NNG But Related: Rail-YouTubers, adapt to COPPA

Last November Youtube had to pay a fine for breaking the "Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act" (COPPA), and now has to differentiate videos for whether or not they are made with children in mind. Youtube's algorithm makes the decision for each video but as a content creator, you can choose if your content is or isn't made for children in mind. What does this have to do with us? Well if you upload railroading content on youtube like Greg Scholl or Jerry Day, YouTube's Algorithm is programmed to mark "Trains" "Railroad(s)" and related subjects as Specifically made for Kids. While our railroad interest is for all ages, the average joe sadly thinks of trains as children's toys, and so do the corporate figures behind Youtube.

"So my video now says it's for kids, what's the big deal?"

The issue is that when your videos are marked for kids, they will not be recommended to anyone, the comments will be disabled, advertisements for the "Youtube Kids" App will be scattered all around the videos, embedding videos will be disabled depending on the website, and a lot of other disadvantages are given to your channel. In the creator studio where you upload/edit videos, you can mark all your videos in bulk "Not for kids" or you can select whether or not a specific video is made for kids or not when editing a specific video. By marking your channel as not for kids doesn't mean kids can't watch it/are not allowed to, but that it was not made for kids in mind.

A great comparison is Roger Hogan's channel and Jerry Day's channel. Roger has marked his channel as not for kids, or the algorithm has somehow deemed his channel as not for kids. However, the algorithm has marked Jerry's channel as for kids.