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Comment by distant_hat | Hacker News Reader

Youtube should not be allowed to monetize any videos with children in it until they comply with the same conditions that movies that employ child actors have to. That would remove the incentive to make children perform for Youtube videos.

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> Youtube should not be allowed to monetize any videos with children in it until they comply with the same conditions that movies that employ child actors have to.

Yes. If Youtube monetization model rewards parents psychologically abusing their children and profits from it. It is cleary that Youtube is at fault.

Google does not want to take responsibility when they host the video, promote the video, and profit from the video. And that creates an incentive to reward bad behaviour and shock content.

I was thinking today how when I was a kid and watched TV at least there was some sort of oversight about what could be broadcast and advertised on TV, especially to children. There is no such thing on youtube or the internet, so people that let their small child loose on a tablet as a babysitter scare the bejeezus out of me.

thats the (ingenuity?) of this whole digital realm

media: youtube/instagram are by far the easiest ways to reach kids with the most effective ways to influence kids/teens being influencers. see: JUUL marketing flavoured nicotine to highschoolers

gaming: loot boxes. comesetics, using kid friendly youtuber/streamers to sell FOMO; and then we get to game passes

it's disgusting how effective its been and how frankly retarded government has been to recognize the laws they made for television arent effective since kids dont watch TV

But then when regulators finally realize what's going on, there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, and "would someone think of the poor startups?".

The wild-west Internet was fine at the beginning, but then the marketing people came and fucked it up.

That's because marketers ruin everything. It's what they do. Anywhere peoples' attention goes - marketers will be there to ruin it.

Mail, radio, television, internet, email, social media... If a bunch of eyes and ears are focused on it you can bet that marketers will be moving to stand between the two and try and get their message seen or heard. The entire point of marketing is to steal your attention from whatever it is that has your attention so that they have your attention. It's insidious at best and most marketing is manipulative (especially emotionally manipulative).

Agreed, I'd say the period just before the internet really became mainstream/gained significant scale was the peak but then I sound like some dusty old hipster. communities are always great when its being built and enjoyed; just before the next, bigger audience jumps on and the mods really have to step in and ruin the original community..

sigh eternal september forever

The period just after the Internet became mainstream was still fine, too. Banner ads were slowly infecting websites, but that's about it. But now all the easy money has run dry, so every overt ad is tracking you, every mainstream news platform is dealing you covert ads, and communities (whether old-school forums or modern social media) are being infiltrated by marketers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/health/juul-teens-vaping....

Juul Targeted Schools, Camps and Youth Programs, House Panel Claims

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAa5B71WwAAwhOf?format=jpg&name=...

This is why I don't let my kid watch YouTube. She gets Hulu Kids, which is high-value, curated, "normal" kids shows. Amazon Prime also has a kids section, I imagine Netflix is the same.

I don't understand why more parents don't restrict their kids to these but let them loose on YouTube instead.

How would that work for those Russian toy videos my kid likes so much? Are we going to force American laws on Russia or just segregate the videos?

The internet doesn't have some magical "international waters" treaty.

ISPs can be forced to block content that infringe on their local laws.

....which would basically mean everything not subject to local laws; ie made in foreign countries?

I'm assuming you would agree for some electronic material. How do you pick and choose which should be forced to follow the law?

The legal system has a well developed notion of jurisdiction to del with that. A movie shot in California will follow California’s laws on child labor, not New York’s, even if it’s shown there.

It is not consistently applied. Look at bans on obscenity regardless of the legality where or when it was produced. So it seems just as reasonable to say that local ISPs are responsible for blocking locally illegal material.

Yes to the last question.

I mean, it is an American company paying out the ad revenue, and deciding which videos can be monetized or not. So yes, if a Russian wants to get paid advertising money by youtube, they would need to follow American laws.

This approach has a two fold problem. One, what if you are say Canadian or European, does this mean that America now gets to decide what your kids do and don't watch? Secondly, this type of action can lead to retaliation and segmentation of the internet into regional entities where you have an American internet, a Russian Internet, a European Internet etc. We have been trying very hard (not fully succufully, see China) to avoid this.

It is not an approach, it is just the law. An American company has to follow American laws, even when their customers/business partners are non-American

All that would achieve is the next popular video sharing website not being American. YouTube has a lot of viewers, advertisers, content providers that aren’t Americans.

I am not arguing for it, I am just saying that is how the law works.

The videos can be there. YouTube can't make money off of them until they comply with the conditions. Youtube can't host porn videos with 17yr olds despite them not being illegal in many countries.

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