 It's the end of the world for YouTube, again. The internet's most volatile platform is facing yet another doomsday in the form of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which states that it's illegal to collect personal data on internet users under the age of 13. It's understandable that Google has been caught unawares by this, as this relatively recent law only came into force 19 years ago. YouTubers are a superstitious and cowardly lot. So when something goes wrong on the platform, which it seems to do every week, we get nervous. A lot of creators are worried about whether their content counts as made for kids and whether they're in danger of a $40,000 fine for inaccurately labelling their content. This, though, isn't the real problem with the legislation. There's a big elephant in the room that nobody at the Financial Trading Commission or YouTube seem willing to discuss. First, a brief history lesson. In the wild west days of the internet, before governments and advertisers really noticed that it was a thing, creators could post pretty much anything online without causing much fuss. It was only as the platform became more popular that parents started to worry that children were being tracked online by nefarious unknown entities. So in 1998, when Google was just barely getting off the ground, the Financial Trading Commission introduced the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which essentially said that it was illegal to collect data on minors. Unanimously, every major company on the internet, including Google, reacted to this by ignoring it. So over the past two decades, the FTC have been getting more aggressive in policing the internet. COPPA was reviewed and refreshed in 2013, and the FTC targeted big offenders with litigation, going after such underhanded deviants as Mrs. Fields Cookies? Mrs. Fields, you see, had a birthday club on its website. Children could enter their birthday and receive coupons for free cookies or pretzels. This seemingly benign act was collecting data on minors, so they were fined $100,000. Thank goodness the FTC was there to stop this clear and present threat to child safety. Pearl-clutching mothers can rest assured that their kids are no longer receiving free cookies on their birthdays. Nevertheless, big companies continued to collect data on children for the sake of tricking them into buying stuff, and the FTC continued to get more aggressive. In February of 2019, the video platform TikTok received the largest fine to date, a whopping $5.7 million for failure to comply with COPPA. Then, in September, Google was fined $170 million, a fine that was 30 times larger than TikTok's. It's hard to argue with the decision, as YouTube has absolutely been in violation of the law, and it hasn't even been giving out free pretzels. In the face of this fine, YouTube essentially passed the buck, as the FTC announced plans to go after individual creators who don't mark their content as made for kids. This despite the fact that it is YouTube rather than creators who collect data on viewers. But herein lies the major problem that the FTC has thus far ignored, the question of enforcement. According to Google, video creators upload 500 hours of content to YouTube every single minute. If you were to watch every second of new content uploaded in a single day, it would take you 80 years. Policing the internet is really, really hard. While all countries attempt to curb illegal activity to a certain extent, nobody manages it better than China, who employ thousands upon thousands of people to scour the internet constantly, flagging anything that's critical of the state or that references protests. The FTC simply does not have these resources. It would be impossible to fairly, evenly police YouTube and fine all creators who fail to mark their content as made for kids. So the FTC has two choices. It can either go after the biggest, most noteworthy offenders, those who feature child actors in videos singing about baby sharks. Or it can send out blanket finds to every video that looks even vaguely appropriate for children. The vague wording of the FTC's guidelines seem tailor-made to give them as much wiggle room as they need. Which way will the FTC lean in enforcing the law? It's hard to say. But remembering the Mrs Fields example, it's clear that the higher-ups within the organisation would rather take down a big, noteworthy target than actually dig into the details of finding more insidious offenders. All of this leaves many channels unsure of what to do. If we mark our videos as made for kids, we're safe from litigation, but we lose visibility on the platform and a lot of advertising revenue. If we assume that the FTC won't be able to find us because it's busy attacking larger channels, we run the risk of incurring a fine because our content simply looks appealing to a child. What's frustrating about all this is that it could easily be sold by looking at YouTube's existing data. Google absolutely knows which videos are being watched by kids, because building consumer profiles on minors is the whole reason the company got in trouble. Just a quick look at our own audience breakdown stats shows that we're more popular with adult men than any other category of viewer. If you're watching this, you're more likely to be over 35 than under 18. YouTube has this information, but whether it'll actually be useful with the ongoing litigation storm remains to be seen. Amid the growing panic surrounding this issue, it's important that we keep the blame-focused where it belongs. No matter what the FTC and YouTube might claim, individual creators are not at fault. This is Google's mess, and the company really needs to take a more proactive role in protecting its creators from the fallout. But then, when did YouTube ever show actual genuine interest in meeting its creators' needs? Honestly, our biggest concern here isn't for our own safety. Our daughter's favorite YouTube channel is L.E.V. Toys, who reviews Lego sets. If the FTC attempts to slap an Australian citizen with a $40,000 U.S. fine and she has to shut up shop, we don't want to have to explain this whole mess to a grieving four-year-old. It's simply a price we're not willing to pay.