YouTube carries content styles from all walks of life, appealing to a huge variety of audiences. This enables the demographic to be spread across a huge spectrum and understandably gives a reason why YouTube is so big. However, both Google and YouTube have been facing some recent criticism, and this comes as a result of a system new to YouTube known as COPPA.
What Is COPPA? How Will It Apply To YouTube?
COPPA stands for Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. It initially began in 1998, where it restricted online services from collecting the personal information of children under age 13 without parental permission. Originally, the goal was to prevent children from sharing personal data that could subject them to online predators or danger. In 2013, it was re-amended to better define its purpose, but it had never applied to YouTube Creators. Now, beginning on January 1st, 2020, COPPA will be applied to YouTube, and this comes with some drastic effects.
YouTube’s COPPA came as a result of the U.S Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and their concerns about young viewers and inappropriate content. The act identifies children’s content with 8 key factors. These are:
- the subject matter of the site or service
- the video’s visual content
- the video’s of animated characters or child-oriented activities and incentives
- music or other audio content in the video
- age of models featured in the video
- presence of child celebrities or celebrities who appeal to children in the video
- language or other characteristics of the website or online service
- and whether advertising promoting or appearing on the website or online service is directed at children.
If a creator’s content applies to any of these characteristics, they must check a box during the uploading process. This identifies whether the video is child-directed or not. By checking it, all personalized ads are removed from that video, which removes almost all monetary gain generated from the video. However, this isn’t the only condition that comes along with COPPA. Failure to correctly (by definition of the FTC) label your content can result in up to a $42,000 dollar fine, per each video that is miss-identified.
Creating Under COPPA – YouTubers and Compliance
But what happens if you don’t know how to categorize your videos? Do you risk the monetization of your content or risk facing a massive fine? Creators can’t produce when the conditions of creating are so steep. YouTube wants to use machine learning to identify the themes of the content, but that makes the FTC’s identification and actions even more unpredictable. None of the identification factors have been fleshed out properly, so YouTubers are at full control of the FTC. An extreme amount of creators will have to make videos while in fear of the fines unless more details are given.
Even so, what about the creators that are actually targeted to kids? With COPPA in place, they don’t have comments, info-cards, or end-screens. These channels can’t qualify for YouTube stories or have a Community Tab. And, as I said before, personalized ads are completely removed. All of these are what helps a channel grow and thrive. The removal of all of these aspects results in little money and views. That’s a huge loss for all the creators who make a living in creating content for kids.
Criticisms of COPPA
With news of this policy, YouTube has received may criticisms from its users. Many people want clarity and are encouraging YouTube to make a statement on how exactly COPPA will be implemented. One primary criticism, however, is that YouTube is forcing online creators to be child-friendly, instead of encouraging parents to control the children’s internet activity.Â
Overall, COPPA’s new policy is coming to YouTube soon and poses many problems for all types of creators. Obviously, there is still news to come, but little time remains before the new decade and the beginning of COPPA’s system implementation. It’s tight at the moment for both YouTube and it’s users. Right now, we can only hope that it can all be sorted out in due time.
Links Used
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9383587?hl=en
Is A YouTube COPPAcalypse Coming? FTC Rules Could Start Demonetizing Creators In 2020
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