The FTC’s 2020 COPPA rules have YouTube creators scared
My son doesn't usually ask me to watch YouTube videos. Particularly not in this serious tone. [credit: Jim Salter ]
The other night while I was getting ready to record a podcast, a Hangouts message came beeping in from my nine-year-old son. He wanted me to watch a video-one which he believed was very important-and come discuss it with him afterward. That video turned out to be a ten-minute clip from YouTube personality Maxmello-who, along with his wife Wengie, runs the Reacticorns YouTube channel-making a heartfelt appeal to his viewers to understand some unpopular changes he'd made to the channel.
Back in September, YouTube settled a pair of lawsuits from the FTC and the New York Attorney General for $170 million. The lawsuits alleged that the Google-owned YouTube has been flagrantly violating COPPA-the Childhood Privacy Protection Act. COPPA reins in the ability of websites to deliberately target and harvest personal information from children under the age of 13, and-in part-requires sites "directed to children" to "obtain verifiable parental consent" prior to collecting personal information; it also provides means for parents to review such information once collected.
Although YouTube's terms of service state that users must be at least 13 years of age in the US, the reality is that millions of American children-like my kids-watch a lot of YouTube. In some cases, underage YouTubers watch content without ever logging in at all; in others, they may be using their parents' account, or they or their parents may have created an account for them that simply lies about their age.
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