News in detail

YouNow – all the children’s room is a stage!

Lara narrates the fight she had with her parents and complains about bothersome teachers. Nothing unusual for the 16-year-old, who is sitting on her bed in her room this Monday evening. But across from her are not her three best friends, rather 1,813 German-speaking users. More join every minute. Lara doesn’t know a single one of them. Right now she’s at the top of the rankings for live streamers with the hashtag "German girls." Her pole position is also one of her main priorities. "Are we going to get over 2k? Come on, people!" – and indeed 100 likes pop up from her number one fan, Kevin. He actually just paid 8 euros to send Lara 100 likes. "That’s it!" Lara pushes her fans more, rarely interrupting her torrent of talking.

It’s been a whole 56 minutes that she’s been pulling in the ratings, and today’s highpoint is almost achieved. She’s going offline soon, says Lara, to which the hundreds of emoji flying into her chat window suddenly turn their smiles upside down into frowny faces. Still, Lara remarks, her view numbers are still stagnating – and that’s "uncool." After a few minutes she’s off. As far as what she’s chatted about for the last 64 minutes of reporting, there’s very little to be said for all that time online. The result, however, is the brief attention she received from so many fans.

Minimum ages go unchecked
Celebrity for minutes. Obviously, this is why the platform is so successful – especially with children and youngsters. Even though officially they have to be 13 or older, may users are much younger. It only takes one click when you open the site for the first time to identify yourself as 18 years old, younger or older. Users who identify themselves as a minor may only follow other minors’ streams. If a user prefers just to consume and doesn’t want to stream themselves, they needn’t identify themselves at all. Despite that the platform claims to have editorial control over access, this hardly seems possible or practicable.

Lack of protections for streamers
It’s an open window into a child’s room – even for people who just shouldn’t be allowed this view. Privacy and youth protection campaigners have been expressing concern since the platform started booming at the beginning of last year. Their criticism is above all directed at privacy rights violations, a lack of youth protection and the problem that streamers could be liable for copyright infringement when they have music playing in the background, for example. Although these concerns seem well-founded, preliminary studies have shown that the large majority of YouNow users are well aware of the dangers.

One researcher at the University of Düsseldorf came to the conclusion that “only” 8 percent of potential violations incurred through streaming on YouNow actually fall under the German Youth Protection Act. Almost all of the youngsters who stream simply ignore their viewer’s calls to “show more” or they clearly decline and even just block the bothersome user from their stream. By far the greatest percentage of possible violations (69 percent) stems from copyright infringement due to background music. Prosecution of this type of infringement, however, seems unlikely.

Tips for parents and teachers
Thus, even if streaming on YouNow is clearly legally questionable, most young people seem to navigate the dangers fine. So, forbidding them to us the service is not really helpful. It would be much better to explain to them the risks that live streaming brings with it. Above all kids must be aware of the possibility to report intrusive spectators or block them all together. The platform could also be the subject of a classroom lesson on copyright law or the right to one’s own image.

This post is a translation from the original by Walter Fikisz, Social Media Manager/ University of Lower Austria. Written by T-Mobile Austria for the kids blog.
www.kids.t-mobile.at