Save family-friendly content on YouTube!

In response to COPPA, YouTube has told all YouTube creators to mark their videos or channels as For Kids or Not For Kids. YouTube's response to COPPA is going to have a severely negative impact on many YouTube creators of family-friendly content, such as the Lego animation (brickfilm), AFOL (adult fans of Lego), Lego MOC (My Own Creation), and Claymation communities by making it impossible for creators to earn enough revenue to keep their channels going, reduce their audience size (by removing notifications, comments, and end screens), and causing many to quit YouTube out of fear of being fined up to $42,000 by the FTC.

A large number of channels exist that provide high-quality family-friendly content on YouTube, and this content is free to view and enjoyed by people of all ages. In the brickfilm community alone, there are dozens of such channels (for example: FK Films, MichaelHickox, Alexander Studios, Brotherhood Workshop, BrickBros Productions).

YouTube's approach will also not actually comply with COPPA, because YouTube will still be collecting data when under 13s watch videos that are marked as Not For Kids. Millions of children watch videos that are Not For Kids - T Series has a combined total video views of more than 89 billion (and it's videos are Not For Kids according to the YouTube guidance), and it is likely that tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of those views are from kids. The same is true of PewDiePie. YouTube will continue to collect data when kids watch these videos, so YouTube will actually not be complying with COPPA.

We want YouTube to change their solution. YouTube should:

* Abolish the Made For Kids and Not For Kids video settings, protecting creators from the threat of being sued for getting the settings wrong and from losing the majority of their revenue if their videos are deemed by FTC to be Made For Kids.

* Allow under 13s to create accounts, and usage data should not be collected on these accounts by YouTube and Google unless their parent(s) consent(s), or until the user is older than 13. This will ensure that under 13s actually have their privacy properly protected.

* Data should not be collected from users who are not signed in to a YouTube or Google account on their device (because the age of users who are not signed in is unknown and could include kids under 13). (This is likely to be a small minority of users, as almost everyone has a Google account).

* All users should be asked to review the date of birth on their account, and parents should be asked to create accounts for their children

* Data can still be collected on all accounts of users aged 13+ on all videos, meaning that YouTube's revenue from targeted advertising is protected and the platform will remain commercially viable.

* It should be the responsibility of users to tell the truth about their age, and the responsibility of parents to create accounts for their children. This is a one-off task for parents that will take only a few minutes of their time.