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Wow. The YouTube/FTC drama actually made it in TV Tropes. It of course details exactly why so many people are so understandably p*ssed off. The last two sentence perfectly sums up how overly paranoid and quick to blame others half the people have gotten over this.
Of course, the FTC has recently begun to hint that they may not mark ALL videos as mislabelled kids' videos based solely on the thumbnails, and it's been suggested that a fine may not even be warranted.
This just appeared in the YT support pages.
Even some of the channels freaking out are happy that the FTC and YouTube are clarifying things for the better. Though more should still be done.
Update: frankly, since I’m still among those not panicking or fearing Armageddon over this, I’m still confident that it’s the site’s operators, not the users or creators who will get hit with the penalties. https://twitter.com/FurbySquawk/status/1197636769325424640?s=20
Frankly, if YouTube and the FTC fine every user (dead/small-time one’s too) $42.000+ each time they had a video with bright colours, toys or cartoons in them, even just based on the thumbnail, or saying “cool”, “duh” or “whatever” in said video on January, I think there would...
...be a lot of collateral damage. For instance, there’d be legal pushback, and endless class action lawsuits since most users on YT can not afford to have such fines at all. Of course even corporations would get hit with said fines as well (at least $42,000 is just pocket...
...money to them though.) And because most users are people, and 2/3 users aren’t big name content creators, YouTube would lose a lot of business and Google wouldn’t want to clean up the mess in the end. Of course not even corporate sponsorship or payment would save them.
The fact that people are afraid of being hit with such unreasonable fines by an agency with no jurisdiction outside the US, being shutdown and maybe arrested for having toys, cartoons and stuff in their thumbnails and saying words like “cool” (which would be HUGE misdemeanours...
...on the FTC’s part and would result in much larger backlash than that currently coming from YT users) is just silly. Not to mention frustrating since these people, out of paranoia, fear and despair will readily open fire on you just for having a more optimistic take on this.
Already I had ONE followback of mine get mad at me for criticizing others for panicking and asserting we ALL should panic because of impending doom that may or may not happen. Remember that nothing is written in stone.
The problem with mass hysteria is that very few have confidence that it might not be as bad. Sadly most will refuse to hear them out and are even willing to completely abandon logic and common sense in favour of suffering a mental breakdown over something that’s upsetting them.
That is seriously how bad things have gotten.
I just hope the FTC, YouTube and the content creators meeting them in DC soon will be able to get their act together and work on a compromise. I’m not giving up all hope just yet.
I just hope the FTC, YouTube and the content creators meeting them in DC soon will be able to get their act together and work on a compromise. I’m not giving up all hope just yet.
