HOW COPPA SCREWED YOUTUBERS

Youtube paid $170 Million to FTC as a fine for Violation of Children’s Privacy Law.

Youtube channels were allegedly collecting kids’ personal information without parental consent thereby violating the COPPA.

Starting from 2020 Youtubers have to comply with COPPA or else their content will be taken down and they can be fined upto $42,000 per video.

The ‘Youtube Creators‘ channel has received much hate and harsh comments on their video regarding COPPA compliance.

What is COPPA?

The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law.

What is FTC?

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government
Its principal mission is the promotion of consumer protection and the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) U.S. antitrust law through the elimination and prevention of anti competitive business practices.

The FTC and COPPA states that showing personalised or targeted advertisements or any kind of stuff which provoke kids to do wrong things is against the law.

The FTC says that kids(considering age to be below 13) cannot differentiate between ads and content.

Showing personalized ads to these kids is unethical and against the law.

Videos marked as made for kids will have

• Comments disabled.
• No personalized or Targeted Ads.
• No Info cards.
• No End Screens.
• No Stories.
• No Notification Bell.
• No Community Tab
• No Save to ‘Watch Later’.
• No Save to ‘Playlist’.

Youtube has asked every content creator to comply with COPPA’s rules and regulations.

Youtube asks every content creator to mark their content as “Made for Kids” or as “Not made for kids” to ensure that kids won’t watch videos not intended for them.

Youtube has introduced an audience setting that lets Youtubers tell the platform if the content is made for kids or not.

You can set your whole channel’s audience status according to all videos that you post by determining if they are “For Kids” or “Not for Kids“. Alternatively you can also do this at video level.

But How does this affect Content Creators?

Youtube has defined these guidelines to determine type of content,

Factors to Consider:-

• The subject matter of the video
• If children are the intended audience
• If it includes child actors or models
• If it includes characters, celebrities or toys that appeal to children
• If it uses language that is meant for children to understand
• If it includes activities that appeal to children
• If it includes songs, stories or poems that appeal to children

Considering above statements Youtubers can no longer play games like Spiderman, Pokemon, Minecraft, Roblox while using adult language in a video intended for adults.

Think about channels like MrBeast, PewDiePie who have child audience to some extent.

Starting from 2020 FTC can take down content from any channel that doesn’t oblige to the rules of COPPA and even fine them upto $42,000 per video.

Family vlogging has become a risky niche for content creation as these videos are suitable for kids but at the same time may have stuff not suitable for kids.

Some might argue these things should affect only ‘Youtube Kids’.

Yeah it should’ve affected only ‘Youtube Kids’ but Youtube has always showed off its popularity amongst children.

Google has stated the following statements about Youtube in the past,

• Youtube is #1 website regularly visited by children.
• Youtube is unanimously voted as favorite website for kids in age group of 2-12.
• Youtube is leader in reaching kids in the age group of 6-11 against top TV channels.

And all these statements came back to haunt them, hence even Youtube in general has to comply to FTC’s COPPA.

Many big and small youtubers will lose upto 90% of their revenue generated per month due to these new rules.

Now once again content creators are paying the price for Youtube’s mistakes.

You guys can learn more in depth by watching this detailed video below.

THANKS FOR YOUR TIME.

This was real_Cyb0rG

Peace out.