Sunday Rundown #12 – COPPA vs. YouTube creators

November ended, we are officially in chaotic December. Get ready for the upcoming holidays while reading Sunday Rundown #12 😉

COPPA vs. YouTube content creators

Last Sunday Rundown we talked about YouTube making changes to kids content. Creators will have to mark their videos on whether or not they are safe for kids. Why is this important? Because if they do not do that, YouTube’s algorithm will do it for them. It is more than likely that there will be mistakes.

We are all aware that kids watch YouTube videos through parental controls, but Google has no way of controlling who is in front of the screen – parent or kid. That is why the FTC requested YouTube to either remove all kids content from the platform or have it properly marked. Of course, YouTube chose the latter. So now all creators will have to mark their content with made for kids or not made for kids.

Either way, the suggested solution is terrible. COPPA is there to protect children’s’ privacy on the internet. I cannot understand how creators, who make content for kids, break this act. It has been proven once again that for YouTube the creators are just final goods. It is way more important to protect the company than to find an adequate solution to the situation.

Complex SERPs create a pinball pattern type of behaviour

The days when Google showed a simple list of 10 blue links tightly packed with URLs and a text snippet, are long behind us. Today, search engine result pages (SERPs) are much more complex.

The way SERPs are presented constantly changes and that affects the way people search on the internet. People’s attention today is distributed on the page itself and they process the results more non-linearly than before. They bounce from one result to another so often that we can establish a new SERP-processing gaze pattern – the pinball pattern.

With this pattern, the user scans the search results in a non-linear way and bounces from one result to another. That is because the results today do not include just links but also images, videos, and even interactive features. So if it makes sense for your content, think about adding some of the nontraditional SERP features.

Why are organisations investing in data literacy?

The ability to read, write and communicate data in context, including an understanding of data sources and constructs, analytical methods, and techniques applied — and the ability to describe the use case, application and resulting value.
Data literacy as defined by Gartner

Even though there are a lot of organisations that admit the benefits of data literacy, there are still barriers when it comes to unlocking this ability. The skills (or rather lack of) is one of the biggest. According to the report Skills of the Modern Marketer by Econsultancy, 13% or less of the interviewees see themselves as experts in strategy, data, measuring results, and brand management.

The Data Literacy Index also shows that the challenges in managing data are there because of the way organisations see the value of data literacy and its application. Econsultacy wrote a great blog post in which they talk about what data literacy is, how important it is and who is investing in it.

OK boomer

This is an interesting topic for Sunday Rundown #12.

Surely you have seen the “OK boomer” meme and if you have not, chances are you are a boomer. It is a meme that represents a dialogue between older people and youngsters. The conversation starts with “back in my time”, only that time is now 50 years in the past and a lot has changed since. Young people are judged by their elders for the things they do and the way they act, but they do not have the energy to fight and the conversation ends with OK boomer.

The meme got extremely popular these last few weeks thanks to TikTok but the phrase “OK boomer” was first used 4 years ago. In 2015 anonymous users on 4chan used it towards other anons who felt “out of touch”. A lot of boomers think the meme is about ageism and entitlement. But it is actually about economic anxiety, the threat of environmental collapse, and people resisting change.

In the end, the debate around “OK boomer” might be another iteration of the endless parade of internet-fueled ideological debates in which neither side is listening to the other.

The quest for simplicity

Everyone sees simplicity differently and looks at it from a different perspective. If complexity asks for order through adding things, simplicity does that through subtracting things.

For some people complexity is simplicity, and for others, it is vice versa. To make a good design you need to know who your target audience is so you know how to make a balance. The design needs to be simple enough so that users can execute a task and in result get information fast.

Bonus links

Thanks for taking the time to read our Sunday Rundown #12. If you have a story that you want to be covered in this series, reply to us below.