Invest In Your Health - Try CBD Today! Click Herehttps://www.naturalhempoil.comUse the Promo code Timpool for 10% off your purchaseMy Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnewsYoutube has been accused of many things and recently those accusations have escalated. Several groups filed a complaint against Youtube for what they say is the illegal collection of data from children.Following many of these stories I ran some experiments myself to see just how Youtube classifies videos from content creators.Make sure to subscribe for more travel, news, opinion, and documentary with Tim Pool everyday.Amazon Prime 30 day free trial - http://amzn.to/2sgiDqRMY GEARGoPro Karma - http://amzn.to/2qw10m4GoPro 6 - http://amzn.to/2CEK0z1DJI Mavic Drone - http://amzn.to/2lX9qgTZagg 12 AMP portable battery - http://amzn.to/2lXB6SxTASCAM Lavalier mic - http://amzn.to/2AwoIhI Canon HD XF 105 Camera - http://amzn.to/2m6v1o3Canon 5D MK III Camera - http://amzn.to/2CvFnnm360 Camera (VR) - http://amzn.to/2AxKu4RFOLLOW MEInstagram - http://instagram.com/TimcastTwitter - http://twitter.com/TimcastMinds - http://Minds.com/TimcastFacebook - http://facebook.com/TimcastnewsBitcoin Wallet: 13ha54MW2hYUS3q1jJhFyWdpNfdfMWtmhZSEND STUFF HERETim Pool330 Washington Street - PMB 517Hoboken, NJ 07030Support the show (http://timcast.com/donate)
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YouTube is now being accused of actually breaking the law.
Now, they've been accused of a lot of things, from censoring certain channels, filtering people based on their politics, to promoting creepy children's videos, and allowing creepy children's channels to flourish.
But now, many groups are saying that YouTube is illegally collecting the data of children, that they know children are on their platform, despite what they say, and they are still continuing to illegally collect their data.
YouTube is a great place for creators to flourish.
It is a place where I can produce my content.
YouTube suggests my videos to new users and that allows my audience to grow.
It allows me to plan for the future and actually make a career out of doing videos like this.
But when YouTube continues to do these strange things and now potentially break the law, it's really worrisome.
Following a series of stories about how YouTube was tracking certain channels and providing ratings, I decided to do a little experiment through Google AdWords to determine just how YouTube ads work.
I decided to see if there were certain categories of videos that would not be family appropriate, not be appropriate for children, yet YouTube would still show them to children.
And what I found is, well, let's just call it obvious and very interesting.
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The first story from The Guardian.
YouTube illegally collects data on children, says child protection groups.
Complaint filed with US Watchdog urges sanctions for Google allegedly failing to comply with child protection laws around data collection and ads.
A coalition of 23 child advocacy consumer and privacy groups have filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission alleging that Google is violating child protection laws by collecting personal data of and advertising to those aged under 13.
The group, which includes the Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center for Digital Democracy, and 21 other organizations, alleges that despite Google claiming that YouTube is only for those aged 13 and above, it knows that children under that age use the site.
The group states that Google collects personal information on children under 13, such as location, device identifiers, and phone numbers, and tracks them across different websites, and services without first gaining parental consent as required by the U.S.
Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
The complainants state that among the most popular channels on YouTube are those directed at children, including Choo Choo TV, Nursery Rhymes and Kid Songs with 15.9 million subscribers and more than 10 billion video views, and Little Baby Bum with 14.6 million subscribers and 14 billion views.
The coalition also states that Google's preferred advertising platform includes a parenting and family lineup in which major advertisers pay a premium to place ads.
Looking at recent stories, I think it is absolutely fair to say that YouTube does know children are watching its videos.
In 2015, they launched the YouTube Kids app, trying to make a space that was better for children that would filter out certain videos.
But as I have covered in the past, what did they end up doing?
They ended up feeding weird conspiracy videos to kids.
A YouTube spokesperson said, while we haven't received the complaint, protecting kids and families have always been a top priority for us.
We will read the complaint thoroughly and evaluate if there are things we can do to improve.
Because YouTube is not for children, we've invested significantly in the creation of the YouTube Kids app to offer an alternative specifically designed for children.
And to lend some credence to the complaint, you can see there are many children's channels.
Katie Cutie Kids TV, this video with 87 million views.
Finger Family Collection, 856 million views.
Another Finger Family song, 772 million views.
You don't need me to go on and show you every single channel that has netted hundreds of millions of views by producing children's nursery rhymes, targeting children with Kinder Eggs or other weird Creepy videos that YouTube has been called out for in the past.
This story back in November.
YouTube to clamp down on disturbing kids videos such as DarkPeppaPig.
And this story had to do with something I had covered extensively in the past.
These weird creepy Elsagate videos.
That's what they were called.
Where you'd see Elsa, Spider-Man, and the Joker doing really bizarre things.
They were depictions of...
Let's just call it very gross behaviors that I don't want to repeat.
Things that children should absolutely not see having to do with, let's just say, toilets and other things like that.
So YouTube certainly knows they have a problem.
YouTube certainly knows that children watch their videos.
And YouTube has tried to address this in the past.
Now, whether or not they're actually collecting the data of children, I would say it's fair to assume they are because they probably just collect the data on everybody.
But that's where we draw the line.
We do know that YouTube has addressed these creepy children's videos in the past.
They did launch the YouTube Kids app, but do they track children?
According to a PDF from Commercial Free Childhood, Google's advertising network services collect and use personal information from all YouTube users, Including children to target advertising.
Children have become a lucrative audience for advertising via YouTube.
According to a 2017 report, the kids online advertising market is set to grow 1.2 billion by 2019.
YouTube accounts for over 30% of kids online time, creating a major opportunity for advertisers in the sector.
Now, I don't want to say what they're claiming is 100% true, because it's kind of hard to verify, unless Google comes out and says, yes, they are tracking children.
What I can say is, I don't think YouTube has the ability to differentiate between who they're tracking or not.
Certainly, little children under the age of 13 are not entering their ages and user information, they're just being handed the app and then using it, and then YouTube is collecting information on what they're watching.
But I decided to do an experiment, because YouTube has been accused of a lot of things.
We learned not too long ago that YouTube applies a rating to various channels like GMA, Teen, etc.
I decided to see which videos were rated what and why, but more specifically, I wanted to see what YouTube thought was family appropriate, and what I found out was actually, as I described earlier, I'm not surprised, it was obvious, but I actually kind of find it disturbing.
So here we have Google AdWords.
First, we will click New Campaign.
And I'm going to try and do this very quickly to show you exactly how this works.
So we're going to go to Video, and we're going to say Product and Brand Consideration, and we're going to hit Continue.
And this is what we get.
So let's call this Campaign Trial 1.
And then we're going to say we want to spend a campaign total of $10.
Next we're going to say start date as soon as possible and end date.
We'll put the end date for next Sunday.
We want this one only to appear On YouTube videos.
So this means ads can appear on YouTube videos, channels, pages, and the YouTube homepage.
You can use in-stream and video discovery ads.
It won't appear in search results, and it won't appear on external display networks.
Now this is where it gets interesting.
Content exclusions.
The standard content filter is the primary tool for content exclusions.
It filters out the most inappropriate or graphic content from the sensitive categories below, and is recommended for most advertisers.
Well, I'm going to say no to their standard content filter.
I can then choose to opt out from individual content categories more aggressive than the standard content filter.
This means when I click one of these checkboxes, my video will not appear in these areas, right?
So this is opt out.
So here's what I did.
In two campaigns, I decided to remove anything that wasn't labeled, anything considered mature, anything considered teen, anything considered PG, and opted only to have my test video appear for general audiences and suitable for families.
However, I made sure that only sexually suggestive videos that were general audience friendly and suitable for families could be displayed.
After about a day, I was given a list of every YouTube channel that displayed my advertisement.
And I'm keeping the information here a bit restricted because I don't want to be accused of publishing sensitive information or personal information.
But this is a series of YouTube channels in which my advertisements ran on videos that were considered sexually suggestive, but suitable for families.
As YouTube describes it, excluded by standard content filter.
Videos with sexually provocative content including some nudity, sexual acts, sex toys and devices, vulgar language, and explicit discussions of sex as a topic.
Excluded by additionally selecting this category.
The content above plus general topics of sex and sexuality, sex education, or videos displaying intimacy, affection, or provocative content in dramatized content, comedy, or music.
This is not selected, which means I am okay with my advertisement appearing on this type of content, and the standard content filter has been deactivated.
That means my ad ran on videos with sexually provocative content, including some nudity, sexual acts, sex toys and devices, vulgar language, or explicit discussions of sex as a topic.
And that it was suitable for general audiences, specifically content suitable for families.
I decided to run a second test.
This time, I would opt out of sexually suggestive and opt in to sensational and shocking.
Sensational and shocking is defined as videos that promote harmful or dangerous acts that result in serious injury or emotional distress or content whose sole purpose is to shock viewers, such as car accident compilations.
I then said ONLY to display my ad on general audience videos that are suitable for families.
And once again it worked, and I was granted this list of everywhere my video ran.
Things that YouTube thought were shocking, potentially promoting harmful activities, but that were also suitable for children.
Now, there is a caveat.
Underneath it, it says, while content exclusions are done to the best of our ability, we can't guarantee that all related content will be excluded.
Multiple content exclusions can significantly limit the reach of your campaign.
Each ad campaign only ended up costing me around $8 or $10 because I ran them for about a day.
One view on YouTube can typically cost one cent, so it's actually not that expensive.
And you can actually get some pretty interesting data from running campaigns like this.
What I found is that there are videos that YouTube thinks promote harmful activities, such as car accident compilations, but that families would be okay watching that, or that there are sexually suggestive videos that families would be okay watching.
Maybe that's true.
Maybe there are certain things that people would consider sexually suggestive, but they think families You know, maybe it's something like Taylor Swift, right?
There are some things that are considered shocking, like car accident compilations,
that families would be totally fine with watching.
Maybe you have some suggestions as to what those may or may not be.
You know, maybe it's something like Taylor Swift, right?
Certainly some people would find her to be sexually suggestive, and that's totally fine
for kids, I guess.
I mean, that's your opinion.
That's a parenting thing.
Don't ask me.
But I think we can see... I can see one of two things coming out of this particular experiment.
Does that mean that YouTube is doing anything wrong?
Not necessarily.
They're giving you the option, and if people want to advertise in that way, they can.
It does mean that, to a certain extent, YouTube does consider sexually suggestive or disturbing content to be suitable for families, at least to a certain degree.
Or...
Perhaps it's all just one big error, and YouTube's system is actually just not that good.
And that would mean that potentially, certain channels that shouldn't be labeled sexually suggestive are actually being labeled sexually suggestive.
And I can say, look, I don't want to give out any of these channels' personal information because I don't want to be accused of...
Wrongfully accusing somebody but I have looked at some of those channels and certainly think some of them fall into This category of disturbing or sexually suggestive and some of them don't so it just seems like The whole big picture around this story is that YouTube is pretty bad at what it does Outside of this experiment, and going back to what YouTube is doing with collecting data from children, we start to see another interesting predicament with the future of the internet.
YouTube just created a platform, and they want to collect your information so they can better sell to advertisers.
They don't know who is using the app.
Billions.
And they are the second largest search engine in the world after Google.
So it's Google and then YouTube.
So let's put it this way.
It is illegal, at least according to this story, for companies to collect data and advertise to children.
But how does Does Google actually know if people are children?
If they say you have to be at least 13 to sign up, but you don't have to sign up to watch videos, they don't know who's watching their content.
So should Google be responsible for what children do on the app or when parents give the app to a child who isn't registered and has them just start watching a video?
How should YouTube actually deal with this?
What if there are 30-year-old people who like watching these nursery rhyme videos?
I mean, you can't ask YouTube to take down kids' videos because kids will watch them, and the only other alternative is to force everyone to sign into Google before they actually watch a video.
And that's also problematic because one of the most powerful tools that YouTube provides is embedded video players, so that news organizations and Social media websites can share these videos far and wide.
That's beneficial to me and beneficial to everybody.
So what is the solution?
How does YouTube actually prevent the data collection of children if those children haven't actually registered for YouTube or if the parents just handed them the app?
Certainly then YouTube is responsible for what kids are doing, but they don't know if it's kids.
Maybe after they collect enough data and they find out it's a kid, they can remove them from the platform or issue a warning, but then things just start to get muddy.
And when we look at what happened with Backpage and now Foster and Sesta, it's very worrying to me.
That the government could potentially go to Google and say, if you even take the data of one child, you are in violation of the law, even if you have no way of knowing who that child is or who is a child.
How do we actually create safeguards for children, but at the same time keep the platform open and free so that we can use it, share videos, and produce what we want?
Maybe there isn't a solution.
Maybe we are just driving straight towards the edge of that cliff and things might just get a lot worse for everybody.
I hope YouTube can stop screwing up.
I hope the controversies can end, but it's important to bring them up so they can be fixed so that I can continue to bring videos to all of you every day.
And more importantly, I think when there's news that affects YouTube, it's very pertinent because this is the ecosystem in which all of us are contributing.
I produce videos here.
I certainly watch YouTube videos all the time.
And so do you.
I'd imagine at least to a certain extent you watch YouTube videos because you just watched me say this.
So I think we all have some kind of mutual stake in YouTube's success.
And hopefully, bringing up these stories, making sure more people are aware of it will result in YouTube doing the right thing.
Fixing these problems, but also when it comes to an issue that YouTube can't actually prepare for this will allow other people to realize that YouTube isn't all bad.
And I think they want to succeed, but I do think it's much more complicated than any one story would let on.
But, let me know what you think.
We kind of have two different takes here.
How do you feel about YouTube collecting the data of children?
At least that's what they're accused of doing.
How do you feel about that?
And how do you feel about what I found?
I don't... Look, I did this experiment.
I'm not sure it's the craziest thing in the world, but I was...
I absolutely expected to find that YouTube would consider some videos to be family-friendly and disturbing or family-friendly and sexually suggestive.
