Some major changes are coming to YouTube, and they could spell disaster for some of your favorite Fortnite players.
Back in September, YouTube came to a $170m settlement with the Federal Trade Commission after accusations of violating children’s online privacy. As a result of this case, they have recently announced some big changes coming to the platform very soon.
Officially coming into effect in January 2020, the new rules will require creators to label any videos which they feel are directed at kids. They will also be able to deem their entire channel as producing children’s content. It seems like in this case, ‘kids’ means anyone up to age 13.
Why is no one talking about this, having to manually go through every video you’ve ever posted to click a box if there’s a chance a child could watch it and then a bot checks your answer and if it thinks you’ve checked wrong you get fined $42k per video https://t.co/Ck8mfwZOQ2
— Published Author (@MoistCr1TiKaL) November 8, 2019
In an effort to protect young children’s privacy, any channels or videos marked as “aimed at kids” will no longer be able to use YouTube’s full ad-targeting system. Instead of this any adverts will be “contextualised” and based on the subject of the specific video. In turn, this means less ad revenue for creators.
The most concerning thing about these changes is how vague the guidelines seem to be. With a game like Fortnite, you are of course going to have a lot of younger viewers, but some people will feel their content is directed at teenagers and younger adults. The issue with this is that channel owners who mislabel their content will be liable to face fines up to $42k per video.
Ali “SypherPK” Hassan has spoken out on the announcement, describing his worries. Sypher says “a channel like mine is in a weird spot because technically my videos are not made exclusively for kids, it’s just gaming content that is enjoyed by adults, kids and everybody of all ages”.
Sypher then went on to argue “if your channel is categorized as made for kids, well then you’re screwed”, explaining that not only will you make less money from adverts, but also “get shafted” by the algorithm and get less views overall.
The popular Fortnite star now has two YouTube channels, after recently launching “MoreSypherPK” to release longer, uncut clips and conversations from his streams. Sypher says that it is hard to know the average age of viewers, as younger kids don’t usually put their real date of birth on their account.
Some creators have already seen drops in their subscriber counts after labelling their channels one way or another. Hopefully, YouTube will provide some more clarity on the situation as we move forward and make it easier for channel owners to understand.
Although the new rules could be a problem if not followed correctly, this shouldn’t be too bad for most Fortnite channels. It is likely that YouTube are mainly going to be targeting people producing exclusively kid oriented content like cartoons etc., rather than gaming videos. If anything does go wrong for Fortnite channels, at least we have a man on the inside now… right Courage?