The possible end of YouTube as we know it

COPPA – censorship and regulation in practice and a perfect example of throwing out the bathwater with all the children – literally.

In 1998, the COPPA law came into effect in the United States, which limits the nature of data that can be collected from children under the age of 13. Which is probably fine, but in the electronic age, it has also started to apply to computers and so-called COOKIES that collect information about you on the Internet, what interests you.
If you search for information about pigs on Google, for example, you will soon start seeing ads for domestic pigs, slaughterhouses, or pork feasts.

And that has NOT been allowed for children since 1998. But how do you know that a child is sitting at the computer?
Of course not, and it's all nonsense.

Parents have become accustomed to shifting responsibility first to the school, then to the state, and now even to internet content creators.

And the state (the American one) began to solve it in its own way.

In September, YouTube was fined a record $170 million for not monitoring this on its network. (Read: It should monitor who is sitting at the computer and actually watching videos) As I wrote – this is complete nonsense.
The fine is record-breaking, but considering YouTube makes $136 BILLION in net advertising revenue every year, it's actually completely ridiculous for them.
Nevertheless, YouTube decided to take a drastic step and now shifted its responsibility, which is inherently meaningless, onto its creators, who feed the entire YouTube.

Every creator (worldwide) MUST now mark their video as made for kids, and if they do so incorrectly, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) can fine them up to $43,000 for EACH such video.
Starting in January, YouTube's artificial intelligence will start looking for such videos. I'm looking forward to seeing the thousands of adult animated films that it will mark as children's...

And what is a video for children?
According to Youtube:

– It features children or child characters.
– It features popular children's programs or animated characters.
– It includes theater or stories with children's toys.
– There are child protagonists who participate in common play patterns, such as theater or imaginary games.
– It contains popular children's songs, stories and poems.

So it can be ANY video with a clear conscience.

The problem is that a video that is marked as child-friendly in this way will have ALL comments disabled, notifications will not work for the channel, and worst of all, ad revenue for the creator will be reduced by 50-90% because the channel will not be able to use targeted ads.

A person could spend years building a channel for children, with lots of games, toys, or animated films. He invested a lot of time and perhaps even a huge amount of money in it, because many channels (especially in America) are highly professional and generate tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. And now YouTube has completely cut that off with one decision and will easily destroy the companies' many years of work and they will lose their audience and their considerable income. And what's worse, they will stop creating more content for their viewers - that is, for you.

In 2016, YouTube began penalizing creators for videos that were deemed "too adult" and now penalizes other creators for videos that are "too childish"... - once again, we are witnessing state regulation and censorship in practice, which leads to hell.

And yet it would be enough for the parent to give consent that they are aware that the child is using YouTube, or to start using the designated YouTube Kids, or to monitor what their child is watching, or to make YouTube officially inaccessible until the age of 18. But NOT for YouTube to transfer its legal responsibility to the creator.

If you don't care about this and want to support creators on YouTube, here it is petition, against this step., which has already been signed by 80,000 people in two weeks. (EDIT – 300,000 – EDIT II – 500,000)