YouTube is recently sued by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), causing them to update their practices regarding children’s content on YouTube.
The US FTC sued Google for $170 million in total where $34 million has to be paid to the state of New York while the remaining has to be paired to FTC for violation of the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
The act strictly prohibits the collection of data on children under the age of 13 without their parents’ consent, which is exactly what YouTube is being sued for.
Aside from the penalty fee of $170 million, YouTube also needs to come up with a new system that accurately labels the contents that are made for children. With the new system, data collection on children will be limited and there will no longer be any personalised ads on children’s content.
“We are changing how we treat data for children’s content on YouTube. Starting in about four months, we will treat data from anyone watching children’s content on YouTube as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user.” Says Susan Wojcicki, YouTube’s CEO.
She also requested for creators to label their videos if they’re under children’s content and will use machine learning to identify videos that are for young audiences such as those with “an emphasis on kids characters, themes, toys, or games.”
To make things easier, parents who often let their kids browse YouTube independently can also use YouTube Kids as it’s easier to control what their children have access to. Google recently updated YouTube Kids to provide better content and introduced the website version of the app so that kids can use it even on their desktops.
