Recently, YouTube was accused of violating children’s privacy and selling the viewers data to companies for advertisements. After the accusation by FTC, now Google will pay $170 million fine to settle with the accusations of child privacy violations on YouTube. Related to Children online privacy, this fine will be the biggest payment FTC will receive in this case.
YouTube was accused of illegally collecting data from kids who use the video-streaming service to watch different children related videos. Now Google will be paying $170 million to compensate for the charges from the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General. Google will pay $34 million to New York and $136 million to the FTC, this fine will be the largest amount ever received by FTC in Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act case since the law took place in 1998.
The New York AG and the FTC blamed Google and YouTube on collecting personal information from viewers of channels direct for children content without the consent from parents including through the Kids app. YouTube provides opportunities for not just creators but also marketers as well and it made millions from using the data received from viewers of children related videos and displayed targeted ads to people watching children channels. YouTube sells its trending interests in children related videos to clients and when COPPA came to know about this news, the YouTube platform completely refused to acknowledge that any of its content was clearly directed for kids.
According to the YouTube, this new settlement is specifically aimed to protect kids and families on YouTube and the platform will keep on working with a variety of lawmakers in this area to make it a secure place for all age groups. Recently, YouTube also changed the category of channels available in the Kids app just make the service more efficient and safe for young audiences.
Despite the settlement and the new policies launched by YouTube, the majority of people still fail to trust YouTube and accuse it of violating Children’s Online Privacy for years. Even two members of the FTC also voted against the settlement.
The new order on YouTube doesn’t mean that the platform will be monitoring the channels for mis-designating their content, this new order by FTC is meant to know about the children related videos and take necessary steps to make the platform secured for kids by removing comments and notifications from the videos.
Read next: Will Google Chrome force users to view ads in Picture-in-Picture mode?
YouTube was accused of illegally collecting data from kids who use the video-streaming service to watch different children related videos. Now Google will be paying $170 million to compensate for the charges from the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General. Google will pay $34 million to New York and $136 million to the FTC, this fine will be the largest amount ever received by FTC in Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act case since the law took place in 1998.
The New York AG and the FTC blamed Google and YouTube on collecting personal information from viewers of channels direct for children content without the consent from parents including through the Kids app. YouTube provides opportunities for not just creators but also marketers as well and it made millions from using the data received from viewers of children related videos and displayed targeted ads to people watching children channels. YouTube sells its trending interests in children related videos to clients and when COPPA came to know about this news, the YouTube platform completely refused to acknowledge that any of its content was clearly directed for kids.
Modifications to YouTube after the settlement
After paying the fine for settlement, YouTube will be banned from collecting information from any videos with children-directed content and the platform will also need to flag videos of channels that are aimed for kids and will also provide annual COPPA training to employees of YouTube that deal with channel owners. According to the settlement by FTC, YouTube and Google are prohibited from violating any of the terms of COPPA and the platform will need to provide notice of data collection practices to parents for consent before collecting any information from children related videos. YouTube will completely stop displayed ads on videos related to kids and the notifications and comments of children related videos will also be turned off. Along with the flags by creators for kid-targeted videos, YouTube will use machine learning to detect videos that target young viewers like the videos of kid toys or games.According to the YouTube, this new settlement is specifically aimed to protect kids and families on YouTube and the platform will keep on working with a variety of lawmakers in this area to make it a secure place for all age groups. Recently, YouTube also changed the category of channels available in the Kids app just make the service more efficient and safe for young audiences.
Despite the settlement and the new policies launched by YouTube, the majority of people still fail to trust YouTube and accuse it of violating Children’s Online Privacy for years. Even two members of the FTC also voted against the settlement.
The new order on YouTube doesn’t mean that the platform will be monitoring the channels for mis-designating their content, this new order by FTC is meant to know about the children related videos and take necessary steps to make the platform secured for kids by removing comments and notifications from the videos.
Bottom Line
YouTube has been a platform for creators and marketers and it is one of the largest online video streaming platforms but the recent accusations on violations of children’s online privacy is making the reputation of the firm at stake so this settlement with FTC and new policies introduced for YouTube is an attempt by Google to make the platform secure for the viewers of all age groups.
Read next: Will Google Chrome force users to view ads in Picture-in-Picture mode?
