Is YouTube preparing for the new AU law?

In case you don't know, Australia passed an amendment called the Online Safety Amendment in 2024. This act of parliament aims to restrict the use of social media by minors under the age of 16.

YouTube has been preparing for this since February where they shared a new technology that would differentiate young viewers and adults. After testing it in other markets, YouTube is now rolling it out to the US.

How it works is that YouTube uses AI to interpret signals from a user and determine whether they're over or under 18. These signals include what type of videos a user is searching for, the categories, and the longevity of the account.

If your account is determined to be under 18, YouTube will

• automatically disable personalized advertising
• turn on digital wellbeing tools
• add safeguards to recommendations (including limiting repetitive views of certain content)

If your account's been falsely identified, you'll need to show proof to YouTube by using a credit card or a government ID.

This has caused a bit of an outrage and fear of YouTube taking your personal information. You may have seen videos talking about how to bypass or not get hit by the new AI.

If you use YouTube Premium, we assume YouTube might just use that to identify you.

YouTube's experimenting with a new collaboration feature!

This new test will allow creators to add collaborators to a video, giving you another way to recommend each other.

This test starts on a small group of creators first, but they'll expand to more creators later.

We assume you and your collaborator might be able to see the analytics of the video. Perhaps you might even share ad revenue.

YouTube updates their profanity guidelines!

YouTube has taken out the guideline of no profanity within the first 7 seconds.

That's right. This means you can say the F word in the first 7 seconds and can still be monetized.

However, this doesn't mean you're free to start swearing like a sailor for the entire video. If YouTube deems your video has too much profanity (i.e. an F word in every single sentence), you can still be demonetized.

Note: You can still be demonetized if you use profanity in your title or thumbnail!

New updates to YouTube's channel termination appeal timeframes and limits!

Starting this month, if your channel's been terminated, you'll have up to a year to appeal. But the numbers of appeals have been limited to a single channel termination.

This is YouTube's way of reducing spam submissions and focus their resources on legitimate appeals.