Before this article begins, we should start off by answering the most basic question:
What is COPPA?
COPPA is short for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. This law regulates the data sites can collect on children. To clarify, anytime “children” is said, it is grouping children under the age of 13, as said in the FTC’s official article.
What changes are upon YouTube due to this new law?
To put it simply, all content creators are required to mark their content as “made for kids” or “not made for kids,” with no in between. This poses a huge problem for mostly every YouTuber, for many fall into that “in between” category.
What happens if you mark your content as “made for kids?”
Below is a combined list from multiple sources (listed at the end of the article) of different features that will be disabled if you are a “made for kids” channel:
Personalized ads- This is where a majority of profit comes from for most YouTubers.
Monetization features- This ultimately makes it impossible for YouTubers to make money, which can prove devastating for some YouTubers who rely on YouTube as their income source.
Comments- This denies fans the right to tell you what they thought of your videos, as well as makes it harder for those to enter contests that many YouTubers host.
Live chat (live streams)- This ultimately ruins the entire purpose of doing a stream.
Notification bell
Community tab
Miniplayer (watching videos while you’re searching for other content)
Stories
Cards or end screens
Channel branding watermark
Channel memberships
Donate button
Likes and Dislikes (YT music)
Live chat donations
Merchandise and ticketing
Autoplay on home
Super Chat
Super Stickers
Save to playlist
Save to watch later
What does this mean for AJ YouTubers?
The entire Animal Jam Community on YouTube was greatly impacted due to this new law. WisteriaMoon has decided to ultimately quit posting AJ content on her YouTube, and only post it on Instagram. Elipsity has decided to mark his content as he goes, but mostly stick with “not made for kids” as well. Bepper has decided to not make as much content for Animal Jam since it has to be marked “made for kids.”
From personal experience being an AJ YouTuber, I marked my channel as “not made for kids” simply because my content is made for a general audience. I make my content, and whoever watches it can watch it. The way you mark your content is reflected by how you speak and what your topic is. Of course, if you use inappropriate language, you’re clearly not for kids. For many content creators in the AJ community don’t swear or use that kind of language.
Animal Jam is a game rated for 7-12 year olds, but the FTC said that the target audience doesn’t apply when rating your channel. If you clearly are a channel making content for little kids like the ABC’s or numbers, but mark your content otherwise, you will be fined (and vise versa).
The threats of thousands upon thousands of dollars have drawn many people to quit making Animal Jam videos all together. As the FTC has told content creators, there is no reason to panic about fines. They have said you can only get fined as much as you make. The FTC isn’t going to charge a very small YouTuber who makes $2 a month $42,000. That would be ridiculous. They will be focusing on the larger channels to make sure they don’t cross any lines.
So for any Jammers out there still having some fears over the future of Animal Jam YouTubing, all I can say is do your research. Make sure you know all of the facts before starting/continuing on with YouTube until you know the laws. It’s clear what content is for kids, and what could be a general audience, so the Animal Jam community really has nothing to be concerned about. Don’t worry! Your favorite AJ YouTubers won’t be fined for making content for you!
COPPA might be one obstacle in the way for some of our community members, but they won’t let that hold them back.
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For more information on COPPA and the rules and laws surrounding it, be sure to check out these resources!
Determining if your content is "made for kids" (An article Google Support uploaded to help whether to mark your content as “made for kids” or not.
YouTube asks the FTC to Clarify the Laws of COPPA (An article about COPPA)
What features are locked for not made for kids? (Video from YouTube Creators Channel)
Complying with COPPA (Video from YouTube Creators Channel)
Jam On!
-Cuteypie