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Google Agrees to a Record Fine to Settle COPPA Investigation over YouTube

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By CARU Staff

Google will pay a fine of $170 million dollars to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and New York State Attorney General to settle an investigation into alleged violations of the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) by its subsidiary video sharing platform, YouTube. The amount of the settlement is the largest fine imposed by the FTC in a case involving children’s privacy. The record was set just earlier this year for $5.7 million by the app TikTok for children’s privacy violations (originally referred to the FTC by CARU!). The investigation concerned the collection of children’s personal data and user activity without the consent of their parents. This information was then utilized to target ads at children. COPPA prohibits online service providers, such as YouTube, from collecting personal data from children under the age of 13 without their parent’s permission. 

In addition to the fine, as part of the settlement, YouTube agreed to take further action to protect children’s privacy online. Channels on the platform will be asked to identify children’s content so targeted ads will not be placed on those videos. In addition to voluntary identification, YouTube is implementing artificial intelligence to identify children targeted content. YouTube will also stop gathering personal information from viewers of children’s videos and will eliminate features that involve the use of personal data such as comments. Per the settlement, these changes must be implemented by early 2020.

Furthering their efforts, YouTube recently launched youtubeforkids.com. This kid-friendly video platform serves as the website companion experience to the YouTube Kids app, YouTube plans to heavily promote YouTube Kids to shift the younger audience off the main website. Parents can track their child’s viewing history, flag inappropriate content, and direct their child to content by age group: “Preschool” for kids under 4, “Younger” for kids 5 to 7, and “Older” for kids 8 and up. Although the site comes with parental controls, they are accessed by answering a basic math question. With unlimited guesses, calculators, and Google, some children may be able to access into the parental controls. This feature may change as the site is newly launched.

You can read the FTC/NY AG Settlement with Youtube and you can also find separate statements by the FTC Commissioners. Chairman Simons and Commissioner Christine S. Wilson issued a joint statement on this matter, while Commissioners Noah Joshua Phillips, Rohit Chopra, and Rebecca Kelly Slaughter issued separate statements. 

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