YouTube channel owners: Is your content directed to children?

I think this mess (because it is a mess) is two fold. On one side FTC mistakenly deems content creators as "operators" of "websites" or "online services". This terminology is very important as it is the legal basis upon which the FTC may go after content creators. On the other side YouTube have managed to deal their penalty by accepting to "police" their content creators (as it can be clearly understood by carefully hearing what the FTC representative said in the press conference) by adding this new "made for kids" checkbox, and at the same time refuses to implement a gate age that would solve this whole mess at the root.

Also, the word "kids" do not exist in the legal parlance of the code nor the Rule set by FTC, they only mention "children" and they provide a definition for them: every person in the 0-12 ages. This is also to clarify some confusion that may arises from the concept of "minor age" and "children" as defined by this law.

So let's first address the FTC assumption that content creators are "websites" or "online services", remembering that what is relevant here is the collection of personal information from children without prior verifiable parent's consent.

So let's make just one rethoric question: do content creators really own their "channels"? Do they are able to verify parent's authorization and provide them the information about the use of the collected information? Do they can even access the collected data? Do they have the ability to make any change on their "website" apart what YouTube allows them to do? Of course no, no, no.

Here the FTC have attempted to charge a responsibility on the content creators' shoulders assuming something they are not. With the pretext content creators benefit bt earning a small, SMALL, share from what YouTube/Google earn exploiting their creativity, art and skills, FTC is mistakenly assuming they are "websites" or "online services" when they actually lack all the relevant power required to do things that could make them compliant (or non-compliant) with the law.

Content creators are just users, or at most suppliers as a storyteller authors would be for a publisher, while YouTube have the ultimate control of how, where, when, and at whom to serve its content (yeah, because you give to YT a worldwide unlimited non-exclusive license of your content when you upload on their platform, so as long as you do not remove your content they hold it in full control).

YouTube already have broken the law by tracking children without parent's consent, as we learned from the Civil Judgment and the attached Exhibits; so let's now suppose you label your content as "for kids", well, what tells you they won't break the law again? They say they turn off many features to avoid to track children, but is that for real? Are you in control to check that through your "website" they won't really collect data from children? Where is your power in doing so?

There is none. And remember the law is about collecting data from children without parental consent, not labeling your videos to be "made for kids". Under the current FTC's assumption you would be deemed liable even if you labeled your videos as "made for kids" if, despite this, YT would collect data from children.

Into this swamp YouTube is swimming to make business as usual by placing persistent identifiers (AKA cookies) to track users while handing over the liability to the content creators, with the complicity of the FTC it seems.

Now, let's have a moment to think about GDPR, is YT compliant with that Regulation too? If you are an EU resident, did you ever seen a notice that inform you what cookies are used, what data are collected, where, and the exact address of who is in charge to ask about your data and to exercise your rights under the provisions of the GDPR?

(It is a genuine question, I did not check.)

> Hm, good question. COPPA is pretty old so I'm wondering if "digital consensus by creating the account" is good enough or if you would had to send some more formal document (letter, fax with signature).

I would doubt the need for a physical artifact—I mean, even the IRS accepts digital returns.

They can do it, Our g-suite side of YT lets me assign users that can approve videos or channels for the org.

It's useless because once you log into YT you can't make playlists or I think subscribe without making a channel, by default that's first name/last name. even if I could I can't stop them uploading content. So the tiny org proofing tools that are there I can't use anyway.

I swear YT don't even use their own product.

Because every company ever (especially software companies) are all about making moneys and employing 1000s of new employees to curate contents isn't very profitable. They will try to automate everything even if it doesn't work because they know this is the future. Until we have perfected the art, we are stuck with this ridiculous misjudgement by the algorithm because its really, really, dumb.

Even if they do hire actual real human, they hire them as cheap labors, not as legitimate jobs (see Facebook)