In June, The New York Times published an investigation into how YouTube’s recommendation system automatically promoted videos of scantily clad children to people who had watched other videos of young children in compromised positions or sexually themed content.
The accusations against YouTube emerged last year after a coalition of more than 20 consumer advocacy groups filed a complaint to the F.T.C. saying that the video platform was violating a federal privacy law by collecting and exploiting the personal information of children.
That law, called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, prohibits online services aimed at children under 13 from collecting personal details — like a child’s birth date, contact information, photos or precise location — without a parent’s permission. The law also prohibits children’s apps from using persistent identifiers to target youngsters with ads based on their behavior.
YouTube has long maintained that its platform is not intended for children under 13, even as some of its most popular channels — with names like Cocomelon Nursery Rhymes and ChuChu TV — are clearly aimed at youngsters, offering colorful animated videos that have been viewed more than a billion times.
People who set up accounts on YouTube must affirm that they are at least 13 and must agree to Google’s terms of service, enabling the company to track users’ video-viewing activities, internet browsing habits and other details. YouTube has said that it deletes accounts when it determines that a user is under 13.
YouTube maintains a separate app for younger users, called YouTube Kids, which says that it does not allow behavior-based ads.
But the children’s groups said in their complaint that YouTube was aware that millions of children were watching its main channel and collected the children’s personal details anyway, without parental consent.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/technology/youtube-childrens-privacy-fine.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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