will no longer be a sustainable job.
How to Protect Kids from Data Collection
I think we all can agree that collecting data from children is an unethical practice that should be regulated. There are definitely good intentions behind this change on YouTube, but there’s one problem that might compromise their online safety after all.
If kids’ content will no longer earn revenue from personalized ads, creators will actively try to get more brand deals inside their videos. As a result, videos that are directed to kids will contain more product placement and despite stating the nature of those brand deals, younger kids are not prepared to tell the difference between the real video and the publicity.
On the other hand, if all the videos made for kids will no longer be recommended by YouTube to find a new audience, they might have fewer options for what to watch online. This means that there’s a higher chance of them finding more adult content that does contain personalized ads. They don’t need a YouTube account to watch videos and if they do, they can just lie about their age. That’s what I used to do as a kid anyway.
So what can parents do to protect their children from data collection? Here are a few things!
First, there’s an app called YouTube Kids, which only filters videos that are family-friendly. Parents can personally block and approve any content that their kids are watching. However, kids could still find a way to access the regular YouTube page if their parents are not paying close attention.
That’s where Online.io comes in. Our extension will block all kinds of ads and tracking software to ensure that your kids’ data is not being targeted and collected by big companies. It works on YouTube and any other website you could imagine. This is the best way to keep them safe on the Internet, wherever they go, and the best thing is that it’s completely free.
Are you onboard? Join Online and download the ad-blocking extension for Chrome and Mozilla.
