I knew there would be a day when I potentially come across this particular issue and I’m afraid to say that day has finally come. As of October 14th, my videos, Sonic Gets Door Slammed and Rouge’s College Experience have been flagged by YouTube as “Made For Kids“. “Knuckles Falls Through The Ceiling” had also received a flag, but was appealed immediately upon request. The two formal videos are currently under the review at the time of me writing this. Still, this is a big problem as this would generate a less significant amount of revenue and views, which could potentially lead to the end of my channel as we know it.
For those unfamiliar with the situation, YouTube has implemented a rating system under the COPPA Act (also known as the “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule“) that requires content creators to specify whether their videos are “made for kids” or not. This was a response due to the FTC suing YouTube for violation of these laws and were forced to pay $170 million in damages.
So why does this hurt content creators? It’s a simple situation turned rather complicated by YouTube themselves. YouTube has an algorithm in place where it automatically flags videos that they think is made for kids, despite the creator saying otherwise. Once they do this, we can’t change the setting. To make matters worse, creators can get channel strikes for this in some cases.
So as you can see, so much of this is unfair and this has been an ongoing issue with YouTube that only promotes distrust and hostility towards its content creators. Several well-known creators have also been affected by this such as Balena Productions, Graphy, and more. It amazes me how little YouTube has done to counter this issue and work with content creators instead of going against them.
I need your guys help more than ever this time. My channel cannot rely on YouTube Ad revenue alone to survive. My Patreon is the only thing I need to keep the channel going and that will be on your guys hands! I have plenty of animations and content I’d like to share with all of you, but with the environment YouTube has set on me, I’d be unable to continue without your help!
As of writing this, I have over 670,000 subscribers on YouTube. My Patreon currently has 3 paid members. If 1% of my subscribers donated $1 a month, that’ll leave me with $6,700 a month in Patreon pledges. That’s more than I’ll ever need to continue making videos. I’ll be making a public announcement video to give a formal update on the channel and will include further details here.
You guys deserve to have great animations and the future of this channel is on your guys hands.
Please help and donate if you can!
-Adrian
