San Francisco (AFP)

A wave of panic blows on YouTube, the authors of videos for children: the announced change in its advertising rules could annihilate most of their income.

"I almost had a crisis of anxiety on Wednesday," says Samuel Rader, who declines the life of his family on video.

"I thought we would have to find another source of income!" Says the former nurse, who left his job to devote himself entirely to his channel, "Sam and Nia", 3 years ago.

Google's hugely popular video platform, which has been fined in the US for breaking the law on tracking children for advertising purposes, has negotiated a four-month delay before changing the rules.

In addition to the $ 170 million fine, YouTube has promised to limit the collection of data on young minors, and prohibit targeted advertising as well as comments and notifications on videos that are addressed to them.

It remains to determine the chains concerned. "Our contact at YouTube told us that our channel was low risk, because our content is not aimed at children," says Sam, half relieved.

- "Home made" -

Like him, many parents film and comment on their daily life on YouTube: the family "vlogging", contraction of video and blog, exploded on the platform.

They are also staged in popular formats, such as challenges to achieve (not to say "no" to his children for 24 hours, for example) or the unpacking of "egg-surprises", with great reinforcement of exaggerated mimicry , basic special effects and lucrative product investments.

On the channel of Sam (more than 2.5 million subscribers), spectators can watch the family having fun at the theme park, do their shopping back to school or go to mass. Fans can even buy t-shirts with their motto, "love each other".

"Many of these channels are" home-made "+, they are small craft businesses and advertising is their only source of revenue," says Melissa Hunter, head of Family Video Network, which oversees children's content creators on Youtube. "The authors are scared, whether it's $ 30 or $ 100,000 a month, they will not win anything in January."

YouTube, whose highly targeted advertising with user data generates billions of dollars in profits for its parent company Google, has acknowledged that these changes will have a significant financial impact on creators.

"We may see a new balance," said Nicole Perrin, an analyst at eMarketer. "If it becomes impossible to track children, then everyone is at the same level, advertisers will not disappear."

- Not for children -

But the balance seems a distant horizon to the youtubeurs. Their fragile business model has already been disrupted by a succession of scandals in recent years (linked in particular to violent, inappropriate content or networks of pedophiles), which resulted in withdrawals of advertisers and loss of income.

"We must change the law," said Melissa Hunter, who intends to visit the US Consumer Protection Agency (FTC) in early October. With other actors in the sector, she considers that the law that protects children from tracking is outdated, because "the internet is already everywhere anyway, from household appliances to television and connected speakers."

Some semi-professional publishers had anticipated the risk of turbulence, diversifying their distribution on other platforms, such as Netflix or Amazon. Others had simply preferred to abstain from this sensitive segment.

"We launched a children's channel two years ago, but some rules have changed, we thought + this is a risky investment +, and we have not touched it," recalls Shaun McKnight, president. from M-Star Media, which includes several channels (hairdressing tutorials, vlogging of her binoculars "Brooklyn and Bailey", etc.).

He would prefer that all children's content be broadcast only on YouTube Kids, the version of the platform dedicated to children.

"The problem is that today parents use YouTube as a babysitter for their kids," he says. "The platform has never been designed for children under 13".

But as Joseph Simons, the boss of the FTC pointed out, this did not stop YouTube from "touting its popularity among children to companies that were prospective customers."

© 2019 AFP