So we have all been hearing how Google is passing the buck onto YouTube creators and putting fear into everyone with their vague explanation about it and even less informative about how to protect yourself. I have a lot of channels I follow and I am seeing them drop like flies, they are deleting all their videos and shutting down their accounts out of fears that the FTC is going to fine them for something they never had control over in the first place. The fear is real, so dont think you can just ignore this and that you will not be affected and if you do upload videos to YouTube you need to heed this warning because it could cost you EVERYTHING if you ignore it! I ran across a great video made by an actual lawyer who has done a fantastic job explaining what is going on, what COPPA even is and what you should be aware of. So I urge you to go check out Ian Corzine's video titled What YOUTUBE's Not Telling You About COPPA.
So I thought I would make this blog post and help those unsure of what they need to do to ensure they are safe from the strong arm of the government and their overreach of the law! The process is really super simple for most users. The first thing to do is to login to your YouTube account at in the top right corner click on the avatar for your account and click on "Your data in YouTube.
Now on that page you will see in the first data block titled "Your YouTube dashboard" all the videos you have listed. Click on this to go into your channel videos area.
From the tab that it takes you to click on "Channel under the Settings menu on the left.
Next click on the "Advanced settings" tab and you will see where it says you can set your channel to say its not made for kids. This is the safest and fastest way to safely setup ALL your videos to be safe from the strong arm of the FTC.
Your not done yet though, now that you have checked this radio button be sure to click "SAVE" in the bottom right corner to commit these changes. If you fail to do this, nothing is going to change on your channel and you will have to go back and start all over.
Now if your channel is not monetized and you do not rely on ad review another thing you can do to ensure a bit more security is to scroll down the same tab (Advanced settings) to where it says "Advertisements" and check the box that says "Disable interest-based ads". Then again making sure to click the SAVE button at the bottom right to commit these changes.
With that done you can be secure in knowing you no longer have to live in fear of the FTC or YouTube. Do know there is a cavate to this setup I gave you in that in Googles new terms of use if you have chosen to disable interest based ads, you may be subject to being removed anyway since Google has made it clear that in no uncertain terms, if your channel is not profitable to them they reserve the right to shut you down.
One last thing, if you do rely on ad based ads and you think that some of your videos are kid friendly and dont want to do this strong arm method of basically turning off your entire channel to kids you will have to go back through your videos and setup each one of them one at a time. Simply go back to the step where I showed you the dashboard and you clicked to show your videos and click each one and you will clearly see at the bottom where you need to check if the video is or isnt kid friendly.
Hope this helps some of you and if you have any questions or need help feel free to CONTACT ME and I would be more than happy to give you a hand.