YouTube: Do You Want to Set Your Channel as Made for Kids? (Action Needed Email)

Today, YouTube sent an email out to creators regarding Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPA) compliance, as a result of a settled lawsuit with the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General.

YouTube creators are required to login to their YouTube channels and answer to the following question: (YouTube -> YouTube Studio -> Settings -> Channel)

Upon logging into YouTube, you may see a banner announcement at the top of your channel:

Important: All creators are obligated to take action to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and/or other laws. Review your channel and video settings.

Do you want to set your channel as made for kids?

Regardless of your location, you're legally required to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other laws. You're required to tell us whether your videos are made for kids. What's content made for kids?

Choices:

* Yes, set this channel as made for kids. I always upload content that's made for kids.

Features like personalized ads and notifications won't be available on channels made for kids. Videos that are set as made for kids are more likely to be recommended alongside other kids' videos.

* No, set this channel as not made for kids. I never upload content that's made for kids.

* I want to review this setting for every video.

Below is the full email from YouTube notifying creators of the change and action needed.

Hi X,

Important changes that may impact your monetization and content discoverability are coming.

Starting today, all creators are required to tell us if their content is made for kids in order to comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other applicable laws. To help you comply, we are introducing a new audience setting in YouTube Studio.

Depending on the amount of made for kids content on your channel, you can set your audience at either the channel level or the video level. For those who are setting at the channel level, it is just one click.

Potential Audience Settings

These changes are required as part of a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and NY Attorney General, and will help you comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other applicable laws.

We know that these changes won’t be easy for some creators, and that this required change is going to take some time getting used to. But these are important steps to take to ensure compliance with the law.

Please read more below to understand your legal obligations and the impact these choices may have on your channel.

What is changing?

Starting today, all creators are required to mark their content as made for kids or not made for kids in YouTube Studio.

Starting in January: we will limit the data we collect on made for kids content to comply with the law. This means we will disable personalized ads on this content (which affects revenue for creators making content for kids), as well as certain features like comments, notifications and others. Note: You may see some small changes as we experiment and refine our systems over the next few months.

For a list of affected features, go here.

Why is this happening?

These changes are required as part of a settlement with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and NY Attorney General, and will help you comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and/or other applicable laws.

Regardless of your location, we are required to ask you to set your videos as made for kids if they fall into that category, please make these settings as soon as possible.

We’ll also use machine learning systems to help us find content that is clearly made for kids. But do not rely on our systems to set content for you -- like all automated systems, ours are not perfect.

If you don’t set your content or if we detect error or abuse, we may set your audience for you. If you fail to set your content accurately you may face compliance issues with the FTC or other authorities, and we may take action on your YouTube account.

What is “made for kids” content?

We cannot provide specific legal advice, but according to the FTC’s guidance on COPPA, a video is child directed (which we call “made for kids”) if:

• • It is directed to children as the primary audience (e.g. videos for preschoolers).
• • It is directed to children but children are a secondary audience (e.g. cartoon video that primarily targets teenagers but is also intended for younger kids).

Learn more about the factors that determine if your content is considered as made for kids here.

We know this won’t be easy for some creators, and that this required change is going to take some getting used to. While we cannot provide legal advice, we are committed to helping you through this transition.

You can learn more about your own obligations under The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the tools we are building to support you here.

The YouTube Team