YouTube content policy change: What vloggers need to know

From November 14, content creators on YouTube were expected to follow a new set of norms around uploading content intended for children (or not), triggering a wave of confusion, fear and panic amongst creators.

Put simply, all content creators (vloggers, streamers, news channels or otherwise) on YouTube will have to flag their channel and videos as “made for kids” or not. Videos that are “made for kids” will have their comment sections disabled and a few other features restricted, while other videos will be treated the same as before.

The changes come after Google was fined $175 million in September by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for settling a case over the company collecting children’s personal data without the consent of their parents.

For creators, failure to adhere to the new rules could result in "consequences on YouTube". While many have claimed that creators could be fined $42,530 per violation, this is not true—the amount comes from the FTC’s civil penalty of $42,530 for each violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This fine, however, is prescribed for website ‘operators’ and not creators per se.

What will happen now is that all uploaders must categorize their content before YouTube does it automatically. According to Google, YouTube will use ‘machine-learning’ to determine whether a video or channel is child-friendly or not. This might also be used to detect improper categorisation of videos. But, this process may also incorrectly categorise videos—with consequences.

Made for Kids videos will not have comments enabled, nor will they show personalised ads. Info cards and end screens will also be restricted. Channels marked as made for kids will also be unable to upload Stories, use the Community tab, have a notification bell, or give viewers the ability to save videos for later watching or to a playlist. Such videos will likely face a decline in revenue due to the absence of personalised ads.

YouTube released a video explaining the changes, in which they said, “Don’t rely on our system to set content for you. Like all automated systems, it’s not perfect. If you don’t set your audience or if we detect error or abuse, we may set your audience for you. But in most cases, we will rely on your audience setting to determine whether a video is made for kids.”

You can read what YouTube and the FTC consider as content that is suitable for kids here.

For creators to set their channel audience, they need to follow these steps:

Go to settings within the YouTube Studio > Channel tab >Advanced Settings > Audience.

Individual videos can also be marked as being made for kids or not. In the videos tab in YouTube studio, you can select videos and click on the audience option to set it.

You will also be prompted to set your audience every time you upload, although the option you selected at channel-level will usually be the option highlighted by default.

Additional terms and conditions

The changes to YouTube are not just about kid-friendly content. Under a controversial new condition, YouTube now says that “YouTube may terminate your use of the Services, or your Google account’s access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable.”

This has been interpreted in many ways—some creators their use of the service may be terminated if their videos have too few views, others feel it would specifically target those who are using YouTube in ways that are not beneficial to the platform, ie, such as by using it for personal cloud storage of files that are marked as private.

However, YouTube clarified the section on Twitter, pointing out that it referred only to features or services that are a part of YouTube that could be outdated or seldom used.  

These are the changes YouTube has made, for now.