This is a bit crazy. I'm sure

This is a bit crazy. I'm sure a lot of kids would enjoy watching videos about cars, construction, real trains, airplanes, etc. Just because a kid would find it interesting doesn't mean it's made for kids.

"Primarily directed"

I think the key words are "primarily directed".  

Model railroading is not "primarily directed" at children under thirteen, and neither are model railroading videos. 

COPPA sounds like a typical heavy-handed government "solution" in search of a problem. 

Keep Calm and Post Videos. 

Randy

Sounds like it's primarily a problem

for creators looking to make ad money off their videos? .....DaveB

Not much

Of a you tube viewer. However, I have watched my soon to be 6 year old grandson look at dinosaurs on U-tube. There definitely needs some oversight as where he can get led To just watching dinosaurs is crazy. Eliminate the side bar of up coming stuff and that would be better IMO. 
 

I do watch Big Al, Scale Model Miniatures, Daryl and his UP layout, Tim Garland and Luke Towan. Maybe one or 2 videos a week. This oversight wouldn’t be necessary if parents would watch what the kids are viewing. But most don’t and those that screamed the loudest got COPPA created. 

Solution, creators—stop publishing any video for YouTube for 2 weeks, watchers—stop watching any U-tube for 2 weeks and see the Quick reversal of this censorship. 

My opinion only

Tom

For the record ...

Puzzling...

YouTube isn't for kids under 13.

It's clearly stated in the terms. And people under 18 needs their parents supervision to use YouTube.

So, how can this be an issue?

Is it a way to remove the parents responsibility?

Or a way to remove non corporate creators from the platform?

Either way, it will scare a lot of people who just want to share their hobbies.

But how will it effect non-US creators? An US federal government has no power outside of the US.

I guess Bitchute and other more adult platforms () will have a HUGE increase in users after this....

Clickbait

All three of the videos linked to in the original post have clickbait titles and should therefore be viewed (if at all) with a healthy dose of skepticism.

I'd guess this is just not a problem for anything model railroady that's typically posted on youtube.

Over-exaggerate

Hysterical much?

None of these videos actually sound like they know what they're talking about.

"We're from the government, and we're here to help"

From all of the video I've seen across a fairly wide variety of fields, it all seems to boil down to the fact that:
1:  The FTC has decided to go after individual creators of Youtube content - see their "We're going to be shooting fish in a barrel, and we can and will sweep through all of the Youtube content periodically." statement in the interviews that the FTC posted.
2: The FTC spokespeople have stated they "will go after anyone whom we deem has mismarked content of interest for children as being "not for children"
3:  The FTC will decide what is of interest to children, regardless of what Youtube or the content creator has marked as being "not for children".
4: The FTC has already won its case against Google and Youtube for violating COPPA and as part of the settlement, Google has thrown its hands in the air, paid $170 million and tossed the individual creators under the bus rather than change their data scraping policies and cookie tracking.
5:  The FTC has stated that it will assume that any material "of (potential) interest to children" is being watched by children, regardless of who has the account being used to access Youtube.

This means that the FTC already assumes that content is being marked as not aimed at kids when it historically has hard evidence through analysis of the cookies that topics like these have been watched by kids.

As far as content creators outside of the US borders, well, there are a ton of legal reciprocity agreements, working protocols, and treaties with foreign countries that regulate other activities.  I would not assume that being in, say, France would insulate you from the $42,000 fine per video that the FTC has said they are going to go after.

It's not going to be pretty.  Even the lawyers who post videos on Youtube are a bit nervous about this.

Janet N.

...

I will agree with Jeff, the part he has emphasized can indeed wind up with trouble for Any and ALL creators that do anything at all with Toys and to be quite frank, Your trains which we have tried to say are anything but toys for the last 20, 30, 50 years are all Plainly traded as commerce in the TOY category and with the FTC and not you and me deciding what the definitions are, I can guarantee you no label will any protection on this.  

Sounds like the people who want to gatekeeper the world found a way to shut things down through COPPA..."Think of the Kids" is always one of the lowest logic appeals that seems to make things happen...

After reading some of the

After reading some of the additional posts, I think there are some good points being made and I've changed my thinking as to the fact there is possibly some risk to model railroad videos being "attractive to children" in the eyes of our over zealous government attack dogs.

I haven't watched the videos, I can't stand the endless chatter from talking heads that frequently have a hidden agenda.

Well, the definitions from

Well, the definitions from the FTC are so vague that they'll be able to arbitrarily go after anyone they find offending them.

After reading some of the

The COPPA text has pages and pages about personal information gathering and retention, parental consent, marketing restrictions, etc. and only like that *one paragraph* I could find about actual *content*. Which would seem to leave some things open to interpretation and subjectivity (and really, necessarily so) but yeah it's clearly about targeting bad actors who are pushing manipulative marketing and other tactics to impressionable kids that don't know any better to recognize it.

Not just making a video about toy trains.

The act itself is actually also like 20 years old with updates along the way.

And don't have any more legal understanding of the issues that you or I do. I watched part of one of them and it was completely inane.

All these people hand-wringing about consequences for violations but no understanding or discussion of what actually constitutes a violation of COPPA...?

Like, by a REALLY liberal interpretation following some of the logic of some of these talking heads, cartoons like "Family Guy" are "for kids", because, you know, cartoon....

Already Posted Videos

How many videos already on You-tube will be taken down I wonder?

Jack

Re: For the record ...

Google has added the following statement with a checkbox to posted videos:

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.

I've gone back and checked the "Not for kids" box on all my videos.

Now the question is how to additionally list those videos posted to the MRH Recent Posts forum:  Public, Unlisted, or Private?

FWIW, it's hard to see how anything other than a computer algorithm could go through the millions and millions of You Tube videos to determine if they were made for children.  That leads to an algorithm miscalculation, cherry picking to set an example, or viewer complaints as being the means by which an individual might end up being cited. 

It would also seem to raise the question of what is constitutionally protected speech.  To a parody a quote from Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, "I can't define what videos are made for kids, but I know them when I see them."

The question that keeps

The question that keeps coming up in my mind has to do with what's the harm if a child is attracted to someone's model train moving down the track.  What if they become totally addicted to liking model trains.  How has the child been harmed.  Something is missing here.

"I've gone back and checked

  The way I read it that's the opposite of what they recommend. The FTC  can still decide your videos are attractive to kids and come after you for marking them wrong.  If you mark them for kids you've satisfied the law and your videos will get the cookies  safe guards applied to them.( the only downside is you wan't get as much ad revenue if that matters to you) ...DaveB

Children viewing Youtube videos

In today's world, it unfortunately is necessary to consider ways in which a criminal might attempt to entice children. We need to consider not only protecting the children, but also protecting the creator of online material from false accusations of wrongdoing, which could ruin somebody's reputation, even if they prove unfounded.

Joe S

It's already here in the hobby

Safe to say, click "Not for kids" for anything model rail related, or model related.  Practically every package I've picked up since returning to the hobby has had the same general statement / warning emblazoned on the wrapper.  Just for laughs, I walked to the bench just now, grabbed the first available box (Accurail boxcar kit), and there it was on the side:

   Age 14 and up

The Bachmann 'bobber' RTR caboose: 

   (not recommended for children under the age of 14)

I missed the memo, apparently stating that everything is a threat to 13 yr old and below.  I guess my parents should have been hauled off to jail in the early 60's for endangerment; Dad, for teaching me proper soldering techniques when I was about 12, and my mother for demonstrating (gasp!) sewing with a sharp needle!

"Reductio ad absurdum" is not the proper basis for law, damn it...

Deane Johnson

It's not actually the content of the video that the FTC cares about - it's that because it wasn't marked "for kids" YouTube/Google will hang a string of persistent cookies on the viewer's web browser, and that's part of what is banned under COPPA. 

So you can get penalized for YouTube/Google's insatiable appetite for tracking and identification. 

Frankly, it's going to be fun watching the first one of these end up in court. 

Fun in the same way watching grade crossing videos is fun. 

PeerTube

I was having trouble understanding what the problem was until Jeff's post:

Maybe this is what's needed to give PeerTube some traction.

...

…

Sounds like you're not familiar with the concept of peer-to-peer networking.

I don't think people are understanding this