I think this is the right and necessary thing to do. Sucks that creators can't use
targeted advertisements to children, too fucking bad for you. It's disgusting if you want to target ads to children in the first place. You can still advertise to children, you can still profit off of children, you just can't profit with targeted, tracking and behavioral based advertising programs. If this infuriates you, you need to look in the mirror and take stock of how you're making money.
If that means "Pixel Dan," who based on his concerns I assume is a grown adult playing with children's toys on a YouTube channel, is spotlighted by the FTC...? Too bad for you, clean up your act. If Pixel Dan is simply documenting toys for adults either as a buying guide or some sort of historical documentary, then I'm sure the FTC won't target him unfairly. MAybe there will be some growing pains as COPPA is starting to be enforced, maybe it will be used unfairly to remove content or penalize creators in the first few years, but whatever, for too long we've done nothing because we've been afraid of punishing the good actors for a "handful" of bad actors. We've lived in the wild west for too long, and the FTC and technologists have mostly just ignored the changing market... They focus a lot on children's advertising on TV and children's programming on broadcast media, but have done practically zero when it comes to internet-based children's entertainment, which is where the majority of children are routinely turning for entertinment today. It's well past due. 20 years past due that the FTC actually propose something with teeth.
Just a couple days ago someone embedded a kids video here, a song and dance video obviously intended for children on YouTube, that had a jump scare from the Exorcist -- an R Rated horror movie -- embedded in the middle of it at about 3mins. They didn't know when they were sharing it and none of us adults would have noticed it except one person realized and was like "uhh, this has a jumpscarre at 3mins, did you mean to share that?" The viddeo content was clearly intended for ~2 year olds, and for the last 15 years there's been no enforcement about that and no enforcement about people profiting on that. It's a shame that
Realistically, there will be no teeth. Pixel Dan can still make videos.
First off, one unquestionable result of YouTube's changes to its kids content policies is a sizable loss of revenue for most, if not all, of the people making content aimed at children. Because YouTube is no longer allowed to
target ads at children based on data collected from them (specifically "cookies" that track their history of online activity), YouTube channels that have kids videos as their bread and butter will take a serious hit—targeted ads based on data collected by YouTube pay more to content creators versus general ads that are not targeted. Which means anybody who marks their content as aimed at kids—a mandatory decision that will need to be made before posting videos—will almost certainly make less money than they did prior to the changes.
I can believe, but my stomach turns, at how offended this Nerdist article is. Like, "OH NO creators cannot make profit off of TARGETED ADS to children." Get your priorities in order.
Children cannot consent to be tracked online. They're below the age of being able to give consent. So if your "bread and butter" as this nerdist article puts it, is tracking children and then advertising to them based on behavior that they cannot consent to, then perhaps you need a new bread and butter.
This is also the result of a
legal injunction against Google. It's the law. For most of internet history, platforms like YouTUbe have used curiously written laws (Well one big one) to shield them from the behavior of their users, and users have been protected by anonymity and easily skirting regulations. This isn't how it should be. I know this is how it has been, but it shouldn't be this way.
The video from YouTube seems rreally clear and straight forward:
Is your video for kids? If yes, tag it that it's for kids. If it's not for kids, don't. YouTube will, in general, respect how you tag your videos and advertise responsibly on it. But by law they're being compelled to use machine learning algorithms to also find videos that are targeted for kids and are mislabelled. This seems like the responsible thing that YouTUbe
should be doing in addition to putting an honus of responsibility on creators to be honest and responsible with their content. The algorithm is going to get a lot wrong, it may unfairly take away your targeted advertising for a video that you swear is not for children, too bad, the risk is not worth the reward.
People saying "Wait, so YouTube doesn't ban white nationalist content, but now they're not letting me use targeted ads to children anymore? That's unfair!" No, it's not unfair and it's not inconsistent and the two things aren't related. For one, there is no law that is compelling Google to take ban white nationalist content, maybe there should be, but there isn't. There
is a law compelling Google to not use targeted advertising to children who
legally cannot give consent to be targeted - COPPA. Google had a suit against them and they had to settle it, and this is the result. Further, though, beyond the legal obligation of YouTube, is the simple fact that if you're trying to justify why you should be able to use targted ads to profit off of children who cannot legally consent to being targeted, you should feel slimy by trying to use the status of white nationalist videos to justify the profit motivations of your YouTube channel. Further,
just because YouTube does a shitty job filtering white nationalist content does not mean that they cannot
simultaneously prevent targeted ads to children on their platform, those two issues are different things and their inaction on one of them should not dictate inaction on another.
