Faced with increasingly strict requirements to control minors’ access to certain content, YouTube must adapt well. In France as elsewhere, laws now oblige digital giants to actively verify the age of their users, going so far as to demand the blocking of access for sites that do not comply – the emblematic example remains the temporary suspension of portals of the Aylo group (Pornhub, Youporn …) under pressure from the French regulator. The protection of the youngest is, more than ever, having become a burning subject, and after X forced to account in Europe, the Google subsidiary prefers to play the right students (or not).
AI as a miracle solution
Faced with these obstacles, YouTube inaugurates a new generation of technologies: rather than systematically requesting an identity document or banking information at each internet user – methods deemed too intrusive and controversial in privacy – the Google platform explores the path of behavioral profiling.
The principle: an automatic learning algorithm Analyzes a multiplicity of indices extracted from the user activity: types of viewed videos, research history, longevity of the account, or even diversity of the explored categories. By crossing these signals, AI is supposed to guess if a user is potentially minor, regardless of the date of birth that he was able to inform when creating his account.
The device, already tested on a small scale in the United States, aims to protect the youngest by automatically tilting them to a suitable digital environment: targeted targeted advertising, digital well-being tools, reinforced filtering of problematic content … all automatically, without human intervention. The adult user who would be restricted by mistake would however have the possibility of appealing by transmitting proof of identity.
… or not
No need to think very far on the issue, the balance is precarious between protection, efficiency and privacy. A poorly calibrated algorithm is likely to generate false positives (depriving an adult access to content without valid reason) or, even more serious, false negatives, letting a minor pass under radars.
Especially since if the system imagined by YouTube is more respectful of privacy, it collects and interprets a large amount of data concerning navigation habits, posing new challenges in terms of data management. Many users could worry about seeing their navigation analyzed in depth for control purposes, even for a good cause.
By rushing into the breach of AI and machine learning to control the age of its users, YouTube tries a delicate balancingist operation. Between imperative to protect minors, fear of an arbitrary deprivation of access and confidentiality issues, the platform experiences a model brought to making noise, under the critical eye of the European authorities and digital defenders.
🟣 To not miss any news on the Geek newspaper, subscribe to Google News and on our WhatsApp. And if you love us, .
