If you guys haven't already seen this you probably should check it out. Youtube is drastically changing the way we will be able to use it. This applies to all videos new & old; **even if you are not in the US.** A "kid" defined here is anyone under 13 years old. Kendama is seen as a toy which means that nearly all future kendama content will likely have to be marked as "made for kids." Monetization aside this is another hoop through which we have to jump and will likely cause problems not unlike copyright issues where videos are taken down requiring manual review, more ways to get strikes (possible channel deletion), and direct communication with Youtube which isn't always easy. In addition to this the TOS have been updated and says that channels which are not commercially viable can be terminated. This will mean that if you have a channel that is making content that is considered for kids then YT generally won't run ads on them making your channel "not commercially viable." Thoughts?
I'm trying to parse my feelings to determine what is my general wariness of surveillance vs how much the typical consumer genuinely does need protection from giant corporations. Like, I feel generally positive about GDPR at this point, but didn't initially. I do heavily support COPPA in a general sense. I don't believe that it's actually possible to make the internet a safe place for kids, but I do believe it's possible to keep companies like YT from letting their algorithms radicalize kids from an early age, for example. I don't necessarily trust the government to craft timely or deft legislation to address anything on the Internet. That said, I trust big data even less. While this will certainly fuck over some content creators, the Internet allows for a ton of flexibility and those folks should be able to move platforms or find a different space for their content. Patreon seems like an obvious choice. I'm unaware at this time of any Kendama related YT presences that have a following anywhere near big enough to make a significant amount of money off of monetization for their videos. In that sense, my hope would be that we won't experience this that much in the kendama community. That said, theres a good chance that is misplaced optimism. We'll see I suppose. Fuck regulation, but fuck Google even more imo.
It's wack. But like @Qonnor said, people that make content that is nolonger "good" for YT will move and so will the people who want to see them.
Since I've been trying to help out the JKA with their website the problem I have is the restrictions on "for kid" content when it comes to usability. No playlists, no sharing, and I'm not sure but it could also mean no embedding in websites. That's how a lot of sites put video on their pages they don't locally host they put it on YT. Imagine if all your favorite edits suddenly couldn't be shared or you couldn't compile a playlist of trick videos for KWC. Not only that but the creator themselves could be held liable for incorrectly labeling their content even if they label it for their intended market it could be interpreted differently by YT's AI, the government regulators, or become popular with kids so suddenly they are out of compliance. You can't control who watches your videos and it's not the creators who were collecting data on kids it was Google/Youtube yet the creators and users are the ones under the hammer. As for moving to another platform there isn't really much out there and Youtube has taken losses for years to help keep the competition at bay to become a defacto monopoly. It's why YT was sold to Google in the first place, it wasn't a viable business at the time; resource requirements were killing them. Everyone stays on YT because of the huge viewership numbers and the potential that new people will see your content not just those searching for something specific.
For sure. I re-read my post and I think I came across as being a bit of a YT apologist. I would place myself somewhere in the pro-COPPA camp. I generally trust the government more than big corporations and I feel that COPPA is an earnest attempt to make the Internet a safer place for kids. In that sense, I'm glad we have it. The issue to me is that in order to protect themselves from any damage from this new legislation, YT is choosing to make changes that directly fuck over their content creators. As you mentioned, there isn't much competition for YT, so they know they can put sweeping new policies in place without much retribution. COPPA in no way put in place to target content creators, YT is just using them as a meat shield to stay safe from any possible legal fallout. With revenue like YouTube's, they could find any number of ways to incentivize creators to stay on the platform and to help support them. That said, because they don't have any competition that incentivizes them to do so, they'll just do nothing. I don't agree with censorship. My understanding of COPPA is that it is directly trying to prevent the sort of censorship and targeting that companies like YT have at the heart of their business models. By preventing YT from using its algorithms to serve content to targeted kids who are usually vulnerable, COPPA helps preserve children's experience of the Internet by allowing them to dictate the content they consume. In this case, I feel that rage is better placed on YT itself than the legislators who are responsible for it.
Hmmm, it seems like getting marked as 'made for kids' is going to generally negatively affect a creator's ability to monetize/share thier videos. I suspect that the monetization aspect will be annoying for some dama-content creators, but I don't think anyone is bringing in a significant portion of their income/revenue in this way. More so, the removal of comments / playlists / notifications / etc, will be detrimental to the virality of new videos. All of those things make it more difficult to attain organic views and growth. Sooo the big question is: what constitutes a 'made for kids video'? If a video's content is otherwise obviously not-for-kids, would the fact that the primary prop in the video is a kendama still over ride this? That seems like a slippery slope... My guess is that content which is quite obviously targeting kids will be the focus of this change, not some giant catch-all for anything that could be construed to be a kids toy. @Qonnor I generally agree with a lot of what you wrote, and I think @goenKendama's assessment of Youtube's market dominance is on point as well. Given the server requirements to run a video-sharing platform... ugh. There isn't a lot of choice if youtube becomes too hostile an environment.
I find it interesting that there is legislature that purports targeted advertising is dangerous for kids, and thus restricts it. But then for adults... oh well sure lets just heavily manipulate them using highly targeted advertising that appeals to their innate biases that we've pulled out of years of internet usage habits. Yea thats probably totally fine and safe... hell why don't we just sell the idea itself to them? " Targeted ads! Only see the stuff you* want to see!" *by 'you', we of course mean 'us'! We have this stuff to sell, after all... I think the ad-tech world is evil, I'm interested to see what happens to some of the new open source projects that are being created in response. See: https://switching.software/ https://switching.software/ethical-alternatives-to-youtube/ https://peertube.social/videos/trending?a-state=42 https://switching.software/ethical-alternatives-to-instagram/ I think the federated social network model is very interesting, I kind of hope it gains more traction going forward.
I was 100% unaware of all this stuff, but am now VERY hyped to keep digging on it. Also I fully agree re: restricting advertising for kids but not adults. Like. If we can identify that this kind of data collection and use is malicious AND ban it from being used on kids, what's the hold up on regulating it in general?! Oh yeah. Those corporations are big af.
For the moment, tricklists could be hosted on a number of other sites like Wistia or even Vimeo. They function pretty similarly, just way smaller. I don't personally feel that much of the kendama community lives on YT, but that might be just me. If I'm watching edits on YT, it's typically because I heard about them via Instagram which doesn't actually allow you to link to them anyway.
@ everyone, First off I really appreciate your insightful input and discussion here. I worry sometimes that digital life is helping to kill off meaningful discourse. On to the rant at hand, the monetization thing while not directly affecting me might put a dent in the likely already reduced cash flow of the industry over the last several years. From this article, Can you still make money on Youtube?, "YouTube shares 55% of its ad revenue with video creators and books an average of $7.60 per 1,000 ad views. That means you get about $4.18 for every 1,000 views of ads shown on your videos." For a channel like Sweets (sorted by views) where their views run from several thousand to 2.3 million the difference might not be insubstantial. The aspects which concern me most strike closer to home. Since, as mentioned above, I work on websites and with organizations trying to promote kendama the restrictions on tools we use to promote is never a good thing. Here's a current real world example for you. The new JKA site is up and we locally hosted the trick videos as was done on the previous iteration of their site. iOS mobile users have been reporting back that they're having some issues watching the videos. The web designers suggested that we follow their company's practice of hosting video on Youtube and linking from the JKA site. If kendama videos are suddenly tagged with the "made for kids" label the playlists we've created, the ability to follow and be notified about new videos, and perhaps even the linking on the JKA site itself will not be possible (the info I've seen mentions not being able to share but I don't know if that would also include embedding). The playlist function alone is a valuable tool for teaching so removing them because of the "kids" label hurts those they claim to be helping; counter intuitive at best. You can see the effort and benefits of well curated playlists here: Sweets playlists Those restrictions seem like Youtube is penalizing creators for something that they were caught doing wrong. If in fact those are restrictions mandated by COPPA compliance then it would appear to be questionable law creation by people who might not actually understand what they are trying to regulate. The equation kendama = toy and toy = kids I think will be the rough filter used to enact the restrictions. It's hard to see the restrictions having the desired stated effect of protecting kids but will have a fairly detrimental effect on content creators and their audiences. Personally I don't see the connection between creating playlists and sharing videos vs. collecting data on kids and selling it to advertisers. The first part of that is what we as creators and users do but the second is the part for which Youtube received its sanctions; it seems a bit of a non sequitur. Tangent alert: As for protections from advertisers I think that the general assumption is that adults have brain functions which are capable of discerning what is and isn't in their best interest; children not so much. Unfortunately this is probably a bit idealistic particularly in our current dopamine fueled digital lifestyles. They don't call it "impulse buy" for nothing. It's a bit of a Catch 22, companies need to make money to stay viable and they all fight with each other over a finite market. Sometimes the market actually has a "need" for something but it can't be discovered and created without companies making enough money to invest in R&D and production. Perhaps part of the difficulty comes also from the market's definition of "need" vs "want" and the companies efforts to move a "want" into the "need" category. It's usually a perception shift rather than a "real" shift however. It's a bit of a conundrum since it is easy to put the blame entirely on the companies but they only do what works and we let it work by not accepting more responsibility for the world around us. Didn't really plan on getting up on the soap box for quite so long but to bring it back closer to home take out the generic "companies" above and insert "kendama companies." They face the same issues about staying in business and competing for a limited market's time and money. If you want to have your favorite companies continue to exist can you fault them for whatever efforts they make to grab attention and hold on to their current customers and create new ones? Do we all like or agree with all the methods, likely not but as the saying goes "innovate or die." They must keep trying things because we the market won't tolerate stagnation; got to have the "new new."
What a beautifully condensed summation of the issue at the heart of the US govt trying to regulate the Internet. Remember how awkward and clearly out of touch our congress-people were when trying to question Zuckerberg during his hearing? Nowhere in the text of COPPA does it say explicitly "in order to comply, you must demonetize any content creators on your platform that target children." Instead, it restricts the way children can interact with certain content and what data can be collected on them which in turn restricts the way YT traditionally measures the value of that content. Since their compensation structure is dependent on the amount of advertising they can slap on content, restricting the amount of advertising that can be done on a video means that the creator can't be compensated at the same rate moving forward unless Youtube decided to change its policies to incentivize creators to stay with them. I think the reality here, at least in my opinion, is that YT has the budget and the lawyers to interpret COPPA sort of however they'd like to. However, instead of offering contracts, re-evaluating compensation structures, offering tip or donation options on certain content, etc., they're taking the most milquetoast way out and simply letting a huge part of their community take the majority of the negative impact of the change.
I suppose somewhere deep down at the very core of market theory, you can draw similarities between Sweets Kendamas and Google. It's just impossible for me to feel anything even verging on sympathy for a corporation like Google. I 100% want a company like Sweets to get every leg up it can. In this case, the only thing even potentially threatening kendama companies as a result of COPPA is the way YT has chosen to apply it. Legislators won't be determining what is "for kids", YT will. Maybe there will be some high profile lawsuits down the line, but those will be about the kid vloggers with millions of followers and will probably settle out of court anyway.
I don't disagree with anything you wrote, but ultimately the lobbyists (lawyers paid by tech corporations) will be the ones that actually write the laws. Bumbling old politicians just need to be coerced into thinking the laws are good, or at least worth the lobbying cash they receive for backing it.
Yeah that's a helpful distinction. Coupled with whatever millennial staffer the elected official looks to on any given day to help explain what the hell the Internet is.
It appears you took my thoughts a level deeper than I was thinking about at the time. I see Google as a tool used by companies to promote their products/brands so it is those companies, not Google itself, I was referring to in my post above. The advertisers are in the business of promoting their products/brand to the market in order to stay in business so that's how I made the jump to kendama companies trying different ideas to promote themselves. We might get tired of the non-stop "widget" promotions or the just plain odd ad methods for company A but they pretty much have to do something to get folks interested in their products/brand. With more thought on the Google aspect I also see the users of the Google ad service as being legal but Google's methods that allowed them to develop/provide said service were illegal. To continue with the Sweets connection you mention above it would be analogous to the current QR codes on the kendama themselves or the new "signature" series. Sweets thinks it's a good idea, some in the market don't but it's part of an overall plan to promote their products and like it or not I find it hard to fault them for it. Perhaps it's a matter of degree or maybe that I have a particular affinity for kendama that makes me cringe a bit when I read some of the customer base hammering on various promotional ideas or business moves being tried out by any given kendama company; think GT's move to overseas production as another example. Agree about the implementation of YouTube's restrictions on kid related video content. YT's functional restrictions are killing it as a tool for kendama companies but the FTC will be the one pressing charges against non-compliant videos/creators. YT can only hand out strikes or delete a channel not impose financial penalties. Maybe this is just a wild thought but it kind of feels like maybe YouTube is wanting to be more of a service like Netflix, Hulu, etc. with less reliance on normal people as creators so they can finally make money. Even at their scale it costs them something to host every video but it's pretty unlikely they're making anything on the 10 hour white noise sleep videos, random goofiness videos with only a few views, etc. Here are some of the restrictions on kid related content: Comments disabled No personalized ads - the big monetization feature No options for cards No options for end screens Cannot share Cannot add to playlist Cannot use "watch later" No stories No community tab No notification bell My understanding is that you might be somewhat mistaken here. The Viva Frei video above has a clip (3.11) from the FTC official stating that they would in fact be monitoring content producers and their first sweep of YouTube will be in 2020. YouTube isn't the one on the hook for the $42,530 per video if there's a disputed labeling, the content creator is. YouTube is shifting the responsibility for their error onto creators. Here's another piece explaining more.
Hmm, in the context of the financial penalty, I wonder what jurisdiction the FTC has to enforce these rulings on non-Americans? Its a slightly different situation- but in Canada if you download/watch pirated content, you might occasionally receive a letter from your ISP. This letter has two parts: the first one is a message that your ISP forwards to you, written by the relevant rights-holder in the US, telling you that you are liable for HUGE fines and penalties, and that they are coming for you. The second letter is from your ISP, and it says you can ignore the first letter because those rights-holders have jurisdiction within the US (ie not Canada), and so their threats are meaningless. The letter from your ISP concludes by saying something like "you shouldn't pirate media, but if you do the absolute maximum penalty is ~$5,000 CAD". On a different note, I can understand the idea that a business will want to explore every avenue for gaining revenue, but I think we should be careful to not use this as an excuse for questionable behaviour. Of course, everyone will have a different definition of 'questionable behaviour', but I just hope that methods used today won't come back to bite us later (and I think A LOT of the ad-tech industry is dangerous in this way). I think most consumers don't have any idea of the depth of these technologies, the absolute invasiveness of them. A simple example: I have been contacted a few times lately to trial a new service, that is designed to "find influencers amongst your already-existing customers". The idea is to cross-reference your customer information/email lists/etc against publicly available social-media information. For example, if you have a customer profile that uses the same email address as a twitter account with a huge number of followers, you get notified so that you can contact that individual and offer them some deals or whatever, to help promote your product in a more organic way (they are already a customer! Not just an influencer to be bought for the day). The idea is reasonable enough, but also strips the ability of someone to just 'blend in with the crowd', which I think is fundamentally important. If we lose privacy in this way, we run into some existential problems in the long run. Many companies exist to simply track and build profiles for individuals online, the more info they gain, the more easily they can manipulate consumers.
@htimSxelA The overseas creators point is something to think about. I don't monetize any of our channels so I don't know the details but if the money paid by YT goes into a US bank the FTC could likely get to any funds there and since YT/Google are US companies the government could likely go straight to them and take any income owed or at least block a users access to it. Also since the FTC is a government entity they could also likely work with Customs and Immigration to block or otherwise impede entry into the US or allow it and take you to court once in the country. Likely as not however they'll probably start with the low hanging fruit (US users). I don't know the under 13 demographic of PewDiePie but his numbers might be incentive for the FTC to look into overseas users in the future. As for businesses getting a pass on their ad practices, nope not advocating or supporting that but in the same breath realize they need to pay the bills. There are also concerns about who becomes the arbiter of "questionable behaviour" since, as mentioned above, those crafting the restrictions don't always have the most complete knowledge or purist of goals. Also as long as consumers have their own brains to process the data and personal choice I can't see putting all responsibility on the shoulders of a business (or government for that matter). Unfortunately convenience and price trump common sense in the vast majority of the market. Temptation doesn't mean a person must give into it. In a number of cases over the years we've seen people attempt to cede responsibility for one's own life to an external entity be it company, government, etc. Just because they sell $1 double chocolate eclairs right next to the cash register at your favorite coffee shop doesn't mean that you must consume 2 a day for year and then try to blame the coffee shop for health issues related that consumption. I'd like to say that it's complicated and a slippery slope and leave it at that but I really believe that handing off our responsibilities and expecting others to look out for our best interest is unrealistic at best and dangerously foolhardy at worst. There was a public submission period for the FTC's ruling mentioned in one of the videos so at least there is some limited feedback possibilities there. I'm not sure what recourse there is available to us about YouTube however. UPDATE: FTC comment link Petition link
Gonna keep it short and sweet Really stoked to share my perspective on this critical issue. I’ve been a long time super fan of Pewdiepie so I have way too much knowledge on the history of YouTube’s relationships with it’s content creators. It’s diarrhea to put it nicely. Media develops controversy and they react by spraying their feces all over who’s behind them, the creators. Adpocalypse 1 and 2 was scary enough for the people making a living off the platform but right after it seemed YouTube was taking more feedback and communicating a bit more with their audience/ creators this hit the fan. Overcompensation for PR is their specialty. Basically, their options are: 1. Return to vulgar language, edgy content/jokes and risk being demonitized. 2. Hit the “for kids” button and make nothing anyway. 3. Risk a $42000 lawsuit per video. And just consider the channels with content that all ages enjoy, that people outside the internet might not get. I know there are adults that enjoy lego, figurine, card openings, gaming, unboxing, meme and similar channels many would consider childish in nature. The Ryan toy review channel would not have made the insane money it has if this was implemented earlier. Looking at Pewdiepie: He’s been uploading daily for nearly 10 years now. He’s already been a media target, despite being a greatly humble and charitable individual. Imagine if his channel is sued $42000 per video. Insane. I hope I have details right, haven’t had too much time to research it, but I feel really bad for all these people relying on the platform for their livelihood. Wish I could put way more time into this, I’ve honestly spent way too much free time on YouTube, it’s history, and it’s controversies. It’ll be very interesting to see the next few months play out.