YouTube Will Use AI To Verify Your Age Based On Watch History, Forces You To Give Legal ID And Biometric Data
YouTube is hot garbage.
Starting later this month, Google’s YouTube will use artificial intelligence (AI) to verify the age of the viewer based on the person’s watch history. If the AI thinks you are underage, YouTube will then force you to submit official paperwork and biometrics scans to prove your identity.
YouTube announced the change in a blog post on July 29th. The post reads:
Back in February, we shared that we would soon introduce technology that would distinguish between younger viewers and adults to help provide the best and most age appropriate experiences and protections.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll begin to roll out machine learning to a small set of users in the US to estimate their age, so that teens are treated as teens and adults as adults. We’ll closely monitor this before we roll it out more widely.
This technology will allow us to infer a user’s age and then use that signal, regardless of the birthday in the account, to deliver our age-appropriate product experiences and protections. We’ve used this approach in other markets for some time, where it is working well. We are now bringing it to the US, and as we make progress we’ll roll it out in other markets. We will closely monitor the user experience, and partner with Creators to ensure that the entire ecosystem benefits from this update.
Here’s how it works
We will use AI to interpret a variety of signals that help us to determine whether a user is over or under 18. These signals include the types of videos a user is searching for, the categories of videos they have watched, or the longevity of the account.
When the system identifies a teen user, we’ll automatically apply our age-appropriate experiences and protections, including:
disabling personalized advertising
turning on digital wellbeing tools
adding safeguards to recommendations, including limiting repetitive views of some kinds of content
If the system incorrectly estimates a user to be under 18, they will have the option to verify that they are 18 or over, such as using a credit card or a government ID. We will only allow users who have been inferred or verified as over 18 to view age-restricted content that may be inappropriate for younger users.
Naturally, a lot of people online are not happy about this.
YouTube has since officially replied to some accounts on social media voicing their concerns, but the new policy is not changing.
This comes days after the United Kingdom initiated its overreaching and Orwellian censorship bill called the “Online Safety Act,” which is touted as a strong measure to protect minors from lewd, harmful, and false materials. The bill forces social media platforms and apps to require biometric age verification checks and banking information to prove people’s identities.
One of the criticisms of the act is that some are concerned this will leach into other countries by default. British officials who designed the bill admit this. According to the U.K. website:
The Act gives Ofcom the powers they need to take appropriate action against all companies in scope, no matter where they are based, where services have relevant links with the UK. This means services with a significant number of UK users or where UK users are a target market, as well as other services which have in-scope content that presents a risk of significant harm to people in the UK.
The Act requires providers to specifically consider how algorithms could impact users’ exposure to illegal content – and children’s exposure content that is harmful to children – as part of their risk assessments.
Providers will then need to take steps to mitigate and effectively manage any identified risks. This includes considering their platform’s design, functionalities, algorithms, and any other features likely to meet the illegal content and child safety duties.
The law also makes it clear that harm can arise from the way content is disseminated, such as when an algorithm repeatedly pushes content to a child in large volumes over a short space of time.
Categorised services will be required to publish annual transparency reports containing online safety related information, such as information about the algorithms they use and their effect on users’ experience, including children.
Australia not long ago enacted something similar that bans those aged 16 and younger from social media, adding age verification checks to these platforms to gain access. YouTube was recently added to this list.
The WinePress reported last week that Russia is fining and jailing people who simply search for content online, and have targeted VPN advertisements as well.
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
Remember when kids used to make fake IDs to buy booze and sneak into clubs and concerts? Now they’ll be doing that to watch videos, and so will many other adults as well!
Always in the name of protecting the children. And then you have these pathetic parents, these loser moms, who cry and beg the government to legislate laws to oppress us all because of their failures and lack of parental oversight.
Isaiah 3:12 As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.
Not long ago I started my YouTube channel, hoping to perhaps expand my reach a bit more. It really has not gone as planned as I think YouTube is already artificially suppressing my views, because the amount of subscribers and views I get on Substack do not even come close to translating to YouTube. Plus, I have already encountered these new biometric and ID checks if you want to perform certain features, features that used to be common for any content creator to have. Not anymore.
Needless to say, at this point I am not sure how much more I will be posting to YouTube. I can still post things, but I have to give up more of my privacy just to do basic things. It’s absurd!
This new plan YouTube is implementing is going to be a train wreck. The AI is going to go ballistic and persecute most people, so don’t get caught watching anything that is considered “underage” lest you get banned from watching videos.
YouTube honestly sucks.
A lot of things have been shadow banned or blacklisted as is; most channels now are just grifters and shills and plants that mine regurgitated content for ad revenue and sponsors. Admittedly, I was wanting to get in on some of that, too, but I realize that is not the path to go down at this point.
That, and the platform itself is a joke. Bots and scams are everywhere, the pornographic ads, the sheer volume of ads, etc.
I’m sure this will drive up content creation and uploads elsewhere such as Rumble - which one of the platform’s biggest shareholders is Palantir’s Peter Thiel. But even that platform has turned into a joke at this point. Good luck finding things you want because the SEO is terrible, and everything is being suppressed in order to boost all of the blatant paid shills and industry plants that are force-fed onto you.
Those of you who have been with me for years know that I have repeatedly said our days online are limited, and now that has become even truer still, because at some point there will be no workarounds available and the only way to access the internet at will is to have a digital ID, period. It’s coming, 100% guarantee.
On the positive side of this, if YouTube and other platforms start censoring you, then that is a good opportunity to get outside more and get back to more reading and physical interaction. God knows we could all benefit from that.
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Those that get a stream of income from using the internet/social media will feel this once YT really gets the ball rolling, and the rest of the online platforms follow suit one by one. Hopefully, a reliable contingency plan is in place for the decent ones that just honestly wanted to share useful info, and the brethren, in terms of ways to make money for basic needs without the internet.
The long, slow march....meets "accelerationism." Somehow, one would think (hope?) the lethargic, distracted, programmed world system-enamored and disoriented public would awaken from their dreams of the nanny state they've been fed as being "Nirvana" from their youngest days and recognize the panopticon instead being constructed all around them. Appreciate the heads up... I STILL hear / read "truth teller" posts getting excited that they might be able to get their platform restored on YouTube again (?!@*???) How incongruous is this? Is YouTube fame and fortune worth participating in something that chooses to lead the race to the bottom and feed the beast system more robust, current information? Technology is the Trojan Horse -- or at least it's become one in the hands of those looking to exploit the users.....