And now youtube is asking for id in USA. It's all down hill from here boys.
Viewing post in Heads Up: Itch will be complying with UK Censorship comments
To be clear, you could never look at "age restricted" videos without being logged into an account, which is the way I browse youtube most of the time (not logged in). But now even that won't be enough if their AI flags you, and I'm sure it will for many people. The whole "age restricted" thing is also grim, because it's clear it has nothing to do with protecting children. All kinds of vile things aren't age restricted. They age-gate when they don't approve of content, but aren't willing to kick or ban it entirely because of the outrage that would provoke. It's another form of shadowbanning and "reach restricting". IE, hidden censorship.
I mean a book could be written on why YoutubeKids was/is a terrible idea. Everyone knows the absolute horrors that populated that space because it's overseen, like everything, by an algorithm rather than actual humans, and that can be gamed. But it's all performative. They have to keep jumping through these hoops in the hopes of tricking the karens and grandstanding politicians into thinking they're doing something.