Disney has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) amounting to $10 million in response to allegations that it misrepresented cartoons on YouTube, leading to the unlawful collection of children’s personal data. The FTC claims that Disney did not label certain videos featuring its popular children’s content as “Made for Kids,” which would have restricted the collection of personal information.
This mislabeling allowed Disney to bypass YouTube’s measures aimed at preventing the targeting of children with personalized advertisements. Instead of designating individual videos appropriately, Disney reportedly utilized a default label at the channel level. Consequently, videos based on family-friendly films like “The Incredibles,” “Toy Story,” and “Frozen” were marked as “Not Made for Kids,” thereby circumventing YouTube’s stricter regulations.
The FTC maintains that this mislabeling resulted in Disney collecting data from children and serving targeted ads on videos intended for non-child audiences, violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which mandates parental consent for data collection on children under 13.
Further allegations from the FTC indicate that Disney should have been aware of these inaccuracies. In 2020, YouTube reportedly informed Disney about the mislabeling and adjusted over 300 videos from “Not Made for Kids” to “Made for Kids.” Despite this, Disney is accused of continuing to upload videos without addressing the labeling issues.
As part of the settlement terms, Disney will pay the civil penalty and is required to obtain parental consent for collecting data from children under 13. Additionally, the company will implement a new program to ensure that videos are appropriately labeled as “Made for Kids” for the next ten years, unless YouTube develops its own system for determining user age classifications.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/policy/769771/disney-ftc-coppa-settlement-kids-data