The New YouTube Policies

If you visited the YouTube channel today you might have noticed all the comments, and a number of other features, are disabled. That is YouTube's doing based on the setting I chose late last year. The comments removal seems sudden to myself as the email about it just arrived this week but maybe I missed something back in September. YouTube told creators that they had to set their content to made for kids or not and it was my understanding that this would impact advertisements which I do not qualify for. While my content is not specifically made for kids, some or all of it might appeal to kids and I do aim for a family-friendly environment so I chose the for kids setting. YouTube also said it would delete all the comments in 30 days which I'd rather they not do. If you're curious, here is what the email says:

Last September, we announced a series of changes that we’d be making to better protect kids and their privacy on YouTube, and to address the concerns raised to us by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). 

Specifically, that all creators would be required to designate their content as made for kids or not made for kids in YouTube Studio, and that personal information from anyone watching a video designated as made for kids would be treated as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user. 

Starting today, we will no longer serve personalized ads or support features such as comments, Stories, live chat, notification bell, and others on videos designated made for kids. 

We know these changes may have significant impact on creators making kids content, so we’re committed to helping them navigate this new landscape. We continue to engage on this issue, including by participating in the FTC's open comment period. We know many creators have provided valuable feedback as well. 

If you haven’t already, please ensure you have set your channel (or individual videos) as made for kids or not, as this will ultimately determine how your content is treated on YouTube. 

Creators know their content best, and should set the designation themselves. We also use machine learning to help us identify this content, and creators can update a designation made by our systems if they believe it is incorrect. We will only override a change if abuse or error is detected.

Here is a link to where YouTube explains why comments are turned off. This is rather frustrating as I am more than capable of policing my own channel and as I said, I don't even qualify for advertising which is what I thought brought about these changes. All of my comments were set to the review possibly inappropriate option and I'd delete any that might be bad for kids, though I never got any like that. In any case, that's why the comments are currently disabled. However, I might set the channel to not for kids this weekend and see what happens. I'd mark the PAW Patrol video as for kids but if I do that I think I need to go through and mark every video already posted individually and that will take a while.