Reply To: COPPA, the FTC and Youtube content appealing to children.

[slayerofworldsParticipant 3449xp 3]

From my own research and understanding, I think there are some misunderstandings with what is really going on.  This has nothing to do with “bad parenting”.

First, COPPA is a very good thing.   And this isnt necessarily about “content appealing to children”, it is however directly because YouTube was knowingly breaking the law for years and lying about it.

COPPA is very good.  It protects children under the age of 13 from huge corporations and other entities taking advantage of them.  COPPA protects kids by preventing corporations or anyone from tracking kids internet usage, building data bases, selling those data bases, and targeting kids from the use of that gathered info.  This is basically all about cookies, and tracking those cookies of children under 13.   Stopping this is a very good thing.  Everyone wants to prevent these sort of things from happening.  Just look at how much google tracks about your own usage as an adult, and what they do with it.  Now imagine corporations doing this to children.   This is a very good law, not perfect of course but still very good.

YouTube, and google by extention , has been knowingly breaking this law for nearly ten years.   They have been gathering, recording, storing, and using data/cookies traffic generated by children under the age of 13 to target advertising directly towards those kids (along with selling that information).   Hence the reason they just settled a huge lawsuit.   They have been hiding behind their terms of service for years, saying that only 13+ can sign up and use youtube.  So since only 13+ can use the site, then COPPA doesnt apply to them.  This of course was the lie.  And to be clear, they knew it was a lie.  There are youtube channels that are primarily starred by children under 13.  They have been tracking analytics for years in regards to these children.

Youtube has known for years that children under 13 have been using the site.  They’ve known because they have been tracking, recording, and building data bases.  They’ve known because they have profited off this information.  All of which is very much against COPPA.

This is all about Youtube and them using the settlement to pass the burden from themselves to the content producers.  Why are they doing this.  Because they lied to the FTC for nearly a decade and the FTC no longer trusts YouTube or their algorithms to police their own website.  The FTC plans to do the policing on their own, using human hands/eyes.   Which is finally where the “content appealing to children” comes in.   Cause YouTube is terrified about humans doing the policing, and that those humans arent YouTube staff.  To much “open to interpretation” for YouTubes comfort.

So to be clear this has nothing to do with the actual content in the video.  FTC isn’t concerned with whats on the videos, only whether or not children will watch them or not.   Why.   Because YouTube tracks, records, and uses data bases to target advertising, profit,  and push users towards certain content on their website.

If children are going to watch that video (the videos subject is irreverent on its own), because it has “content appealing to children”, then youtube cant by law record or gather anything from those children watching that video.  So you see, its not the video thats the problem… its the gathering of user information from viewers under 13 of that video that is the problem.

YouTube cant record anything, if they do they are breaking the law.  So those tracking/recording functions have to be shut off on any and all videos that children could be watching, or the law could be broken.   Again this is a good thing.   This is a good thing, which is proven by how hard YouTube willing to do anything… except simply shutting off user tracking on the website.  Which is literally all it would take to make all these COPPA problems go away… stop tracking/recording info of ALL users on youtube.

The problems are not with COPPA.  The real problems come with the way YouTube and the FTC came to a settlement from the lawsuit.   In the settlement, YouTube was able to shift the burden from YouTube and onto the content producers…  some how.     YouTube threw their own content producers under the bus and never looked back.

The next problem comes from the very vague, and unrealistic, list of what constitutes a video that would “appeal to children”.  The FTC needs to make it more clear what is and is not a video that would cause a violation if YouTubes recording/tracking algorithms aren’t turned off.    From my understanding these qualifications are not part of COPPA, they are fallout from the lawsuit and the need to police YouTube specifically (cause youtube wants to track/record ALL user data).

COPPA isnt the enemy here.

YouTube is the problem, and the way they now have to be policed by the government (because they cant be trusted and are too greedy to shut off user data tracking/recording).   Also, the FTC not putting enough thought into the criteria for declaring what content is and is not “appealing to children” is a problem that could seriously impact content producers.

To my understanding, anyway.