WWWP Open Thread

Wow, it's already a week later and here we are again. I'm all hopped up on Red Bull Winter Edition. It's actually very good tasting. I don't ever drink these things, so I'm a bit wound up. So, we started out this week with winter weather and now it's going to be almost 80º tomorrow. That's winter in the Deep South for ya. Shoot, you can go to work in the morning dressed for warm weather and leave regretting that you didn't layer up. 

Aaaand, I've already run out of stuff to talk about. Hey, it's better than usual where I start out and have no idea what's about to go down. Alright, I'm shooting from the hip now ... and wouldn't you know it I just hit my foot. Now I've got nothing to talk about AND a hole in my foot .... I wonder where MIA, Boho, Cajun, Your Founding Father, Jubal, and Geralt have been hiding at.

And just like that, the sugar rush is over. Now I just feel like I drank 8.4 fl oz of sugary plum flavored shame and regret.

This could be a long one today folks as I'll be doing a legit blog post in the next segment. And with that let's keep this thing moving ....

This week's next section is a bit more serious than usual. The meme factory has been really hot the past few weeks so there have been some good ones to feature; however, think everyone at Meme Inc. took the week off this week. That being the case I'd like to bring attention to something, but first let me give some context. I watch a lot of YouTube. It is my primary source of video entertainment.

A few weeks ago a handful of content creators brought up COPPA (Child Online Privacy Protection Act), and the recent fine that was just levied on YouTube by the FTC for violating this. The platform was collecting cookie data from videos meant for kids and and they were using it for the purpose of targeted ads. This is illegal online. It comes down to the collection of data online in the form of cookies that websites use. YouTube settled out of court for $170 million and they struck a deal with the FTC. Now the FTC will be going after content creators, even though it is YouTube and not the content creators who have control over the collection of data for advertising. Now, nobody is saying that we shouldn't be protecting kids online; however, the wording in the law and YouTube's new rules are the problem. 

YouTube has made a concerted effort over the past few years to hedge edgy content and push content creators towards making more family friendly content. They altered their algorithm to push this family friendly content in recommended feeds across the platform. In order to be family friendly content creators began making content that would be enticing to a broad audience. For instance some gaming channels that were clearly for adults dropped innuendo related jokes, swearing, and other off-color things in their videos and included jokes and references for kids while keeping jokes in that only adults would understand but not off color. This happened with game reviews, anime channels, unboxing channels, and just about every other type of channel you could think of in some form or fashion. Not conforming meant that your monetization was in jeopardy, so if a creator was making a living off of ads then they really had no choice but to go the "family friendly" route. Now here is the kicker. If you make content that the FTC believes is for children it's a $42,000 PER VIDEO. So that brings to question: What does the FTC take into consideration to see if a video is targeting kids? According to YouTube's FAQ Page here are the criteria that content will be judged against.

• Subject matter of the video (e.g. educational content for preschoolers

• Whether children are your intended or actual audience for the video.

• Whether the video includes child actors or models.

• Whether the video includes characters, celebrities, or toys that appeal to children, including animated characters or cartoon figures.

• Whether the language of the video is intended for children to understand.

• Whether the video includes activities that appeal to children, such as play-acting, simple songs or games, or early education.

• Whether the video includes songs, stories, or poems for children.

• Any other information you may have to help determine your video’s audience, like empirical evidence of the video’s audience.

It's all very vague. Now let's look at what happens when you select that your video is intended for kids on the YouTube platform. If you set your video as "made for kids" the following restrictions kick in, as per YouTube's Page about it:

Starting in January, when you set your audience as “made for kids”, we'll restrict certain features to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and other applicable laws. When this happens, the following features won’t be available on individual videos or live streams:

• Personal advertising

• Comments

• Channel branding watermark

• Donate button

• Cards or end screens

• Live chat or live chat donations

• Notification bell

• Playback in the Miniplayer

• Super Chat or Super Stickers

• Save to playlist


Note: Starting in November, the channel memberships "join" button and the merch shelf won't be available on content set as made for kids.


Starting in January, if your channel is made for kids, your videos or live streams won’t have any of the features above. Your channel also won’t have the following:


• Stories

• Community posts

• Notification bell

• Channel Memberships


Your viewers also won’t be able to “Save to Watch later” or “Save to playlist.”

Note: Starting in November, channels set as made for kids won't be able to sign up for channel memberships.

This basically takes an active channel that someone can make a living off of and kills it immediately. Then if they are fined they are ruined financially. They are placing the blame and consequences where it doesn't belong. But then again, it is Google, and being evil is kind of their thing these days. I'll post a few of responses from youtubers I watch in the comments below.

They have already started flagging content, and most of it is missing the mark. Channels that are clearly not kids' channels are being flagged because they talk about animation, collectables, are family friendly, or are centered around gaming. Not only that, but YouTube is the one who collects data. Content creators can't collect it and they can't see it when YouTube collects it, but the platform has thrown them under the bus and moved the responsibility to them.

The FTC is collecting comments at this time, until December 9th regarding the issue. You can leave your remarks HERE

Tip of the week: 

This week we're going to look at how to control the leading in a post. Leading is the space between the lines of text. For example:

Lines might have big text
 and/or touch each other.

But we can control this with a simple code: <div style="line-height: 20px;"> Simply change the number and the space in between lines of text will change.

This will be typed (or copy/paste) above the text where it is to be applied and then closed at the end. So, applying the last two weeks of tips, if we apply a color and a size to the text and then adjust the leading "line height" our text would look like this in the HTML editor: (BONUS TIP: Use the same code but use "text-align" instead of "line height" and you can control your type of paragraph with left, right, center, and justify."

<div style="text-align: center;">
<div style="line-height: 20px;">
<span style="color: #e47825;"><span style="font-size: 40px;"><b>Lines might have big text</b></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #e47825;"><span style="font-size: 40px;"><b>and touch each other.</b></span><span></div></div>

This what the coding for the example above looks like. Now let's adjust the line height to 40px and the font size to 30px and watch it clean up.

Lines might have big text
 and/or touch each other.

Remember that the <span> tags have to be closed out and reapplied between each line break ( <br /> ) whereas the <div> tags can cover the whole paragraph.

Next week we'll do a few random things like add a runaround to a photo as well as choose the photo in your blog post that Blogger will use as the photo is posts with an article on the homepage.

Music time.

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y'all know what's up 

memes, gifs, music, pics, random thoughts ... 

post 'em if you got 'em