YouTube age-restricted content

[timbo343]

This email has just started to hit our users inboxes.

 

 

"We’re reaching out because you use YouTube at school with a Google Workspace for Education account. In this type of account, you use your school email address, and your school administrator manages your access to Google products like YouTube.

 

 

 

Starting in the coming weeks: Because your school admin has marked you as under 18 years old, you’ll see a new, limited version of YouTube designed for schools when you use your school account. This means you won’t be able to do things like comment, live chat, or receive most notifications. You also won’t be able to create YouTube videos and may not be able to watch certain videos.

 

 

 

This new experience is automatically given to students marked as under 18. But this only impacts your YouTube experience on your school account and does not impact the YouTube experience on your personal account.

 

 

 

If you have uploaded videos to your school YouTube account, your channel will be hidden. You can download and save your videos using Google Takeout (when turned on by your admin).

 

 

 

In the coming months we will also be launching a tool that will allow you to directly move videos from your school account channel to a personal account. We will reach out with more details when the tool opens.

 

 

 

For more info on your school YouTube account, please visit our Help Center.

 

 

 

Thanks,

The YouTube team"

 

Solution is here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/10651918?hl=en#zippy=%2Cservices-not-available-to-users-under%2Cgoogle-maps-and-google-earth%2Cgoogle-search%2Cyoutube

I got this to my inbox [emoji19].. is there a way to change this on mass or maybe configure the users who are part of a group.

[psydii]

Set age-based access to Google services

Prior to September 1, 2021, you can designate your users’ age level in your Google Admin console. After that, all users without an age designation get the default experience for your institution type. However, you can still make changes after September 1, 2021.

 

Note: Age-based settings that you configure do not take effect until September 1, 2021.

 

Before you begin: To be sure that your institution gets the correct default age designation, check that you set the correct organization type in your Google Admin console. For details, go to Select your organization type for Google Workspace for Education.

 

To set age-based access, sign in to your Google Admin console.

 

 

From the Admin console Home page, click Account settings and then Age-based access settings.

 

To apply the setting to everyone, leave the top organizational unit selected. Otherwise, select a child organizational unit or a configuration group.

 

For Choose an appropriate age label, choose an option:

• Some or all users are under 18 years of age
  
• All users are 18 or older
  

 

Click Save. If you configured an organizational unit or group, you might be able to Inherit or Override a parent organizational unit, or Unset a group.

Edited September 1, 2021 by psydii

[TechMonkey]

I'd check that you are set as an administrator. I had 2 emails warning of this change, with steps on how to sort it, in the last month. It is very easy to sort.

[paulkerton]

It's literally setting OUs as to whether all the users are over or under 18. By default everyone will be set as under 18, you just need to update the ones that are for over 18s.

Really simple to do.

[psydii]

So prior to this we had YouTube restricted, and teachers were able to authorise otherwise restricted videos for Students. With this change (September 2021, not the earlier one where this thread started), if a video is age restricted by google algorithm, is a teacher able to override this with the Approve button?

[paulkerton]

So prior to this we had YouTube restricted, and teachers were able to authorise otherwise restricted videos for Students. With this change (September 2021, not the earlier one where this thread started), if a video is age restricted by google algorithm, is a teacher able to override this with the Approve button?

I believe so, yes. I've not come across a blocked video as yet to allow - but this is the solution Google are putting in place to fix issues we were facing with content last year.

[the_quick]

Well, it still doesn't work. I did assigned staff to be 18 and over a few weeks ago, checked today and the settings is still there.

 

Teacher came today and a video doesn't work

 

Age restriction, cannot verify age. I though this settings should solve this problem !

[psydii]

I'm seeing the same on that video. When I check in the admin console, my account is recorded as being 18 or over.

[Zammo]

Just saw this thread and found the same problem! We thought we had changed the settings too....

[paulkerton]

Yes, I'm getting "Verify your age" too, even though we have already done so. Guess it hasn't rolled out on 1st September as expected.

[kingoranks]

Google Edu is messing up

[the_quick]

Now I have another problem. On G suite we have disable YT app for students - we don't want them to upload vidoes using school account. But now on chromebooks it try to sign them in and they error message youtube is not available with your Google Account. I'm doing something wrong here?

[paulkerton]

Now I have another problem. On G suite we have disable YT app for students - we don't want them to upload vidoes using school account. But now on chromebooks it try to sign them in and they error message youtube is not available with your Google Account. I'm doing something wrong here?

 

You've disabled it via Apps > Additional Google Services > YouTube then you've turned it off completely for that OU/Group. The account has YouTube disabled essentially.

 

Turn it on via that, but then turn on the "Users are under 18" for the Student OUs under Account > Account Settings > Aged Based Access Settings. If there are users under 18 in the OU, uploading of video is disabled but they can still watch those deemed appropriate.

[Koldov]

Is this still happening to anyone, or just me?

 

The setting for the OU I am in (Admin) is 'everybody is over 18'...

 

 

Yeah ok Google...

 

[paulkerton]

Yes, it's still happening here too. But, as YouTube is non-supported service we aren't in the position to log it at the moment, are we?

[psydii]

Can somebody post links for more videos where this is happening? Edited September 17, 2021 by psydii

[paulkerton]

Can somebody post links for videos where this is happening?

 

These two from the first post are what I've been using. Probably worth anyone in this thread using the same videos to check for consistency!

 

[the_quick]

Thanks Paul, your suggestions worked.

 

It is still bit weird how it is done. Pupils can create own channel, but Youtube will stop them from uploading any videos - so what is the point of giving them ability to create the channel??

[tadcooke]

There are queries open with Google - maybe if everyone piles onto this it might get looked at quicker?

https://support.google.com/youtube/thread/125959057/gwfe-accounts-marked-as-18-years-or-older-still-being-asked-to-verify-age-in-youtube-peggyk?hl=en

[Ditto]

I've just finished listening to one of the Google's Edu updates and it reminded me of this thread. I suspect this isn't the explanation but I'll chuck it out there. It appears as of September, there is an age based access setting and the default is that everyone is under 18 in all your OUs. That'll drop Youtube. Even if it isn't, it's a new feature to be aware of anyway!!!

 

*** which I now see is covered by @tadcooke post above and @psydii earlier - it's a pretty big oversight by Google ***

Edited September 27, 2021 by Ditto

[pete]

I've just finished listening to one of the Google's Edu updates and it reminded me of this thread. I suspect this isn't the explanation but I'll chuck it out there. It appears as of September, there is an age based access setting and the default is that everyone is under 18 in all your OUs. That'll drop Youtube. Even if it isn't, it's a new feature to be aware of anyway!!!

 

At one of our schools, even with our staff groups / OUs selected and set as "Over 18" such as:

 

School > Marked as under 18

School > Staff (group) > Marked (at this level) as over 18

School > Students (group) > Inherit from School

 

...we've found YouTube is rather hit-and-miss about recognising logged-in adults correctly.

 

This could be because staff and groups are synced into Google from Azure, but checking in the Admin console there group memberships we're using are getting pulled through correctly.

 

At another school where ther groups are directly created in Google they don't appear to have this issue.

[paulkerton]

I've just finished listening to one of the Google's Edu updates and it reminded me of this thread. I suspect this isn't the explanation but I'll chuck it out there. It appears as of September, there is an age based access setting and the default is that everyone is under 18 in all your OUs. That'll drop Youtube. Even if it isn't, it's a new feature to be aware of anyway!!!

 

*** which I now see is covered by @tadcooke post above and @psydii earlier - it's a pretty big oversight by Google ***

 

They informed of this back in May/June though, so it isn't a new thing suddenly dropped on us. The problem seems to be it's ignoring what the OUs say/are set to.

[paulkerton]

This could be because staff and groups are synced into Google from Azure, but checking in the Admin console there group memberships we're using are getting pulled through correctly.

 

At another school where ther groups are directly created in Google they don't appear to have this issue.

Synced in users should be irrelevant. My user was manually created and it has this issue, even though most staff and students since September 2020 have been synced in.

[Ditto]

They informed of this back in May/June though, so it isn't a new thing suddenly dropped on us. The problem seems to be it's ignoring what the OUs say/are set to.

True. I think the recent go-live is what has brought this to the fore. The support case listed earlier seems to have pinned it down to videos where community guideline flagged content is where the problem lies.

[Koldov]

Teaching staff and non-teaching staff are in separate OUs, but have the same settings applied to them in the Google Admin Console.

 

All users in our domain have "Moderate Restricted YouTube access" applied, including staff. However we enabled the option "Verified Google Classroom teachers can approve videos", which gives teachers the equivalent of "Unrestricted YouTube access".

 

According to Google, Restricted Mode and age-restricted videos are not the same. So we wouldn't expect the above settings to make any difference to age-restricted content:

 

https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/7354993?hl=en#zippy=%2Cis-restricted-mode-the-same-as-age-gating-or-age-restricting-videos

 

Think we have finally got to the bottom of this, after yet another chat session with Google and chatting to a different person again, I was finally given this nugget of information:

 

"Further, some videos are not eligible for approval due to the configuration and upload settings. Videos restricted with age, are not eligible for EDU organization due to the COPPA agreement you have signed with your organization"

 

Videos which state underneath "Notice: Age-restricted video (based on Community Guidelines)" cannot be played. Others such as this one

show a banner underneath allowing the teacher to approve the video

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]61293[/ATTACH]

 

Is there something we are missing here? Something in either the way the videos are categorised by Google, its Community or the uploader...

 

Out of the videos listed in this thread (based on my user being in an OU with 'over 18' setting applied):

 

- Verify your age - Community Guidelines

 

- Verify your age - Community Guidelines

 

- Plays OK

 

- Plays OK - No Teacher approval banner but we don't have that setting enabled

 

- Verify your age - Community Guidelines