This archive report was first published on 5 September 2019.
YouTube has been fined a record Ksh 17.7 billion ($170 million) by a US regulator for violating children’s privacy laws.
The fine, which is the largest ever in a case under the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa), was announced on Wednesday after Google, the parent company of YouTube, agreed to pay the sum in a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The FTC said that YouTube had collected data on children under 13, without parental consent, and used it to target ads to the children.
“There’s no excuse for YouTube’s violations of the law,” said FTC chairman Joe Simons.
YouTube will now treat data from anyone watching children’s content on YouTube as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user. This means that it will limit data collection and use on videos made for kids only to what is needed to support the operation of the service.
YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki said that the company had been investing in policies, products, and practices to protect kids and their privacy.
However, one of the five FTC commissioners, Rohit Chopra, said that he thought the settlement did not go far enough, and that Google had “baited” children on YouTube with videos featuring nursery rhymes and cartoons.
