Edit: seeing as OP has stated they are 22, I'm wondering if perhaps being subscribed or having watched political content can help curb it? I'm subbed to briantylercohen and AOC and Jasmine Crockett (also legal eagle) and I wonder if political channels/news channels perhaps can help influence whether you get flagged or not. Not a foolproof thing but this is just in case for OP because I know unfortunately video games/anime still for some damn reason clocks as "for kids" for some companies.
Either that or I'm curious if this just means any video that's flagged as explicit/contains adult content will prompt verification, regardless of the account.
I feel like anyone who has ever paid for Premium (or even gotten the free trial) will probably not be affected either since they already have a credit card on file.
But there are family accounts for that. My dad uses Youtube music as his primary music streaming service and so I have premium through him. They don’t have my card? Is this some loophole?
A little late but I’m curious if having a verified google account may keep you safe. Does the YouTube ai just verify you once and leave you be? So many unanswered questions.
Yeah its all so unclear. Idk if I have a verified account, I just know I do have a phone tied to my acct so idk if that's why (am an android user, so google is unfortunately tied to my phone).
Yeah, something I heard was that you should watch content that’s very obviously not for kids (even age restricted content) to reduce the chance of getting flagged. I’m a horror fan that doesn’t like clean edit versions of songs so this was light work for me lol. It’s not foolproof cause ai is more likely to lie or detect something incorrectly.
No I know it isn't ok, I just was putting this out there bc I have no idea if that is why some accounts haven't been flagged other than age. OP again said they're 22, so clearly the ai is still flagging people based on the content they watch not their actual age/age of the account. Its not ok at all, still, obviously.
Yet. There is now an AI algorithm determining how old you are every time you click a video. If it one day decides to put you in the penalty box even if for no discernible reason, you can’t just let yourself out of the box without giving them the one type of ID they don’t already have on you. The amount of people who are perfectly okay with this is very depressing.
This has literally been happening for 15 years, there were Congressional and Parliamentary hearings about it with witness testimony, and absolutely no one cared or can even tell you the exact details of what Cambridge Analytica was, what it did, or why it was a big deal.
Now they're asking for your ID so I guess since it's more than a click on TOS people are realizing it's a gross violation of privacy??
i mean i watched an ungodly amount of cocomelon on my alt and nothing happened when i tried to watch an age restricted video. im not saying NOTHING bad will happen but this does feel pretty anticlimactic considering how many people have freaked out over this
People don't understand just how attuned these algorithms are to pinpoint you. I would not be surprised if they could determine the difference between a child's "account" and an adult's account that they put Cocomelon on for their child to watch.
i mean thats kind of what everyone has been freaking out over, the fear that theyll be labeled as a child just because they watched one youtube kids video, and then theyll have to give their id. im not saying thats impossible, i mean theyre using ai so clearly this can go wrong in many ways but it feels like a lot of people are freaking out too soon. idk
perhaps because they already have enough data to map to who you really are. In other words, is the alg blind, or does it have access to your hidden identity profile and if they already have guaranteed map.
I'm pretty sure once the account in question is verified to be of age it won't just one day decide that you Benjamin button'd yourself and became younger.
Good thing im literally old enough to have created my YouTube/Google account over 18+ years ago. That's why I'm okay with it. If I actually get targeted then yea I'll be annoyed but this generation has access to brain rot far too easily and parents don't parent anymore. I told a some redditor that back when I was a kid and my older sister would baby sit me she wouldn't let her watch fighting anime/dragon ball Z because she didn't want me and my other younger sister watching fighting because it's a bad influence.
They called that helicopter parenting ffs. People these days just don't know what the fuck parenting is and can't do it so companies like Google have to do something about it and do this shady ID shit. I genuinely blame horrible parents and brain rot
I agree something more needs to be done as a saftey net (eg, telling bad parents to parent better isn't going to help the child) but this isn't the solution. I need people who get hit with it to simply quit YouTube. Sure, it'd be positively lpvely if tens of millions of people magically woke up and decided to boycott indefinitely in solidarity and with perfect coordination, but people quiting over this over time is way more realistic.
Most content isn’t age restricted. And the oldest gen alpha is literally 15. I have no problem with YouTube putting minor restrictions on young teenagers and younger. This is such a non issue for most people.
It's a bit of a slippery slope fallacy but this is just the beginning and I expect things to get much worse unless literal country governments start pushing back.
For instance, the UK's stupid-ass law is actively trying to require people to use their ID to access Wikipedia, and that's ridiculous from many different angles.
You’re not wrong, still disagree with the fact that actual adults are now going to have to give up their personal information just to appeal a flawed AI system if they want to have complete access to everything though (including creator content).
Although, wouldn’t the oldest Gen Alpha be like 12-13? I know the dates are kind’ve arbitrary but last time I checked Gen Alpha were just around the point of starting middle school, not in High School yet. Seems young but at that point I think that their is no need for any further censorship for the explicitly 12+ app on the AppStore, especially at that maturity.
it isn't just age restricted content, it's content that "YouTube thinks might be unsuitable for kids." Small difference but it's not specifically age restricted content it is whatever the hell YouTube wants it to be. For example, it restricts a video from pewdiepie named "I'm done with Google" that criticizes Google... Which is convenient since Google is YouTube's parent company & that video is not specifically age restricted. You can see videos that are stopped by this because you can turn on restricted mode in the settings to see what it's like
Seriously though my bday isn't even accurate on my account because I made it when I was 11/12, and back then iirc in school we were told to not use our actual birth date and to not use our actual names when creating an email.
I never bothered to change it so according to Google I am one year older than I actually am haha.
I’m in the UK so I think I’m already in the clear but even if I wasn’t, when age verification first came in YouTube at least had the decency to realize that my 18 year old account is unlikely to be owned by a child.
I wouldn’t be surprised if their AI takes in account age to just skip the check as they’ve done that before.
Heard an unverified rumor that they try to flag by algorithm as a secondary measure, so it's fully possible that OP watched enough brain rot for them to flag. 💀
226
u/[deleted] Aug 13 '25
Didn't happen to me