Why YouTube’s New Children’s Content Labeling System Is a Really Big Deal

The recent landmark settlement between YouTube and the FTC has resulted in a big step toward children’s rights and data privacy protection: In compliance with the COPPA law (Child Online Privacy & Protection Act), YouTube is finally requiring that videos that appeal to children be labeled as such by the videos’ creators, starting in January 2020.

And taking it two steps further — when a video is labeled as appealing to children, YouTube will turn off: 1. data collection (which stores information like children’s viewing history and personally identifying device information), and 2. personalized ads that are served to them based on algorithms and data collection.

The labeling sounds pretty evident, right? Like, a pretty common-sense thing that should’ve been done years ago? The most obvious is the benefit to parents — they’ll more easily be able to identify video content that’s appropriate for their children to view.

But the underlying reason for the new labeling is the result of data privacy violations and the recent agreement between YouTube and the FTC. YouTube was fined $170 million for violating the COPPA law, which forbids companies from collecting data from children under the age of 13 without explicit consent from their parents. YouTube has been doing this all along — COPPA is nearly impossible to enforce on modern-day online content distribution platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.

In addition to the fine, YouTube was also required to “develop, implement, and maintain a system for Channel Owners to designate whether their Content on the YouTube Service is directed to Children.”

Here’s what these new changes mean on a below-the-surface level to parents, children, video creators and advertisers:

For children: Score. Children have the right to view media without being served content and ads based on their digital footprint or record of their past, much of which is not under their control. Within the new requirements, no data will be collected when children view child-labeled videos. And the videos will contain advertising based on the video content itself — not served according to the viewer’s history.

For parents: It’s a victory. Finally the responsibility shifts from 100% parents for gatekeeping their children’s privacy as well as content and ad consumption, to some shared accountability with video creators and distributor YouTube.

Despite YouTube’s efforts to combat some of these concerns in the past, and provide parent controls and preferences on YouTube Kids, inappropriate content has still been an issue. Besides that, YouTubeKids was created for 8 year olds, with most of the content skewing younger. Tweens turn to the regular YouTube, and it has become part of their culture and society.

For video creators: Less money, more burden. Yes, it means lower ad revenue for YouTube and video creators. The new requirements actually place a lot of burden on creators, and there’s confusion over whether or not these new mandates apply to them, especially if they publish content that appeals to a variety of ages.

According to The Verge’s recent article, a number of other YouTube features are also impossible without personalized data. In particular, “child-directed videos will no longer include a comments section, click-through info cards, end screens, notification functions, and the community tab, all powerful tools for driving viewers back to a channel.“

Consequences for not labeling a video accurately could be severe. Under COPPA, “the FTC is entitled to seek $42,000 for each mislabeled video, which means monetary damages could quickly grow to a staggering scale.”

For advertisers: Less targeting. Most will still be able to advertise within children’s videos, but the ads will not be as targeted because there will be less data and detailed info to work with. The possible outcome is less effective ads, which logic might say can have a negative impact on their business.

COPPA is a modern day Children’s Television Act of sorts, which was passed in the 1990 and restricted advertising to minors. Proposed updates to the COPPA law and more requirements by the FTC are slowly coming.