COPPA Sucks

So I got the email from YouTube today saying that the first changes from COPPA began taking effect today.

I believe that this will slowly be the death of YouTube and it's not even YouTube's fault since it's just a law that YouTube is forced to follow.

On the foundation, it doesn't sound scary, at its core it's saying that videos can't market to kids and that Youtubers have to signify that a video is for kids.

But here's the problem, there are lots of videos that aren't expressly for kids that the FTC will still consider for kids because of their nature, like Let's Plays, music videos, and DIY's.

If a YouTuber posts a video and does not say it's for kids, but the FTC investigates and does find that it's for kids, that YouTuber can be charged up to $42,000.

This creates a lose-lose situation for many Youtubers. For example, let's say there's a Let's Player who sometimes swears while playing a game like Minecraft or Fortnite. If they swear in the Video, it's automatically flagged as adult content and it's demonitized, so the YouTuber gets no money. But if they don't swear, the nature of the video will classify it as kid friendly and ads won't play at all, meaning the YouTuber makes no money either way.

I've already seen a lot of the damage done over the past few hours. Many videos habe since had their comments and notifications closed.

It sucks and if Youtubers of the most popular genres stop making money, they're going to start leaving the platform soon.

Yeah this is some serious aids.

My best prediction is that there will be both more focus on livestreaming this next decade as well as the birth of other sites similar to YouTube in an attempt to avoid this issue.

I honestly don't even get why this is happening in the first place. I grew up watching YouTube, and someone swearing at a video game or shooting a gun in a game has never made me want to shoot up a school. So sad that many YouTubers will probably not make the transition to whatever comes next, and this might mark the end of their career.

Furret : Yeah, one of my favorite YouTube groups has been designing their own platform for their own videos for the last few year's because of the long-standing YouTube revenue problems, and this probably just made them want to leave even more.

I wonder if YouTube streaming would be as affected by this or if that would shut down too.

Plus let's not forget that this isn't a YouTube thing, it's a Government Law in most places, so it could pass on to any site in the future.

I more just dislike that it's seriously ruining peoples lives. While there is some good in that it legit just murdurs those very innapropriate channels aimed at kids such as those Spiderman/Elsa things that are still alive somewhere, and also getting rid of people like Jaystation (hopefully my lord). It will also take out a lot of people who aren't that bad at all. On the bright side, the Youtubers I watch generally have a job so they make Youtube as a hobby and not a career. Like Mudahar from SomeOrdinaryGamers, who actually visited Vizzed once upon a time, kinda surreal.

Boured : It's not meant to shut down channels. YouTube probably hasn't even realized yet that these channels are going to be forced to leave.

Take a Fortnite video. Millions of kids watch those so the money from ad revenue that goes to the channel and to YouTube is coming from kids views, and that's what they want to stop.

If YouTube had a say in this, they would make sure that no channels closed down.

I might not have uploaded in years at this point but even then I have friends who do YouTube and for their sake I hope the laws aren't as strict as they could be this could really mess up their careers. Even when I don't think of how it will affect people I know I just think of all the youtubers I like watching and I have to wonder how many of them will still be around and it's honestly depressing to think about.