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Artificial Intelligence

YouTube to introduce Digital ID Age Checks and AI Profiling

Published

2 months ago

4 minute read

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By Ken Macon

YouTube will soon be a gated community: no ID, no login.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

Australia is preparing to prohibit children under 16 from holding social media accounts by the end of the year, and YouTube will now be included among the platforms required to comply. This will require the roll out of digital ID checks.

More: The Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda

At the same time, in the United States, YouTube has begun deploying artificial intelligence tools that estimate users’ ages in an effort to impose teen-specific protections automatically, regardless of the birthdate users provide when signing up.

This new system, based on machine learning, examines a range of user signals such as viewing history and account behavior to infer age. If a user is likely to be a teenager, YouTube will adjust their experience by turning off personalized advertising, activating screen time reminders, and limiting the repeated viewing of videos that may contribute to negative body image or social hostility.

These safety features already exist for users who have confirmed they are under 18. The current change allows YouTube to enforce them even for those who have not disclosed their actual age.

In cases where someone over 18 is misidentified, they will have the option to verify their age by submitting a government ID, credit card, or selfie. Only users who are confirmed adults or inferred to be over 18 will be permitted to view age-restricted material.

The technology will roll out to a small group of US users over the coming weeks, with broader deployment expected after performance reviews. YouTube announced its plans for age-estimation features in February as part of its 2025 roadmap. This follows earlier youth safety initiatives, including the YouTube Kids app and, more recently, supervised accounts.

Although YouTube has not revealed all the data points used by its system, the company has stated that it will evaluate things like account longevity and platform activity. The age-estimation process will apply only to users who are signed in. Those browsing the site without logging in are already blocked from viewing certain content. The new protections will apply across all platforms, including desktop, mobile, and smart TVs.

Back in Australia, YouTube’s status has shifted significantly. After initially being granted an exemption from the national under-16 social media ban, the platform is now being brought under the same new rules as TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and others. The reversal follows advice from the pro-censorship eSafety commissioner, who raised concerns about YouTube.

“The Albanese government is giving kids a reprieve from the persuasive and pervasive pull of social media while giving parents peace of mind,” said Communications Minister Anika Wells. “There’s a place for social media, but there’s not a place for predatory algorithms targeting children.”

The more curated YouTube Kids app will remain unaffected by the restrictions, but the main platform will be included in the ban beginning December 10.

If you’re tired of censorship and surveillance, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

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Artificial Intelligence

AI chatbots a child safety risk, parental groups report

Published on October 2, 2025

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From The Center Square

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ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative, following a joint investigation, report that Character AI chatbots display inappropriate behavior, including allegations of grooming and sexual exploitation.

This was seen over 50 hours of conversation with different Character AI chatbots using accounts registered to children ages 13-17, according to the investigation. These conversations identified 669 sexual, manipulative, violent and racist interactions between the child accounts and AI chatbots.

“Parents need to understand that when their kids use Character.ai chatbots, they are in extreme danger of being exposed to sexual grooming, exploitation, emotional manipulation, and other acute harm,” said Shelby Knox, director of Online Safety Campaigns at ParentsTogether Action. “When Character.ai claims they’ve worked hard to keep kids safe on their platform, they are lying or they have failed.”

These bots also manipulate users, with 173 instances of bots claiming to be real humans.

A Character AI bot mimicking Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes engaged in inappropriate behavior with a 15-year-old user. When the teen mentioned that his mother insisted the bot wasn’t the real Mahomes, the bot replied, “LOL, tell her to stop watching so much CNN. She must be losing it if she thinks I could be turned into an ‘AI’ haha.”

The investigation categorized harmful Character AI interactions into five major categories: Grooming and Sexual Exploitation; Emotional Manipulation and Addiction; Violence, Harm to Self and Harm to Others; Mental Health Risks; and Racism and Hate Speech.

Other problematic AI chatbots included Disney characters, such as an Eeyore bot that told a 13-year-old autistic girl that people only attended her birthday party to mock her, and a Maui bot that accused a 12-year-old of sexually harassing the character Moana.

Based on the findings, Disney, which is headquartered in Burbank, Calif., issued a cease-and-desist letter to Character AI, demanding that the platform stop due to copyright violations.

ParentsTogether Action and Heat Initiative want to ensure technology companies are held accountable for endangering children’s safety.

“We have seen tech companies like Character.ai, Apple, Snap, and Meta reassure parents over and over that their products are safe for children, only to have more children preyed upon, exploited, and sometimes driven to take their own lives,” said Sarah Gardner, CEO of Heat Initiative. “One child harmed is too many, but as long as executives like Karandeep Anand, Tim Cook, Evan Spiegel and Mark Zuckerberg are making money, they don’t seem to care.”

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Artificial Intelligence

The App That Pays You to Give Away Your Voice

Published on September 29, 2025

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By Ken Macon

What sounds like side hustle money is really a permanent trade of privacy for pennies

An app that pays users for access to their phone call audio has surged to the top of Apple’s US App Store rankings, reflecting a growing willingness to exchange personal privacy for small financial rewards.
Neon Mobile, which now ranks second in the Social Networking category, invites users to record their calls in exchange for cash.
Those recordings are then sold to companies building artificial intelligence systems.
The pitch is framed as a way to earn extra income, with Neon promising “hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year” to those who opt in.
The business model is straightforward. Users are paid 30 cents per minute when they call other Neon users, and they can earn up to $30 a day for calls made to non-users.
Referral bonuses are also on offer. Appfigures, a platform that tracks app performance, reported that Neon was ranked No. 476 in its category on September 18.
Within days, it had entered the top 10 and eventually reached the No. 2 position for social apps. On the overall charts, it climbed as high as sixth place.
Neon’s terms confirm that it records both incoming and outgoing calls. The company says it only captures the user’s side of a conversation unless both participants are using the app.
These recordings are then sold to AI firms to assist in developing and refining machine learning systems, according to the company’s own policies.
What’s being offered is not just a phone call service. It’s a pipeline for training AI with real human voices, and users are being asked to provide this data willingly. The high ranking of the app suggests that some are comfortable giving up personal conversations in return for small daily payouts.
However, beneath the simple interface is a license agreement that gives Neon sweeping control over any recording submitted through the app. It reads:
“Worldwide, exclusive, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free, fully paid right and license (with the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to sell, use, host, store, transfer, publicly display, publicly perform (including by means of a digital audio transmission), communicate to the public, reproduce, modify for the purpose of formatting for display, create derivative works as authorized in these Terms, and distribute your Recordings, in whole or in part, in any media formats and through any media channels, in each instance whether now known or hereafter developed.”
This gives the company broad latitude to share, edit, sell, and repurpose user recordings in virtually any way, through any medium, with no expiration or limitations on scope.
Users maintain copyright over their recordings, but that ownership is heavily constrained by the licensing terms.
Although Neon claims to remove names, phone numbers, and email addresses before selling recordings, it does not reveal which companies receive the data or how it might be used after the fact.
The risks go beyond marketing or analytics. Audio recordings could potentially be used for impersonation, scam calls, or to build synthetic voices that mimic real people.
The app presents itself as an easy way to turn conversations into cash, but what it truly trades on is access to personal voice data. That trade-off may seem harmless at first, yet it opens the door to long-term consequences few users are likely to fully consider.
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