Creators are slamming YouTube for automatically applying “Made For Kids” labels on their content. In a post on X, creator Hassan Khadair claims that this issue “nearly destroyed” his YouTube channel.
“They flagged hundreds of my videos where I am actively cursing and making suggestive jokes as made for kids and denied all my appeals,” he wrote. “I even tried changing my titles to something horrible and explicit, and they still denied it.”
Accompanying the post was a screenshot of the outcome of one of Khadair’s appeals. The video’s title appears to have numerous curse words and explicit sentiments.
In an interview with Passionfruit, Khadair, who has some content based around Mickey Mouse, says that he tried numerous workarounds to stop his videos being flagged as “Made For Kids.”
This included adding curse words into the titles of videos and changing mentions of Mickey Mouse to Steamboat Willie, which is in the public domain. Hassan also speculated that the term “Mickey Mouse” caused his videos to be flagged as “Made for Kids.”
“The system is inherently broken,” he said.
Are Cartoons Just For Kids?
Similarly, YouTuber and voice actor Shelby Young called out YouTube on X after claiming one of her videos was labeled as being “Made For Kids.” After publicly asking YouTube to accept her appeal, the platform responded by saying her video will remain labeled as being “Made For Kids.”
Young’s video appears to have been flagged like this because it involves a cartoon character. Although, as Young puts it, “Cartoons aren’t just for kids.”
(Young and Google did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.)
The rules for what qualifies as “made for kids” are very broad. They include any content centering on “actors, characters, activities, games, songs, stories, or other subject matter that reflect an intent to target children.”
What does the ‘Made For Kids’ setting on YouTube do?
In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) filed a lawsuit against YouTube and Google. The suit claimed that YouTube had violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA) by collecting young people’s personal data.
In order to stop this from happening again, Google reached a settlement with the FTC. Part of this settlement involved YouTube having to “create a mechanism” for channel owners to categorize videos based on whether they’re directed to children. This mechanism ended up as YouTube’s “Made For Kids” label, rolled out in 2020.
When YouTube labels a video as “Made For Kids,” creators will have less opportunity to earn revenue. This is because features like comments, personalized ads, info cards, and end screens will no longer be available.
Furthermore, YouTube sometimes applies these labels automatically with AI. While creators can appeal, it clearly doesn’t always work out.
As Khadair puts it: “If I clearly as an adult have marked my video as made for adults, and YouTube goes over my head and says it’s made for kids, that is really dangerous.”
Further reading:
- Can We Protect Kids Without Ruining the Internet?
- Senate Passes Landmark Bills To Protect Children Online
- Is AI Stealing From YouTubers? Copyright Law Faces a New Challenge
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