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

[turbocoolerParticipant 4103xp 0]

There is no way to know if a YouTube algorithm is targeting children or an adult.  If you watch many of the video game channels or anime channels are you a child or an adult?

Second, COPPA is not specific to YouTube, the idea that you can just switch platforms and no longer have to comply makes no sense.  The question is how or what the enforcement lookd like.

Most likely what we will see is more pay walls.  By having a pay wall, you are taking a credit card and have so reasonable belief that you are not targeting a child.  Can someone steal a credit card, sure, but the courts have ruled that this does not count.

Both in the US and EU there is also an anti big tech sentiment with law suites at the state level on both continents.  What people do not realize is that privacy is dead.  If you are a good parent there a plenty of parental tools to block certain content including tracking cookies.

Ads and tracking online is under attack in general.  There are already browsers that block all advertisement and tracking cookies out of the box.  People have been blocking ads for some time.  IMHO, we will see end of the free internet and more of paid content.  Just like you have Netflix for movies, you are going to subscription services for certain Internet content.

Finally, “protect the children” is always the rallying cry for someone, some group or some government agency to do something stupid like censor or ban or limit freedom.  Going back to Prohibition in the USA, it started with “protect the children”.  Frankly, people need to push back.

I raised two children both in college now.  I sit in the airport while I poorly type this on my phone.  Neither child was corrupted by the Internet.  Much of this was because my wife and I basically unplugged them from all electronic devices as much as we could and taught them to play board games, photography and arts and crafts.

Far too many people involved in this legal action used bad information and emotions to ban something they do not like versus a real threat.  I will argue that the ban in the USA over vaping is an over reaction versus looking at the root cause of the deaths from vaping because when you want to pass a law it is always better to find a villain.

I like to remind everyone at one time “the people who knew better” tried to ban Dungeons & Dragons, Pin Ball Machines were considered to be a gateway drug into higher level gambling and were banned in New York State into the mid 1990s, comic books were burned, Bugs Bunny was considered the gateway into violent children, the poster child for how bad video games are was Pac-Man.  What we have here is just the next boogeyman in a long line of false boogeymen because “if we save just one child” it will be all worth it!  Right?? or just just a false premise and false emotional crises in order to control speech and people by the government?