A quick heads up - we’re getting a lot of feedback that YouTube creators are just deleting videos after the announcement about COPPA, which seems to be completely the wrong thing to do. If you're unsure whether your videos are made for kids or not, play it safe in the short term and set that video to ‘Made for Kids’. And then, as we move into 2020 and we get a better understanding of how we should categorize our content, change it then, but deleting videos means you're losing the views, and you're losing potential ad revenue. It makes no sense.

YouTube is not banning you from making content for children. They just want you to make sure that you know what you're doing because you are liable for a fine if you get it wrong, and that fine, apparently, will be $42,530 U.S. dollars. Yes, that's correct, folks. This number is now actually a search term on YouTube, littering video titles because a huge number of creators have got it into their heads that they will be caught by the FTC and they will be fined $42,530.

We ourselves have been guilty of using that very figure in one of our thumbnails because it's simple to use and it creates a headline statement which is almost guaranteed clicks, but are all of us who are talking about this topic doing all of you a disservice? The only way to find out is to check the facts and go to the source, which is the FTC.

YouTube Channel Owners: "Is Your Content Directed to Children?

What are the possible penalties for violating COPPA? The Rule allows for civil penalties of 

All right, then, some key wording right out of the gate. This is not a fixed penalty. You could be fined up to that amount. If you're a video creator with 100 subscribers who has never monetized their content, and you break the COPPA law by accident, do you think you're going to be hit with $42,530? For legal reasons, I don't think I can say no with 100% certainty, but you know those bacterial wipes that say that they kill 99.999% of germs? That's how confident I am that you wouldn't get a $42,530 fine. Also from that FTC page:

The FTC considers a number of factors in determining the appropriate amount, including a company's financial condition and the impact a penalty could have on its ability to stay in business.

The vast majority of you watching this video are not companies, you're independent video creators, and in the same breath, not to be offensive, but most of you are either not monetized or make very little money from monetization on YouTube. Because you see, a lot of what the FTC is about to embark on with YouTube content creators is uncharted waters.

Here's a pop quiz. How many cases has the FTC investigated which have resulted in fines? If you said over 10,000, you're wrong. If you said over 1,000, you're still wrong. If you said over 100, you are still wrong.

The $170 million judgment against YouTube is 30 times larger than the largest COPPA civil penalty the FTC has ever previously obtained, and it is 10 times larger than the civil penalties we have obtained in all of our 31 prior COPPA cases combined.

To put this into perspective, there are millions of video creators on YouTube, and if just 1% of those creators violate COPPA, that's at least 10,000 content creators the FTC will have to investigate. Whatever way you look at it, 30 doesn't go into 10,000, especially when those 30 cases were investigated over the span of 20 years.

The FTC has stated that once its order has been effective for a period of time, the commission will conduct a sweep of the YouTube platform, determine whether child-directed content is being properly designated as such in order to ensure that the channels themselves are complying with COPPA. None of us knows what a sweep means in this instance. It's very unlikely to be people at the FTC watching every single video that's published to YouTube. It's likely to be more automated in some way.

From a very simplistic and somewhat naive viewpoint, it's all very well and good having an automated system go through the YouTube content, but surely, at some point, if the FTC is going to impose financial fines on an individual human being, then, at some point, there needs to be a human at the FTC making sure that the automated system got it right. Oh, no, wait. That's what YouTube does, and they often get it wrong. And I still can't wrap my head around this. Just over 30 cases in 20 years versus 23 million video creators uploading 500 hours of content every single minute. How is the FTC seriously going to deal with all of this content fairly?

And that leads me to believe that a lot of cases are going to fall to YouTube's automated machine learning. I wouldn't be surprised if only a fraction of the COPPA violations ever hit somebody's desk at the FTC. They're going to rely on YouTube to police their own content for many of the creators who are under a certain number of subscribers or views on videos, but that is just my opinion. It's not based on any facts right now, because it hasn't happened. We haven't got any cases to look at yet. And if it is left to YouTube's machine learning to police your content, what's much more likely to happen than a huge fine?

YouTube will recategorize your content as ‘Made for Kids’. You'll lose the personalized ad revenue. You'll lose comments, you'll lose stories, community tab, all those sorts of things, but you will not get $42,530 fine to pay.

The FTC is not out to impose maximum fines wherever possible. They will assess the financial conditions of the violator and their ability to stay in business. And for the vast majority of video creators, that sentence isn't even compatible. This is not your business, it's your passion. It's your creative outlet. It would cost the FTC so much to fine so many of you so little for it to not even be worth it, and when you start to investigate previous cases, you discover just how much trouble a company needs to get into.

In this case, a company called I-Dressup had 2.1 million registered users. A quarter of a million of them were known to be under 13. They were fined $35,000. What would that be the equivalent of in YouTube terms? Two million subscribers? In two other cases, the companies had fewer members or registered users on their books but were fined a lot more money. Today, the FTC has dealt with established money-making enterprises, and can only investigate them on a case-by-case basis.

The COPPA fines also seem to be calculated to be the revenue earned from targeted advertising. Again, for the vast majority of channels who are really worried about this, it shrinks the potential fine to a minuscule amount.

Now, I'm not saying this should be applied to every single channel. If you take a look at Jake Paul, for example, a huge channel, well-established, that has been accused of targeting merchandising sales to children under the age of 13, those are the types of channels who want to be looking over their shoulders, not the typical video creator such as yourself.

So, with all of this being said, does it convince you that if you continue to make videos on YouTube, you will not be hit with a $42,530 fine from the FTC? Yes, children's content creators are still going to be massively impacted in a negative way on the YouTube platform. They have serious questions to ask themselves as we move into 2020. I wish you all the best of luck on whatever decision you decide to make, but ultimately, YouTube, with its near two billion monthly active users, isn’t going anywhere.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

When it comes to COPPA, the FTC, and YouTube there is one shock and awe number that is scaring everyone - that potential $42,530 fine. Is this just clickbait or a very real threat for YouTubers?

How Likely Are You to Receive a $42,530 Fine Under YouTube's FTC COPPA Rules?

If you are a creator, you should be aware of the changes made by YouTube around COPPA (see our ‘

11 Things You Need to Know About COPPA and Kid's Content on YouTube TODAY

Under the law, websites are restricted from collecting personal information from users aged under 13. Now at this point, you might be thinking, I make videos from the UK or elsewhere, why does this affect me? Well, YouTube is a US company and anyone in the world can watch YouTube content so it affects that privacy policy, and it affects you.

, YouTube was given time to get their house in order to protect children in the future, and now those changes are in full effect.

Essentially if you are a video creator on YouTube, this is a brand new term that you have to get used to - ‘Made for Kids.’ YouTube is enforcing much stricter rules and placing the onus on you to communicate to your audience whether that content is appropriate for children.

‘Made For Kids?’ - New Settings on YouTube

If you haven't already updated your settings around the new policy, now is the time to do it:

Go to the new Creator Studio and on the left-hand side, click on settings.

Then go to the Channel section, followed by the Advanced Settings tab. This is the new channel audience setting which tells YouTube whether all of your content is made for kids, none of your content is made for kids or some of your content is made for kids.

If you select yes, you will see a brief description of how this impacts your channel which we will cover in a moment. Consider this your master setting that affects all of the content on your channel. This setting will affect all current videos on your channel and all future content on your channel.

And this is not an opt-in choice, no matter where you are in the world as a video creator, you need to check this setting and determine whether or not your content is made for kids, or not. As stated on the setting, regardless of your location, you're legally required to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act and all of the laws.

Now obviously not all of your content may fall into one bucket, so you can adjust audience settings for videos on an individual basis by:

Going to the Video Manager page, and checking ‘Videos’

Click on the edit button and then go to ‘Audience’

From this screen, you'll simply be asked whether the videos checked are made for kids or not.

Also, when you upload a video, you'll be asked this question and depending on how you've answered it on your channel settings, that default will be used and you can change it if you wish.

So you can't dodge the question. It's going be coming up on your channel settings and on individual videos. You must answer whether or not the content is made for kids. And if you're going to try and cheat the system and lie, YouTube have machine learning in place trying to detect whether or not your content is made for kids.

YouTube & ‘Made for Kids’ Content: Penalties for Creators

Now given YouTube's history, unfortunately, mistakes are likely to be made with the content being mislabeled as one or the other. The question for you is, if you do fall into the wrong categorization, what potential penalties are there for you as the individual video creator?

They're, potentially, quite harsh. The maximum civil penalty that the FTC may enforce for each breach could be 

. So in a worst-case scenario, all it would take it is 24 videos to be mislabeled on your YouTube channel to wrack up a fine of over $1,000,000.

Now there is quite a bit to unpack from that huge number. Are the FTC going to fine every single video creator that amount of money if they misrepresent their content on YouTube? And given that there are hundreds of hours of content uploaded onto YouTube every single minute, how is that going to be policed?

And to be honest, I don't think any of us have the answers to those questions right now. What everybody is saying to you right now is to air on the side of extreme caution. Make sure that your content is correctly labeled and you think about the content when you're making it as to whether or not it is appropriate for kids.

The next big question to consider is, what is kid's content? Well, these are seven things you should consider:

Whether children are your intended audience for the video.

Whether the video includes child actors or models.

Whether the video includes characters, celebrities or toys that appeal to children including animated characters or cartoon figures.

Whether the language of the video is intended for children to understand.

Whether the video includes activities that appeal to children.

And whether the video includes songs, stories or poems that appeal to children.

Now I will appreciate that every single video on YouTube will garner a slightly different answer to all of those questions. And some are more clear cut than others. Baby Shark for example, yeah that's pretty much designed for children. But a full night montage of comical moments, that's a little bit more of a gray area and, unfortunately again, we don't have the answers.

The other frustration for video creators is that YouTube doesn’t necessarily have the answers either. When no longer in the realm of YouTube community guidelines, their rules, we're now into law and YouTube has stated that:

Ultimately we can't provide legal advice. So we're unable to confirm whether or not your content is made for kids. That decision is up to you taking into consideration these factors. But we want to help you follow the law as much as we can. Check out our help center and talk to a lawyer if you're still unsure whether or not your content should be marked as made for kids.

There are two things there that essentially cover YouTube's butt. In order to avoid, another $180,000,000 fine, they're making sure that you, the individual video creator, are responsible for telling your audience who that content is appropriate for.

And second of all, YouTube is not going to determine whether or not content is kids' content. If it got to that point, it would be for the law to decide. And that's why YouTube, along with everybody else who's covering this topic, is suggesting you seek legal counsel, if required. And for many of you, that's probably going be unrealistic but we have to say that.

Now, so far we've talked about the potential impact if you miscategorize your content on YouTube. However, if you tell YouTube that your videos are for kids, you also lose a significant number of YouTube features. All of these features are rooted in the collection of personal data which is exactly what YouTube need to avoid with viewers under the age of 13. And I know that for many of you video creators, this is a huge blow. It essentially means that you can't directly engage with your community because you don't know anything about them.

What if Your Content is Mislabelled as ‘Made for Kids’ on YouTube?

So far we've focused on channels that will be impacted by these changes, channels that do make content for children. But what about all of those other channels that shouldn't be affected because they don't create content for under thirteens. What if YouTube makes a mistake and it categorizes that content as made for kids? Is there any way they can appeal against that? Well, kind of.

If YouTube determines a video is made for kids you can send feedback. But what does send feedback mean? Does that constitute an appeal? And can you get YouTube to actually change the decision, once made? I think it's safe to say that while this is everything we currently know about YouTube's changes due to FTC and COPPA, we don't have enough real world examples of how this is going to impact channels.

So, whether YouTube will be able to change on appeal or what type of penalties you may get, those answers are still up in the air. What we will continue to do here at VidIQ is monitor the situation and give you all of the information as soon as we have it.

After a bombshell announcement, YouTube is making creators responsible for telling their audience who their content is appropriate for. Find out more about COPPA, the FTC and your YouTube channel.

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