YouTube and the FTC COPPA Act
Posted: Sun Nov 17, 2019 12:36 pm
Been watching with interest the developments around this. It's basically the latest round of things large digital companies are doing wrong, that are only now being belatedly addressed. In brief, YouTube has been found to be in breach of the Child Online Privacy Protection rule by collecting data on minors which is then used for targeted advertising.
Their response to this has been that they will flag and restrict any videos with content that may appeal to children. More importantly, creators will also need to do this themselves, because if they don't, they'll risk a fine of up to $42,000 per video found to be in breach of COPPA, by the FTC. This obviously has huge implications for creators and communities like ours, who collect and discuss what are basically toys (even the ones that say 'Adult Collectibles').
I've watched a few videos from the likes of Pixel Dan about this subject and it's something of a sad time for the platform. I don't think that anyone will disagree that children shouldn't be protected from data mining to sell to advertisers, it's just a shame that as well as being an unhelpfully vague ruling, it will limit the one thing that was neat about YouTube - the ability to comment and interact with others in the YT community.
Personally, I think it's interesting that YouTube have basically said 'this is too big for us to police, so creators will be liable for their content'. This strikes me as a much more honest approach than Facebook have taken, but the fines that can be levvied against individuals by the FTC seem to be ruinous - and deliberately so - to the extent that I wonder if we'll be looking at a sharp curtailing of YouTube as we move into the new year.
I don't really know enough about the IT specifics of how alogorithms work, but would have thought that with a broadcasting platform like YT, they might have thought better about linking ads to the content of the videos, rather than the demographics of the user base - or am I just being naieve and silly here?
Thoughts?
Their response to this has been that they will flag and restrict any videos with content that may appeal to children. More importantly, creators will also need to do this themselves, because if they don't, they'll risk a fine of up to $42,000 per video found to be in breach of COPPA, by the FTC. This obviously has huge implications for creators and communities like ours, who collect and discuss what are basically toys (even the ones that say 'Adult Collectibles').
I've watched a few videos from the likes of Pixel Dan about this subject and it's something of a sad time for the platform. I don't think that anyone will disagree that children shouldn't be protected from data mining to sell to advertisers, it's just a shame that as well as being an unhelpfully vague ruling, it will limit the one thing that was neat about YouTube - the ability to comment and interact with others in the YT community.
Personally, I think it's interesting that YouTube have basically said 'this is too big for us to police, so creators will be liable for their content'. This strikes me as a much more honest approach than Facebook have taken, but the fines that can be levvied against individuals by the FTC seem to be ruinous - and deliberately so - to the extent that I wonder if we'll be looking at a sharp curtailing of YouTube as we move into the new year.
I don't really know enough about the IT specifics of how alogorithms work, but would have thought that with a broadcasting platform like YT, they might have thought better about linking ads to the content of the videos, rather than the demographics of the user base - or am I just being naieve and silly here?
Thoughts?