LogFAQs > #970520177

saspa posted...

When did they first start forcibly turning pre-existing videos into youtube kids and removing existing comments, since then no one has complained enough for them to change it back? I noticed that sometimes if enough people complain, companies do listen and backpedal.

USA made a law in 1998 called Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA), which means that US-based websites are not allowed to collect data from children below 13 years. This is why so many websites got a "You must be above 13 years to use this website" rule
Youtube also had that rule, but they were pretty good at determinate the age of users based on what videos they watched. So they knew that there was a 98% chance that these accounts were used by children below 13. While that was against COPPA, nobody could prove anything and nobody really cared.
Until Youtube got the great idea to sell targeted ads space that were made for children below 13. This was proof that they knew that the users were below 13 and that they collected their data.
So they got hit hard in 2020.
And to prevent it from happening again, they made a deal with COPPA about putting all the blame on the content creators in the future.
To isolate the what they believe is below age content to Youtube Kids, where comments etc are turned off, they simply show COPPA that they are not collecting data from this group of users.
No complaining will being it back, and trust me, people have complained.