[14]

I for one am glad at this though I am sure the fine could have been exponentially larger. The fact that YouTube can go here and say their platform is only intended for 13 year olds and up is a joke. Their are thousands of shows targeted directly at my kids. I can even clearly hear one video my kid likes to watch starts out with saying “look kids” so tell me how that is not directed at kids. I use an adblocker but when I go to my moms she doesn’t have it set up on her iPad. The kids shows are bombarded with ads for adult products like cars or you name it. They are marketing towards kids and I can’t stand it.

[midev]

You need to be a parent and not expect regulatory fines to watch your children. You've identified a problem, you've identified the cause, and now you need to do something about it within your household.

You're literally talking about a video you let your child watch, while bemoaning the FCC needing to step in.

> The fact that YouTube can go here and say their platform is only intended for 13 year olds and up is a joke

The joke is that you understand YouTube is for 13 year olds and up, and you still allow your child on there. Personal responsibility needs to come first.

> They are marketing towards kids and I can’t stand it.

What kind of home router do you have. I'll show you how to block YouTube. Your mom can do similar things at home. There are plenty of blocking solutions out there. Which ones have you tried?

[etse]

How is demanding fines not being a parent? They are not mutually exclusive.

The comment about moms blocking YouTube is a bit ridiculous. Seems hard to believe likelihood of finding one could be higher than the likelihood of finding a kid who can work around it.

[midev]

One should come before the other. You should parent before calling for regulations.

> The comment about moms blocking YouTube is a bit ridiculous. Seems hard to believe likelihood of finding one could be higher than the likelihood of finding a kid who can work around it.

It is not hard to block domains at the router, and restrict the devices your child has access to. Of course they might use a friends, or find a way around it. But the OP is literally talking about overhearing the video on the couch and not doing anything about it.

That's why I asked what they tried... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOTyUfOHgas

[point78]

Completely wrong, everything targeted at children (for decades) is regulated. If your kid is watching Sesame Street on PBS and an ad for The Sopranos appears - that does not happen for a reason.

Uploading cartoon nursery rhymes and having an ad for drug trafficking come up is idiotic.

[johnisgood]

It very may well be regulated, sure, but what is completely wrong exactly? Parents are responsible for their children! Is this incorrect? We can go back to how parents blame everyone but themselves when their kid steals their credit card to buy, say, loot boxes.

[DanBC]

We don't want a society where parents have to helicopter their children. We want a society where parents can give their children gradual access to freedom.

> We can go back to how parents blame everyone but themselves when their kid steals their credit card to buy, say, loot boxes.

This is a completely different problem. Content is made for children. Those content creators don't want unsuitable ads in the content. The children enjoy watching the content. Those children don't want unsuitable ads. The parents are happy for their children to watch the content. Those parents don't want unsuitable ads.

All YouTube has to do is give content creators a checkbox: "Is this content aimed at people under 18?", then not place ads for gambling or alcohol or horror movies etc against that content.

YouTube needs to be aware that regulation is coming, and they're not going to like what the EU will impose.

[johnisgood]

> We want a society where parents can give their children gradual access to freedom.

Of course. There was another submission under which the US was called out for having less of that in comparison to Europe. As I said, kids are free to be kids around here in Eastern Europe, there are lots of playgrounds being built for them, they are usually allowed to go to school and back alone, and so on. Kids' freedom is less restricted in the name of safety.

> We don't want a society where parents have to helicopter their children.

I am not sure what exactly you mean by this. What I am trying to say is that if someone's kids buy something with their credit card, then perhaps they should find a solution to that within the household (parenting) instead of asking the Government to step in.

Regarding my example, I only meant to bring up the trend which I observed lately that some parents put the blame on everyone else but themselves, that is, they do not assume parental responsibility.

> All YouTube has to do is give content creators a checkbox: "Is this content aimed at people under 18?", then not place ads for gambling or alcohol or horror movies etc against that content.

Yes, I do agree with not placing ads targeted for adults when the videos are targeted for children. There is a solution to it right now though, namely ad blockers. Parents could install or ask their kids to install, say, uBlock and perhaps even uMatrix. They do not have to wait for the regulations. :)

[cj]

It sounds like you're basically saying this: "Parents, stop complaining. Either move to a country that's safe like here in Eastern Europe where you don't have to helicopter your children in the name of safety, OR act on your parental responsibility to shelter your kids from the bad things in the world BUT don't discuss with anyone how society is broken or how it could be better."

I think the mistake you're making is assuming everything is binary. "A parent either assumes parental responsibility OR they complain about how society is corrupting their child."

But why can't a parent do both?

[jimktrains2]

Ad blockers don't work well on the YouTube app. I still can't get adaway to block YouTube app adds, not to mention people on iOS or without root.

[14]

You are partially correct. Yes parents are responsible for their kids but not always. We have laws making it illegal for kids to buy alcohol. If the store sells alcohol to my kid they have broken the law and it was their responsibility to not sell it to my kid. So as you can see there are examples out in the world where yes as a parent we teach our kids alcohol is bad and for kids wait to an adult but the responsibility for not allowing that actually falls on all of society. You can't legally serve a kid alcohol. And I also believe the same will be said of Youtube. You can't serve all this content obviously directed at little kids, and lets cut the bullshit this is directed at kids or do I need to go find several videos and link to them where they into the video saying "hey kids...today bla bla bla", and then fill it with predatory ads. The TV industry was hit with this years and years ago and made a standard for tv shows so children did not get exposed to crap. Youtube surely saw this coming? They let is happen for years so again I think they deserve this punishment but wish it was even bigger.

[point78]

Yes they are, but you're leaving out the most important point here. It's content SPECIFICALLY designed for babies. The onus is on the producer - whether it's toys, videos, ads - for us to have some regulation saying x is ok but not y.

By your method of thinking...let's just make everything OK for babies and let the parents decide.

That makes no sense...it's why society has laws (Why can't I go buy a bazooka in Europe? Because there are laws).

[DanBC]

> You're literally talking about a video you let your child watch, while bemoaning the FCC needing to step in.

But other video providers can make sure that video and the ads placed against that video is suitable for children. I can let a 7 year old sit and watch uk ITV kids content for an hour and I know it'll be fine. I cannot do that for YouTube, because YT ignores the regulatory framework.

That framework is largely voluntary, so sure they don't _have_ to comply with it. But whenever this comes up (especially with taxes) people say "if you don't like non-compliance with voluntary regulation just change the law". And then, when the law is changed (eg, GDPR), people lose their shit and talk about how restrictive the law is.

[luckylion]

> I can let a 7 year old sit and watch uk ITV kids content for an hour and I know it'll be fine. I cannot do that for YouTube, because YT ignores the regulatory framework.

That's mostly because ITV is a television network and YT is a platform, not a publisher. ITV curates the content (and the ads), YT does not. One is meant for children, the other is not, though some third parties are putting content on the YT platform aimed at children. Those are major differences. If you want to let a child alone in front of a screen, turn to television.

[dmix]

Isn't there a YouTube kids version? I'm not a parent so I've never used it and I've been curious since I also see that Netflix had a cordoned off sections for kids too. I'm not sure if these are sufficient content and feature wise?

Also is there any parental consent thing going on here as well with how YouTube words it?

I remember seeing plenty of adult ads as a kid watching TV at night time watching with my parents. The morning kids shows and kids channels always had ads for children of course. Id imagine it's in YouTubes interest not to show kids adult ads as well, most adults probably aren't sitting around watching the same shows with them to make the adult ads useful.

[ryanjshaw]

There is but it is not free from very disturbing issues (search for 'elsagate').

Also YouTube Kids has no quality controls. It uses more bandwidth, due to our hires tablet display I guess, than any other device in our household. Very annoying when on capped LTE on a trip.

[mav3rick]

You can set video quality to a lower res.

[jan_g]

There is and any parent giving their phone/tablet to young kids should at minimum make sure it's YouTube Kids they're watching. It doesn't have ads or comments section, for example. As for its content being sufficiently filtered or not - nowadays I think it is.

We, the parents, should of course try to minimize the amount of time our kids spend with youtube or in general with phones/tablets/TVs.

[point78]

Cartoon nursery rhymes directed at as low as even 1 year olds will sometimes have ads popup for a tv show containing drugs and guns. Completely inappropriate!

EVERYTHING that deals with children whether directly or indirectly is strictly regulated, and rightly so.

Television programming as an example, for 70 years only permits certain ads to be displayed on children's shows.

YouTube should be regulated by the FCC in regards to this and very easily can have a checkbox for advertisers and providers to check that says the content is for under 13 or not.

[DanBC]

Yes.

I've complained to the UK regulator about gambling ads placed in children's content and they are paying attention.

They say it's hard because YouTube forbids (because COPPA) anyone under 13 from having an account, which means those children use their parent's accounts, and so the demographics used by the advertisers are skewed.

However, they did take action against every single gambling company I complained about because the ads were placed against children's content.

[izacus]

> Cartoon nursery rhymes directed at as low as even 1 year olds will sometimes have ads popup for a tv show containing drugs and guns. Completely inappropriate!

Does that still happen if you actually pay for the service via Prermium subscription? Or only if you want to use it completely free and paying nothing?

[point78]

Free. Just like public broadcasting system is free and when watching Sesame Street an ad for The Wire (Or whatever came up) will not happen.

[wolco]

I thought having an account required 13 or over but to view a public video there are no age restrictions.