Jim Sterling (The Jimquisition)

How can YT know if a particular video is being watched by someone under 13? Or that why the focus is on the content of the videos, so they limit ads on videos targeted at children?

You mother- I was just gonna post that!!!!!

...... Wait it got bottme paged this is my chance.

Edited by slimcoder on Nov 20th 2019 at 6:21:10 AM

That is an issue with fines as legal punishments. A sufficiently wealthy company can afford to pay fines easily, and sometimes doing so is cheaper than following the law. For example, Disney pays fines for not-entirely-legal fireworks shows at Disneyland.

> How can YT know if a particular video is being watched by someone under 13?

Easy,if they're logged in check to see if they have a credit card or birthdate that would make them legally not 13

logged out..well you got me there they have no way of knowing short of having a popup that wont go away asking them to verify their age or something

That's expecting too much from YT

They will use bots, bots will make a mess, youtubers will be unhappy, people want a youtube competitor, they resign to their fates and adapt, rinse and repeat

I blame Pewdiepie

Edited by fasoman1996 on Nov 20th 2019 at 11:37:02 AM

I've seen some people mention a couple of video hosting alternatives like bitchute, which seem alright but realistically I think there's very, very few companies that would have the money to front a business like YT. IIRC it's still not profitable and the sheer amount of server space and data that traffics on YT is more than the vast majority has the money or infrastructure for.

EDIT: Actually never mind about bitchute. I mean site and functionality wise it seems fine but the front page is filled with far-right/manosphere/chemtrail garbage. Like wtf is this?

Edited by Draghinazzo on Nov 20th 2019 at 10:50:25 AM

Lack of reliable ad revenue from YT is why so many creators are going with Patreon as a funding source, but that's not accessible to everyone. There's also Youtube Premium subscriptions (like what I have), which give money for views regardless of ads, and also Youtube channel memberships, which act a bit like Patreon.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 20th 2019 at 9:42:09 AM

Sounds like it mainly serves as a site for people who are too shitty for Youtube, which is saying something.

Google have a lot of metadata on its users (and not only on youtube) that can tell many things about them, including age. They already break down the viwerbase by age and give to youtubers, so at very least they should be capable to know who is probably under 13.

Another easy way would be to only use targeted adds to those with google accounts who have disclosed their age (and said age is over 13). That would rely on self reporting, of course, but it is not like people would have reason to lie and they still can claim they are doing something to avoid gathering information on children.

Well it’s called bitch, right there in the title.

What else ya expect?

I don't really know anything about the site so maybe they just don't have enough staff to prune all those videos and ban the accounts, and an environment like that is welcome to people who would get banned/reported on YT regardless of the founder's intentions. I might be giving them too much credit though.

It's kind of a shame since a legit competitor to YT would be great, although I doubt Google would "compete" in a healthy way.

It offers the functionality of Youtube without its oversight, hence why people considered too fringe for Youtube's radical centrism find their homes there.

This is actually a major issue with trying to compete with Youtube. The people who are most likely to leave Youtube for another platform are the people Youtube doesn't want, often because they're too toxic.

The other issue is oversight. Most creators want a platform with little oversight, and what often causes them to leave Youtube is a belief that Youtube has too much oversight. This causes obvious issues.

If a competitor to Youtube gets as big as Youtube, it will come under the same oversight.

Is there like an effect where a thing starts off small, people like it, it grows big, starts having problems, people end up dissatisfied, they find new small fledgling, migrate there, it grows big, suffers same problems...

What do you call that? I mean imagine the next Youtube thing that starts off small like it did back then 14 years ago, people go there because it lacks any of Youtube's bs but over time it gets worse like Youtube did. And the process repeats

Might be better to try making sites specialized towards certain hobbies and subjects like Twitch, Instead of competing with Youtube directly. Directly competing with them might as well be as pointless as trying to dethrone Disney. Going at it with the reason of giving hobbyists a home for if COPPA's worse case scenario happens. And then make sure that those sites aren't like Bitchute andmore like old youtube, but for their specific niches.

A couple umbrellas that could be big enough for their own video site would be Arts & Crafts, Video Gaming (Twitch), Tabletop Gaming (though Twitch might cover that if it wants), 3D Printing and DIY crafts, Makeup, News (for smaller news groups, not CNN, WSJ and the like as they likely have their own videos, Leftube could also be placed under this umbrella) and Media Critique and Analysis (though thatcouldalso be placed under news as well and some might be germane enough for Twitch or the other sites to consider bringing to its fold).

Basically instead of one too-wide-to-manage net, it might be worth considering casting multiple, smaller bit more specialize nets instead. Though infrastructure might be a problem, and I'd suspect Patreon would be used in the interim until any such sites have their payment plans toghether.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Nov 20th 2019 at 7:36:30 AM

You have to remember that COPPA legislation is born from TV legislation.

How do you know who sits in front of the TV? You don't. What the FTC does is police what advertising can be done when the TV's programing is aimed at children.

This is the same concept here. Youtube can't fully know who is behind the screen (coz most young children would use parental accounts anyway). But youtube SHOULD be able to know what media it has that's primarily aimed at children, and thus turn off audience tracking from them and targeted ads.

The issue is youtube should've done that, and made this a core part of its system from its inception. Training creators to tag their content and consider who their audience is when Youtube offers creator Adsense contracts.

BUUUUT youtube didn't do it. It purposefully operated a legal wild west ignoring the law and offering add sense. When the FTC came knocking, Google reached their 170 million dollar settlement, then turned around and is expecting all of their users to comply with rules Youtube had never bothered to communicate, nor can it bother to explain.

The truth of the matter is that for 95% of channels, this will change little. Other than sometimes getting false flags coz google's robots are terrible and going for reviews.

For a handful of truly malicious channels, this is shutting them down (And good thing).

For a handful of others, they are now in a weird legal no-mans-land. For example I know many channels who review figures for adult collectors. As far as the FTC is concerned, anything with toys falls under kids. So those channels cannot label themselves as for adults and are gonna see themselves losing income and delisted from recommendations, which all but neuters channel growth.

Other big areas are channels who talk of topics that may trigger the bots. If you do serious media analysis but you do an episode on say, My Little Pony, is your channel gonna get tagged? Youtube ain't saying.

Supposedly Youtube has contacted channels that their algorithm has tagged on a first pass. According to Egoraptor.

TL:DR Youtube's been fine profiting from their own ignorance of the law for years, and now it suddenly expects content creators to now down to rules that youtube themselves won't clearly explain now that the gig is up.

Edited by Ghilz on Nov 20th 2019 at 11:15:51 AM

Jim's take on the COPPA regulations feels... weird. The concern I've seen isn't that the FTC will come after after individual channels, but that Youtube will arbitrarily decide that a channel is "for children" and fuck it over. Which is particularly bad since videos already get demonetized, delisted, and whatnot for being insufficiently family friendly. No-win scenarios are fun!

Personally, I feel like youtubers need to unionize. Leaving isn't really in the cards—People find video creators through youtube and can't be guaranteed to follow them if they migrate. And if they somehow do manage build actual competition, it's likely to run into the same problems. The best solution is to push back against Youtube's excesses

Apparently Jason Schreier has heard through a contact of his that the Stadia's sales are flopping pretty hard.

I'm not sure that preorders being below expectations quite count as a massive flop, though Schreier could have more sources than just that

might refer to retailers not being too hasty to stock up on Stadias, or importers being too excited for it.

MorningStarl337: Isn't that what MediaGoblin basically is?

Superdark 33: Stadia isn't sold at retail and isn't imported. It's entirely an Internet thing.

The real issue I think is the 'Youtube kids'. They run a specific app and website targeted at kids. Stuff that shows up on there is not always 'for kids' and its all on youtube that it doesn't but the are passing that off onto the creators.

Edited by Memers on Nov 21st 2019 at 6:20:06 AM

I'm still waiting on Dragalia Lost to put out its Mega Man collab trailer so you shoulda seen the look on my face when the announcement for this popped into my feed for Nintendo's mobile channel instead a few days ago.

Yes, two subscription services. One speeds up how fast you can do chores and the other gives you free loot boxes fortune cookies and extra item storage.

Pocket Camp's always kind of floundered around since launch trying to monetize itself in a ton of different ways and trying to figure out what the best approach is, but this is... something else.

Edited by NesClassic on Nov 21st 2019 at 9:18:19 AM

We know it's impossible to make money by selling games on mobile app stores because people aren't willing to pay for apps. Is there any way to make money from mobile games that doesn't involve lootboxes, data harvesting, or subscription services?

Half-Life: Alyx - Excited? Disappointed? Both Reactions Are Valid (OMGH)

Jimquision: Let's Get Pissy About In-Game Subscriptions

Edited by Ghilz on Nov 25th 2019 at 12:31:04 PM