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Comment by newguy1234 | Hacker News Reader

Google/youtube still won't be able to do anything because kids are smart. They'll just make accounts saying they're 22 years old. It reminds me of the times when I was like 14 and started watching pornography. To say the least, you quickly learn to just click the "yes, I am 18+ years old". That's the reality. If YT/google were to really enforce it they would make all YT/google accounts require ID submission for commenting/uploading etc.

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Google already has a minimum age of 13 to create an account (the maximum age before COPPA no longer applies). The issue here is that if a child didn't sign in or used an account where they claimed to be older, they would still have their information collected - the FTC is arguing that Google should have disabled tracking on all videos targeted towards children, even when they didn't know the age of the person watching.

So basically all kid content creators are going to be hit hard once this goes into effect, and we'll get another wave of backlash about "Youtube is killing our channel"

The trickier part is "all age" content. Even something like Minecraft, which at the surface is aimed at kids, I know many adults who watch and play the game... Are all Minecraft streamers screwed?

I don't understand why kid content creators are going to be punished here; Google can't collect data from people watching kids content and can't serve targeted add to them - so what? They can still count views and play untargeted ads and pay out creators?

I don't see anything saying they can't play ads? They can even target them without having to collect any info. If you are watching a kids video its pretty obvious an advert about toys or kids games would be relevant.

That's true, it will still play ads, but obviously non-targeted ads are not as lucrative (an adult watching a Minecraft video doesn't care about toys), therefore, there will still be a non-negligible hit in revenue. If the difference was negligible, why would Google spend so much time developing targeted ads?

The adult watching kids videos is something I did not consider. Target ads are useful for adults because their wants and needs are far more diverse. Only a fraction of adults are interested in buying a circular saw so targeted ads are needed but for kids you can put a pretty safe bet on the fact that a lego advert on a kids show will hit the correct audience pretty spot on.

You weave unsubstantiated comments into you arguments. They would be stronger if you didn't.

Which is a real shame. All people lose a little freedom and anonymity to "protect the children".

Nothing about the law or settlement is about blocking children from viewing inappropriate content. It is solely about Google violating children's privacy by collecting information on viewers of content that targets children.

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