C4 THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019 LATIMES.COM/BUSINESS
been doing for the past five
years,” said Dylan Collins,
SuperAwesome’s chief exe-
cutive. “And they haven’t.”
Waves of new media dar-
lings have tried to unseat
YouTube, with no success.
But Collins is one of several
entrepreneurs trying to
strike while YouTube is in
turmoil. The video behe-
moth, owned by Alphabet
Inc.’s Google, has earned a
reputation as a Wild West of
media, a place where young
viewers have too readily
stumbled on footage of crass
humor or bloody violence.
Lawmakers have asked
about this, part of the scru-
tiny of the privacy practices
and dominance of big tech.
The FTC is probing
whether Google violated the
Children’s Online Privacy
Protection Act, or COPPA,
which prohibits tracking
the personal information of
minors younger than 13.
YouTube’s frequent tweaks
to its all-powerful
algorithms and ads policies
have left video creators dis-
gruntled. A handful of up-
starts are hoping this mo-
mentum will help their
cause. They’ve roped in ven-
ture financing, licensing
deals and customers with
the promise of creating kid-
safe internet real estate.
The FTC is inadvertently
playing a role, too. Uncer-
tainty over the case is
producing panic in parts of
the YouTube community,
prompting some stars to
hunt for alternatives. News
reports surfaced that the
FTC may force YouTube to
move all children’s videos to
its Kids app or cut them off
from ads.
“No one really has a sense
of what is going to happen,”
said Michael, who runs Kid-
City and two other YouTube
family channels. He is one of
more than 150 YouTubers
jumping to Rukkaz. He isn’t
moving off YouTube but will
cross-post select YouTube
clips with the start-up,
which will share ad revenue.
He asked that his last name
not be revealed to protect
the privacy of his children.
Kids media online is
booming as millions of chil-
dren swap Saturday morn-
ing cartoons for streaming
and smartphones. Most
streaming services, such as
Netflix, run curated, slickly
produced shows for kids,
while YouTube relies on a
mountain of unscripted,
user-generated content.
Multiple people who make
these videos said that, in re-
cent months, support repre-
sentatives from YouTube
have halted contact without
explanation.
A chief concern for many
creators is that their videos
will be restricted to the
YouTube Kids mobile app, a
much less popular service,
where Google runs fewer
ads. “That would put every-
one out of business. I mean,
almost overnight,” Michael
said.
YouTube is unlikely to do
that, or to cut off all its kidsand family footage from ads.
On Wednesday, YouTube
said it would launch a sepa-
rate website for children and
change the age categories on
Kids. Also, YouTube is plan-
ning to end “targeted” ads
on videos kids are likely to
watch. That solution would
make it harder for the crea-
tors behind those clips to
earn more from ads, al-
though it’s a less draconian
move than some other ru-
mored options.
A problem with this ap-
proach, though, is defining
kids videos. COPPA applies
to any web service “directed
to children.” While most
clips on YouTube Kids, such
as nursery rhyme cartoons,
clearly are, other huge
swaths of YouTube, such as
footage of video game
streaming, arguably aren’t.
Yet it’s an open secret that
younger viewers love watch-
ing people play video games.
Roughly a quarter of the
YouTube ads one major toy
company buys run on
“Minecraft” videos, accord-
ing to a media buyer with
knowledge of the matter
who asked not to be identi-
fied discussing private data.
“The difficulty here is de-
termining what is ‘kids di-
rected,’ ” said Ashkan
Soltani, a privacy researcher
who was previously the chief
technologist for the FTC.
“It’s not a bright-line rule.”
Once the line is drawn,
YouTube creators do not
want to fall on the wrong
side. Many, like KidCity’s
Michael, now describe their
productions as “family-
based play” or “co-play” —
videos that feature adults
and, the hope is, that adults
watch.
YouTube is not the only
major player in an uncom-
fortable spot. The FTC fined
Bytedance Inc., the owner of
popular app TikTok, for vio-
lating federal guidelines on
minors. Critics have com-
plained that Facebook Inc.
illegally tracks children’s on-
line behavior. Many in chil-
dren’s media don’t expect a
viable solution to come from
the household names.
“It doesn’t make sense
that big internet companies
can take something they de-
signed for grown-ups and
make that for kids,” said
Kevin Donahue, an early
YouTube executive who now
runs Epic, an e-book start-up. “You have to create
something new.” (Donahue
said he has no interest in ri-
valing his old company,
though. “We’re not at all do-
ing that,” he said.)
For most newcomers,
that something looks like
Netflix: A subscription serv-
ice with a limited selection.
The idea is that parents
would pay for some parts of
YouTube popular with kids
— the toy unboxers and
niche animators — without
the pratfalls of an unlimited
content library. Three years
ago, Epic added video to its
$7.99-a-month e-books app.
It offers a few thousand
clips, all reviewed by staff
members. Kidoodle.TV, a
Canadian company, offers
children’s videos on set-top
box services such as Roku.
Another, JuniorTube, had a
slate of curated amateur vid-
eos available on a subscrip-
tion-based app. Roku added
a new curated kids and fam-
ily section.
Highbrow, a London-
based start-up, sells a $6.49
monthly service with the
tagline “Trusted by schools
and parents worldwide.”
Priyanka Raswant, a corpo-
rate lawyer, formed the com-
pany as she was preparing to
have her first child. She
found most videos available
on YouTube Kids “nonsensi-
cal” and the app unhelpful
for parents.
“If you see something
outrageous, you have to re-
port it,” Raswant said.
“They’ve put the onus on the
parents. Most parents don’t
even have time to brush
their teeth.”
Highbrow has partnered
with telecoms in Latin
America and India for distri-
bution, but it doesn’t share
sales data. The service
carries videos from Pink-
fong, the studio behind
mega-hit “Baby Shark,” as
well as smaller shows such
as “Travel With Kids” from
PBS.
SuperAwesome is one of
the few borrowing You-
Tube’s model of free, ad-sup-
ported programming. It is
set to book $60 million in rev-
enue this year. (YouTube
doesn’t share sales, but esti-
mates place the yearly sales
from its kids content north
of $700 million.) Collins said
his company is profitable. Of
course, the uncertainty sur-
rounding kids online videocould also threaten those
profits. His ad business is
competing against those at
the twin giants of Google
and Facebook. The benefits
of SuperAwesome’s ad serv-
ices might not be as appar-
ent if YouTube passes
through the FTC probe un-
scathed and grows its Kids
app.
That could mean that
more is riding on Collins’ vi-
deo service. For Rukkaz,
Collins is targeting
YouTube’s blind spots. Most
of YouTube Kids caters to
preschoolers, so Collins is re-
cruiting creators aiming for
an older audience. He’s also
approaching creators with
between 500,000 and a mil-
lion subscribers on YouTube
— enough to earn livings
from the site, but not to be
inoculated from its swings.
“This entire community is
really being orphaned by
YouTube,” Collins said.
Michael, who runs the
KidCity channel, is opti-
mistic about Rukkaz. He’s
planning to use SuperAwe-
some’s feature for hosting vi-
deo comments, which he
finds useful for getting audi-
ence feedback. YouTube
shut off comments on videos
with children this year but
allowed a select group of
channels to keep them with
the condition that they “ac-
tively moderate” the posts.
Filtering those comments,
though, requires using a ma-
nual system. “You have to go
in there and spell the dirty
words,” he said.
His attempts to find foot-
ing beyond YouTube haven’t
succeeded in the past. On
KidCity, the Texan father
and his two children perform
long skits dressed up as fa-
miliar cartoon characters —
Marvel Comics’ Wolverine or
Disney’s Queen Elsa. They
tried to post one of these
clips on Amazon’s self-pub-
lishing service, Prime Video
Direct, but the company re-
jected the videos, citing in-
tellectual property con-
cerns. A KidCity clip of his
son donning a Spider-Man
costume and testing a Spi-
der-Man toy has more than
85 million views on YouTube.
YouTube’s laissez-faire ap-
proach to media has
brought scathing critics, but
it has also enabled countless
careers online.
“That’s the creator plat-
form for kids,” Michael said.
“The only one, unfortu-
nately.”
At least one would-be
YouTube rival has already
bit the dust. JuniorTube, a
company based in Indiana,
made a paid app and re-
cruited a few established
YouTubers. Like the others,
it managed the costs of host-
ing video and other back-
end services, splitting sales
with video producers. In
May, these producers re-
ceived an email that Jun-
iorTube had shut down “due
to very poor business per-
formance and audience in-
terest.”Bergen writes for
Bloomberg.YouTube, which has been
criticized and investigated
for showing inappropriate
videos to kids on its main
site, said it will launch a
separate website for chil-
dren.
The new site, an online
version of the YouTube Kids
mobile app, will go live later
this week, according to a
statement posted Wednes-
day by the Google-owned
service.
YouTube also said its
Kids app and website will get
new categories for different
ages. Preschool will be for
children who are 4 years old
and younger. Younger is for
ages 5 to 7 and Older is for
ages 8 to 12.
“We know that what is
great content for a 4-year-
old may not be great content
for a 10-year-old, which is
why we want to make it eas-
ier for parents to select the
right content for their kids
on YouTube Kids,” the
company said in the blog
post.
YouTube has been
criticized for letting inap-
propriate, misleading and
sometimes violent videos
spread on its service. For
years, executives were un-
able or unwilling to address
the problem as they pursued
aggressive viewer engage-
ment targets, Bloomberg
News has reported.
Videos targeting children
have been particularly prob-
lematic, partly because
YouTube doesn’t manually
review all clips and its soft-
ware can’t easily identify
what content is appropriate
for young viewers.
The Federal Trade Com-
mission is looking into
whether YouTube breached
the Children’s Online Pri-
vacy Protection Act. The
agency has reached a
settlement with YouTube
but hasn’t released the
terms. To satisfy regulators,
YouTube officials are plan-
ning to end targeted ads on
videos that kids are likely to
watch.
On Wednesday, YouTube
warned parents that it still
won’t be able to spot all inap-
propriate videos. “Our sys-
tems work hard to exclude
content not suitable for each
of these age categories, but
not all videos have been
manually reviewed,” the
company said. “If you find
something inappropriate
that we missed, you can
block it or flag it for fast re-
view.”Facing criticism,
YouTube plans
new site for kids
The online version of
its app for children
will have new age
categories and address
content concerns.
By Gerrit De Vynck
more control over their pri-
vacy.
“As a result of our review,
we realize we haven’t been
fully living up to our high ide-
als, and for that we apolo-
gize,” Apple said in a state-
ment Wednesday.
Bloomberg News re-
ported this year that Ama-
zon.com Inc. and Apple had
teams analyzing recordings.
The Guardian reported in
July that some of the people
reviewing the Siri requests
heard private personal
details and possibly criminal
activity. Amazon, which still
has teams auditing voice
commands for its Alexa dig-
ital assistant, said this
month that it was letting
users opt out of human re-
view. Google has agreed to
stop transcribing voice re-
cordings in the European
Union amid a German inves-
tigation.
The tech giants’ use of
human reviewers has
spurred examinations by
lawmakers and regulators in
the U.S. and Europe. Privacy
advocates have expressed
concern that the practices
could violate users’ rights,
particularly when devices
begin recording uninten-
tionally or without the user’s
knowledge. Apple faces a
class-action lawsuit over pri-
vacy violations related to hu-
man reviewers listening to
recordings.
“We know that customers
have been concerned by re-
cent reports of people listen-
ing to audio Siri recordings
as part of our Siri quality
evaluation process,” Apple
said. “We heard their con-
cerns, immediately sus-
pended human grading of
Siri requests and began a
thorough review of our prac-
tices and policies.”
At the CES technology
trade show in Las Vegas this
year, Apple posted bill-
boards that proclaimed,
“What happens on your
iPhone, stays on your
iPhone.”
At Apple, less than 0.2%
of Siri commands were ana-
lyzed, the company said.
The recordings that were re-
viewed also don’t contain
personally identifiable infor-
mation and are stored for six
months tied to a random
identifier, not linked to a
user’s Apple ID or phone
number.
As part of the changes
Apple said it’s implement-
ing, users will be able to opt
in to let the company listen
to a select bunch of ano-
nymized audio samples in
order to improve Siri, and
then be able to opt out of the
program later if they wish.
Although it will no longer
store audio recordings, com-
puter-generated transcrip-
tions will be held anony-
mously for up to six months,
Apple said.
In another change, Apple
said only its own employees
— not outside contractors —
would listen to audio sam-
ples. The Guardian reported
Wednesday that at least 300
contractors in Europe lost
their jobs as a result of Apple
suspending its grading pro-
gram. Apple also said it’s
making changes to the re-
view process to reduce the
data about customers that
reviewers can see.
After user concerns that
Apple could be retaining re-
cordings from Siri that were
accidentally picked up be-
cause of a mistaken button
press or the system wrongly
thinking the user had said
“Hey Siri,” Apple said
Wednesday that it would
work to delete inadvertent
recordings.
Apple often tries to dis-
tinguish itself from other
tech companies by saying it
has tighter privacy controls.
But twice this year it has
apologized for lapses. In
January, Apple issued a mea
culpa for a bug in its Face-
Time video chat service that
enabled users to listen in on
people before they had even
accepted or rejected a call.Gurman writes for
Bloomberg.APPLE marketing executive Phil Schiller discusses
Siri at its introduction with the iPhone 4 in 2011.
Paul SakumaAssociated PressApple apologizes
for privacy lapse
A YOUNG BOYwatches “Thomas the Tank Engine” on YouTube at a Massachusetts school. Though the site
includes clips of such scripted shows, it relies mostly on a mountain of unscripted, user-generated content.Jessica RinaldiBoston GlobeFTC inquiry could set off
a shift in kids digital media
YOUTUBEcould be pressured by the FTC to move
children’s content to its separate YouTube Kids app.Chesnot/Getty Images[YouTube,from C1][Apple,from C1]