Last September, we announced a series of changes to better protect kids and their privacy on YouTube and to address concerns raised by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Specifically, that all creators will be required to designate their content as made for kids or not made for kids in YouTube Studio, and data from anyone watching a video designated as made for kids will be treated as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user.

In November, we released a setting in Studio to make it easier for creators to designate their content. And today, we will begin to roll out these changes globally. We wanted to outline what you will start to see in the coming days.

What is made for kids content?

According to the FTC, a video is made for kids if it is intended for kids, taking into consideration a variety of factors. These factors include the subject matter of the video, whether the video has an emphasis on kids characters, themes, toys or games, and more.

To help us identify made for kids content, in November we introduced a new audience setting in YouTube Studio to help creators indicate whether or not their content is made for kids. Creators know their content best, and should set the designation themselves. We also use machine learning to help us identify this content, and creators can update a designation made by our systems if they believe it is incorrect. We will only override a creator designation if abuse or error is detected.

An updated experience for made for kids content

YouTube now treats personal information from anyone watching children’s content on the platform as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user. This means that on videos made for kids, we limit data collection and use, and as a result, we need to restrict or disable some product features. For example, we no longer serve personalized ads on this content or support features such as comments, live chat, notification bell, stories, save to playlist, and others.

Many creators around the world have created quality kids content for their audiences, and these changes will have significant impact. We’re committed to helping creators navigate this new landscape and to supporting our ecosystem of family content. We’ll share more in the coming months. In the meantime, we continue to engage on this issue. For example, we participated in the FTC’s public workshop and submitted our comment on COPPA, where we discussed the importance of clear guidelines that help creators live up to their legal obligations and support access to quality kids content.

Continued investment in YouTube Kids

We still recommend parents use YouTube Kids if they plan to allow kids under 13 to watch independently. In fact, tens of millions of people use YouTube Kids every week, and recently we saw an all-time high of weekly viewers since the app’s launch. Starting today, you will see a YouTube Kids promotion across all made for kids content. We also continue to improve the product. For example, we recently launched signed-in support for YouTube Kids on the web and connected devices — such as smart TVs — so parents can now access and control their child’s YouTube Kids experience across even more surfaces.

Responsibility is our number one priority at YouTube, and this includes protecting kids and their privacy. We’ve been significantly investing in the policies, products and practices to help us do this. Today’s changes allow us to do this even better and we’ll continue working to provide children, families and family creators the best experience possible on YouTube.

— The YouTube Team

YouTube Music is a dedicated music streaming service that guides you through the world of music. With official songs and albums as well as deep cuts, live performances, and remixes, you can listen to exactly what you want, when you want to. Or you can sit back and let us recommend music for you right on your home screen.

Rolling out today, we’re introducing a shelf of three personalized mixes - the new Discover Mix, New Release Mix, and Your Mix - to keep you up to date on what’s just been released and introduce you to a wider range of artists and sounds based on your personal taste. Updated regularly, these mixes will use your listening history to create a unique experience and guide your music exploration to exciting and fresh destinations week after week.



Check out what each of these new mixes is bringing to you:

Discover Mix: Whether introducing you to an entirely new artist you’ve never heard before, or unearthing hidden, lesser-known gems from artists you’re already familiar with, Discover Mix will give you 50 tracks every week that help you expand your musical horizons. With new updates every Wednesday, it’s your go-to playlist to discover music.

New Release Mix: This mix is your one-stop shop for a playlist of all the most recent releases by your favorite artists (and others we think you’ll like). Expect a big update every Friday (when most new releases drop) along with mid-week releases sprinkled in throughout the week to ensure you are always up-to-date on the latest releases.

Your Mix: Your Mix is the perfect playlist for those times when you don’t want to think and just want to play something you know you’ll like. It’s full of songs by artists you know and love, and also mixes in some songs and artists you’ve never heard before, but that we think you’ll love. Small updates are made regularly, so the music never gets stale and there’s always something new in rotation.

The more you listen to and like songs, the better your mixes will be. New to YouTube Music? Don’t worry, we can start delivering a personalized experience after you’ve selected a couple of artists you like during setup, or even after listening to just a few songs!

Discover Mix, New Release Mix, and Your Mix are now available globally for all YouTube Music listeners. To check out your personalized mixes, download the YouTube Music app for iOS or Android or visit the webplayer to dive in.

These new mixes are just the beginning of an even more personalized YouTube Music, so stay tuned for more music mixed just for you!

Nathan Lasche, Product Manager - YouTube Music, recently listened to "Dance Monkey by Tones and I"

Over the last several years we have worked to improve the way we manage content on YouTube by quickly removing it when it violates our Community Guidelines, reducing the spread of borderline content, raising up authoritative voices when people are looking for breaking news and information and rewarding trusted creators and artists that make YouTube a special place. Today we are announcing a series of policy and product changes that update how we tackle harassment on YouTube. We systematically review all our policies to make sure the line between what we remove and what we allow is drawn in the right place, and recognized earlier this year that for harassment, there is more we can do to protect our creators and community.

Harassment hurts our community by making people less inclined to share their opinions and engage with each other. We heard this time and again from creators, including those who met with us during the development of this policy update. We also met with a number of experts who shared their perspective and informed our process, from organizations that study online bullying or advocate on behalf of journalists, to free speech proponents and policy organizations from all sides of the political spectrum.

We remain committed to our openness as a platform and to ensuring that spirited debate and a vigorous exchange of ideas continue to thrive here. However, we will not tolerate harassment and we believe the steps outlined below will contribute to our mission by making YouTube a better place for anyone to share their story or opinion.

A stronger stance against threats and personal attacks

We’ve always removed videos that explicitly threaten someone, reveal confidential personal information, or encourage people to harass someone else. Moving forward, our policies will go a step further and not only prohibit explicit threats, but also veiled or implied threats. This includes content simulating violence toward an individual or language suggesting physical violence may occur. No individual should be subject to harassment that suggests violence.

Beyond threatening someone, there is also demeaning language that goes too far. To establish a consistent criteria for what type of content is not allowed on YouTube, we’re building upon the framework we use for our hate speech policy. We will no longer allow content that maliciously insults someone based on protected attributes such as their race, gender expression, or sexual orientation. This applies to everyone, from private individuals, to YouTube creators, to public officials.

Consequences for a pattern of harassing behavior

Something we heard from our creators is that harassment sometimes takes the shape of a pattern of repeated behavior across multiple videos or comments, even if any individual video doesn’t cross our policy line. To address this, we're tightening our policies for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) to get even tougher on those who engage in harassing behavior and to ensure we reward only trusted creators. Channels that repeatedly brush up against our harassment policy will be suspended from YPP, eliminating their ability to make money on YouTube. We may also remove content from channels if they repeatedly harass someone. If this behavior continues, we’ll take more severe action including issuing strikes or terminating a channel altogether.

Addressing toxic comments

We know that the comment section is an important place for fans to engage with creators and each other. At the same time, we heard feedback that comments are often where creators and viewers encounter harassment. This behavior not only impacts the person targeted by the harassment, but can also have a chilling effect on the entire conversation.

To combat this we remove comments that clearly violate our policies – over 16 million in the third quarter of this year, specifically due to harassment.The policy updates we’ve outlined above will also apply to comments, so we expect this number to increase in future quarters.

Beyond comments that we remove, we also empower creators to further shape the conversation on their channels and have a variety of tools that help. When we're not sure a comment violates our policies, but it seems potentially inappropriate, we give creators the option to review it before it's posted on their channel. Results among early adopters were promising – channels that enabled the feature saw a 75% reduction in user flags on comments. Earlier this year, we began to turn this setting on by default for most creators.

We’ve continued to fine tune our systems to make sure we catch truly toxic comments, not just anything that’s negative or critical, and feedback from creators has been positive. Last week we began turning this feature on by default for YouTube’s largest channels with the site’s most active comment sections and will roll out to most channels by the end of the year. To be clear, creators can opt-out, and if they choose to leave the feature enabled they still have ultimate control over which held comments can appear on their videos. Alternatively, creators can also ignore held comments altogether if they prefer.

All of these updates represent another step towards making sure we protect the YouTube community. We expect there will continue to be healthy debates over some of the decisions and we have an appeals process in place if creators believe we've made the wrong call on a video.

As we make these changes, it's vitally important that YouTube remain a place where people can express a broad range of ideas, and we'll continue to protect discussion on matters of public interest and artistic expression. We also believe these discussions can be had in ways that invite participation, and never make someone fear for their safety. We’re committed to continue revisiting our policies regularly to ensure that they are preserving the magic of YouTube, while also living up to the expectations of our community.

— Matt Halprin, Vice President, Global Head of Trust & Safety