Saturday, November 16, 2019

FTC's COPPA with YouTube

Back in September, YouTube was fined for gathering information/data on kids videos which sort of violated Children's Online Privacy Protection Act or COPPA and as a result of the violation, they came up with a controversial strategy that will fine the content creators of $42,000 per video that is found to be in violation of that law. From this new strategy, you must figure out which video is kid-friendly and which one's not and if your channel has been on-going for a decade with hundreds/thousands of videos, it's going to be a challenge determining which. The thing is, most of my contents are not aimed towards kids whatsoever. I make them for teens or even adults although people my age are probably interested in viewing my stuff as proven by the demographics from my account. The viewers are mostly adults ranging from 18-34 years of age but even then, there's no way to tell if the kids have seen your videos or not in addition to teenagers and adults. Also, none of my videos are profitable as they are posted for entertainment.
If your channel is kids-friendly target audience-wise, you're going to be on the serious lookout for this change. I have a feeling that various Japanese YouTubers' channels are going to fall under that category. I don't know if this is the same for Japanese Virtual YouTubers as well but I guess that not all videos are probably kid-friendly in the first place. Some of the Japanese Virtual YouTubers won't be kid-friendly for sure as if they appeal to the nerds or some sort.
6 years ago, the COPPA was amended to expand the definition of "operators" to include content creators who publish content to ad-assisting platforms like YouTube although I don't know if this applies to other sites that are like YouTube as well like Nico Nico Douga or Bilibili for instance, or even social media websites as they have ads pasted somewhere. For six years, the enforcement didn't happen after the amendment. However, the notifications on YouTube website have been there even for content creators not from US. We have like until January next year before the actions against violating content creators will be taken. If the video is declared kid-friendly like it's Child-Directed via the check box, it won't be monetized and have personalized ads. Furthermore, comments will be disabled automatically like it already happened on such contents.
For gaming channels, it is self-explanatory to determine which game which kid-friendly or not that you may as well set the videos to match the ESRB ratings or something. Most of fighting games won't seem kid-friendly of course and the same goes for many AAA games, mostly TPS or FPS games but what about the games on mobile? Are there mobile games that don't seem kid-friendly from a closer look at the contents? I also do the unofficial music arrangement/remix stuff and I sort of know the game origins but do I probably need to set certain videos to be kid-friendly like that?
There's even the petition someone came up with at change.org for you to sign through this link: https://www.change.org/p/youtubers-and-viewers-unite-against-ftc-regulation.
Another interesting source to take a look at:
https://www.tubefilter.com/2019/11/05/youtube-coppa-adpocalypse-ftc-rules-demonetizing-child-directed/