YouTube plans major changes in children's videos after a record $ 170 million fine

Youtube, the giant video site owned by Google, announced Wednesday profound changes in the way it handled children's videos, while the US Federal Trade Commission imposed on Google new rules and a record fine of 170 million dollars for opening an investigation into the confidentiality of child data on YouTube.

This is the heaviest penalty for violating the Children's Online Privacy Act, or COPPA. But critics, including Democrats dissenting commissioners of the FTC, noted that even a record penalty was not enough for a company the size of Google. Based on Google's performance last year, $ 170 million equates to two days of profits. Google generates the same amount of revenue in about 11 hours.

But Andrew Smith, director of the FTC's Consumer Protection Bureau, said his reach was going beyond the $ 170 million fine, calling the settlement "a new front" in his battle to protect the confidentiality of children's data. Wednesday's agreement settles allegations that YouTube illegally collected personal information from children without their parents' consent.

"We hold a responsible platform under the COPPA for content posted by someone else.It's really a big deal," Smith said at a conference. Press.

Today, we share several changes to help better protect children's content on YouTube. From approximately four months:

– You Tube, You Tube) September 4, 2019

In fact, YouTube will assume that people watching children's content on YouTube are really kids, no matter how old they are. This means that the data collected on these views will be kept to a bare minimum, namely what is "necessary to keep the service running," YouTube said.

YouTube will also prevent children's videos from showing ads, comments, and personalized notifications. And it will be necessary for the downloaders to inform YouTube when a video is intended for children. These changes will take effect towards the end of the year and most of them are required by the FTC regulations. One measure – the YouTube slot machine that is learning to help police videos be classified as child-friendly – goes beyond the requirements of the FTC.

Channels that post children's videos but do not identify them as such run the risk of being fined "aggressively" by the FTC, according to the commission.

YouTube is the largest online video source in the world, with 2 billion monthly users, and a considerable number of billions of videos viewed on the site are aimed at children. A study suggests that children's content is perhaps the most watched category of videos on YouTube. But YouTube has been the target of many scandals involving children. Wednesday's $ 170 million penalty was for data collected by YouTube, without parental consent, on children's video playback. But YouTube has also faced scandals involving videos of child abuse and exploitation, nightmarish content in its YouTube Kids app and predatory comments that sexualized clips of young kids.

Parent effects

The child viewers and their parents will not necessarily notice dramatic changes in the YouTube experience solely from these changes. Beyond the lack of comments and notifications, parents will not have to worry as much about the data that Google collects every time their kids film a video on YouTube. The changes could reduce the number of ads on kids' content because most YouTube ads are now personalized. And the changes could mean that videos recommended to kids are less sophisticated.

But YouTube could make other changes than those announced Wednesday. The company announced that it would also invest in its YouTube Kids app, including in improving its products and in a promotional campaign aimed at educating parents. YouTube has recently tightened its standards so that channels can be part of YouTube Kids, reducing the number of channels on the app, and last week, YouTube Kids was expanded to the Web, instead of just offering it mobile app.

YouTube will create a $ 100 million, three-year fund to invest in "original and thoughtful content for kids" on YouTube and YouTube Kids.

"Accountability is our number one priority at YouTube, and nothing is more important than protecting children and their privacy," YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said on Wednesday about the changes.

Smith, the head of the FTC, said he hoped that YouTube's actions would eventually lead to YouTube and other mainstream platforms, hosting "protected areas for kids".

The group most affected by the changes will be the children 's content creators, who would earn less money and also risk being drawn into their own FTC penalties. And this may mean that YouTube simply has fewer children's video creators.

And then the doozy, more personalized ads. The vast majority of YouTube ads are personalized. They do not really make non-personalized ads. Thus, the creators of children's content (and there are many excellent ones) will see their income decrease, if I had to guess, more than 50%.

– Hank (to watch before tweeting) green (@hankgreen) September 4, 2019

Subsequent targets

The settlement with Google was the first battle of this type of FTC, but it will not be the last, said the commission. Smith said that more actions against major technology platforms, including possibly those that record voice commands, are more likely as a result of actions against Google and YouTube.

"If you think about all the existing platforms, all the economic power that they hold and the amount of content they host, that's a game changer," Smith said.

The FTC also warned that deceptive children's content creators on YouTube could face their own aggressive fines. As part of this settlement, the FTC will analyze YouTube videos once the company has implemented the required changes. Because YouTube will now require downloaders to identify videos for children, any channels that lie about the nature of their videos could be captured by the FTC and face "heavy" fines, Smith said.

The history of Google

Google has been in trouble with the FTC in the past. In 2013, the agency closed an investigation that unanimously decided that Google did not violate any antitrust law after allegations of biased search results.

But government officials have since taken a firmer stance towards technology companies. On Tuesday, the Washington Post announced that more than half of the country's attorneys general were targeting Google as part of an antitrust investigation that could be announced next week.

Regulators and government officials also look at the technology industry more broadly. In July, the Justice Department announced the opening of an antitrust investigation on Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon. At the same time, Democrats in the House announced in June their own investigation into the tech giants, to determine whether companies engaged in "anti-competitive behavior."

Google has also been facing pressure from European regulators. In March, the search giant was fined $ 1.7 billion from the European Commission for "abusive" advertising practices online. The Commission stated that Google was exploiting its dominance by preventing its competitors from placing their search ads on third-party websites. Last year, the EU's executive arm sentenced to a record $ 5 billion fine for unfair business practices around Android, its mobile operating system.

Carrie Mihalcik from CNET contributed to this report.

Originally released on September 4, at 6:28 am Pacific Time.
Update, 12:23 pm: Add details, quotes and context throughout.