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In September, Google paid a landmark fine of $170 million to the Federal Trade Commission after an extensive investigation found that its YouTube platform had violated the Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act (COPPA). What is COPPA? The FTC Ruling & Aftermath New YouTube Policy Coming Soon Pushback & Criticism New Harassment Policy YouTube Seeks Further Clarification from FTC Furthermore, YouTube requests further clarification on how it should handle situations where children are viewing content geared towards adults, like how-to videos, makeup tutorials, or gameplay videos. Currently, there simply isn’t enough guidance for those created mixed audience content. In the statement, the FTC maintained that YouTube knowingly exploited data collected from children to serve its advertising agenda. As a result, the video content platform has recently undergone several major changes to its infrastructure to curtail similar issues in the future. Now, YouTube has recently turned to the FTC to request further clarification on confusing COPPA terms and how they’ll be implemented. “Currently, the FTC’s guidance requires platforms must treat anyone watching primarily child-directed content as children under 13,” YouTube said in a statement. “This does not match what we see on YouTube, where adults watch cartoons from their childhood or teachers look for content to share with their students.” This leaves many content creators and influencers to wonder where their future stands with YouTube, and whether they can still continue to monetize their channels.
What is COPPA? COPPA was passed in 1998 to protect children under the age of 13 across the Internet. Managed by the Federal Trade Commission, the Act specifies what needs to be included in privacy policies, requires websites to collect parental consent before gathering data from underage users, and outlines the responsibilities that website owners are required to uphold to maintain children’s safety and privacy online. The FTC Ruling & Aftermath YouTube agreed to pay $170 million in fines to the FTC and New York State for violation of COPPA. The settlement found the media company guilty for illegally collecting personal data from children and using Venezuela Phone Number List it to siphon personalized ads. Even with the penalty, FTC’s Rohit Chopra was unsatisfied with the settlement charges amount. “Financial penalties need to be meaningful or they will not deter misconduct,” she said in a statement. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is slated to generate $161 billion in revenue this year, making $170 million feel more like a slap on the wrist. As a result of the settlement, Google agreed to overhaul its platform to adjust the way children can interact with that content. However, YouTube’s approach has caused a stir. To comply with COPPA, YouTube influencers are now asked if their content serves an audience of children before they upload videos. If the content is geared towards kids, YouTube won’t collect data without consent from a parent, and won’t use behavior targeting tactics to show children relevant ads.
For content creators that rely on ad revenue streams to keep their channels going, this will be a huge hit. Currently, several of the highest earners are YouTube create content geared towards both children and adults: New YouTube Policy Coming Soon But moving forward, bigger infrastructure changes are on the way. Videos that are marked for children will no longer have a comments section, effectively decimating engagement and community on those channels. Customization options, like screens and info cards, will no longer be available to YouTubers who create content for children. And lastly, users that are subscribed to channels that publish videos for kids will not be notified when a new video is uploaded and those videos will not appear in YouTube search or in recommended videos. With each of these factors in the mix, YouTubers whose audience include children will essentially be isolated from the rest of YouTube. Users will not be able to discover those pieces of content in search, interact with content creators in comments, or navigate to related content from that channel. YouTube will also enforce its own algorithm monitoring tool as a backup measure to locate mislabeled content—videos that serve a young audience but aren’t specifically labeled as such during the upload process.
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發表於 2024-2-14 13:45:12