Long story short: there is a US law called The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) since 1998 which is about chldren's online access to harmful/obscene content. YouTube has defended itself that their service is not for children - however it seems they lost lawsuits regarding that and they will be forced to comply from 1 January 2020. That means if you are posting videos on YouTube, and the FTC finds out that your content is harmful for children - according to their definition - you can be sued for a very large amount of money (~42k USD per video), unless you tagged your content as inappropriate for children under the age of 13. You can also be sued if you are not American.
There is a thread about this on the Elder Scrolls Online forum. The problem is that it seems FTC thinks everything about videogames belongs here: "if your content includes traditional children’s pastimes or activities, it may be child-directed" (quote from here). That could effect every gaming YouTube-channel from January.

4 years ago

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Awesome! Hope they enforce it

4 years ago
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I sure hope you are being sarcastic here. But could not find the /s.

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4 years ago
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"You can also be sued if you are not American"

Good luck with that.

4 years ago
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YouTube and Google can also terminate your affected account. Delete all the videos, emails etc :P

4 years ago
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Of course they can.

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I've been hearing a bunch of youtube chanels talk about this as if it's gonna be the end of the site and everyone is going to get sued into bankrupcy even if they're outside the US.
Meh, it'll probably just kill the kid oriented content, which honestly sounds like a positive, as most creators will probably just start doing stuff that's firmly into adult territory. Can't wait for gratuitous edgyness and cursing, it's gonna be hilarious.
And about youtubers from the rest of the world, how on earth do they plan to apply this IRL? They can't step over the laws of other countries, will they raid your house, kidnap you, and secretly fly you to US territory? XD
Let's be real, this gonna be a shitshow (bright colors are included in the list for fucks sake), but it'll probably be a fun shitshow to watch.

4 years ago
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4 years ago
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The vast majority of youtube content will be marked as inappropriate for children, and the standard obnoxious intros will have disclaimers warning as much, and will only be viewable through registered accounts. This will place the onus on youtube for moderating new accounts, but in typical youtube fashion they will bow to every threat and penalise/wipe out anything the automated media attackdogs point at.

The end result is that content creators may finally migrate to other services that may consider standing their ground, or not defaulting to blind penalties towards anyone accused of anything without evidence or reason. It sucks for those that came to use youtube as a source of income, but we've known for a very long time now that youtube is not a reliable host, and will function only in the manner that is both most convenient and most profitable for themselves. A company wanting to lean into making money isn't bad in itself, but when it has no own-brand loyalty to those that prop it up, it becomes troublesome, and maybe getting bitten in the pocketbook will give them pause for thought.

4 years ago
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This recap of legal docs & law by an attorney on Youtube didn't yield much in terms of complaints or concern here, in part because an "operator" is defined as a platform like Youtube and NOT individual content creators, which is why YT is recently having to make people go through more hoops with regards to age-awareness so that YT doesn't target ads specifically at kids under 13 and such.

4 years ago
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Thought this might be helpful as well: https://youtu.be/C3Q48dwopVU A vid by an actual lawyer

4 years ago
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