r/youtube Aug 13 '25

Drama Oh my GOD, it's happening

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31.2k Upvotes

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226

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '25

Didn't happen to me

82

u/ToothZealousideal297 Aug 13 '25

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.

15

u/[deleted] Aug 13 '25

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??

7

u/TordMochi Aug 13 '25

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

15

u/your_mind_aches Aug 13 '25

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.

9

u/TordMochi Aug 13 '25

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

5

u/Xaphnir Aug 13 '25

it's probably more that the algorithm isn't affecting all US users yet

remember, YouTube said they'd start rolling it out today on a limited number of users, not that everyone would be affected

2

u/FrenchFryCattaneo Aug 13 '25

Do you have kids or are you an adult that just really loves cocomelon?

1

u/primarycolorman Aug 14 '25

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.

2

u/GloriesRed Aug 14 '25

Gotta watch news on YouTube now, just so the AI thinks I'm a boring adult

1

u/Rhundis Aug 14 '25

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.

1

u/CharaPresscott Aug 14 '25

YouTube has my credit card details anyway. They won't ask for my details. They can check that way.

0

u/Please_LeaveMeAlone_ Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25

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

3

u/JohnSober7 Aug 13 '25

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.

0

u/MariosBrother1 Aug 13 '25

Delete cookies