YouTube is overhauling its community guidelines to more strictly moderate gambling and violent gaming content. The massive Google-owned video platform will soon ban links to online skin casinos and other cosmetic gambling sites. It'll also age-restrict videos featuring certain violent imagery like the kind you might see in any standard playthrough of blockbuster video games like the upcoming Grand Theft Auto 6.
The policy changes introduce clearer rules around three main categories of content: online gambling, social casino games, and graphic gaming content. YouTube will expand its enforcement on gambling-related material to include digital goods with monetary value--such as in-game skins, cosmetics, and NFTs--if they are linked to non-Google-certified gambling sites or apps. Also, content that depicts or promotes social casino games--even when no real money is exchanged-- will now be age-restricted to protect younger audiences. YouTube stopped allowing creators to verbally mention or display online gambling services not approved by Google back in March.
"Senior Biden Administration officials [...] conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies."
