NEWS: Disney To Pay $10 Million Fine for Collecting Children’s Data on YouTube

According to Variety, Disney has agreed to pay a $10 million civil penalty for collecting children’s data on YouTube.

The “Made for Kids” setting on YouTube videos is meant to protect kids from having their data collected and used for targeted advertising. Disney did not mark their videos as “Made for Kids” and therefore was collecting kids’ data.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) states that to comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires parental consent for children under 13 years old to have their data collected, Disney will need to modify its practices.

Andrew Ferguson, the FTC chairman, said, “Our order penalizes Disney’s abuse of parents’ trust, and, through a mandated video-review program, makes room for the future of protecting kids online — age assurance technology.”

Disney responded with “Supporting the well-being and safety of kids and families is at the heart of what we do. This settlement does not involve Disney-owned and operated digital platforms but rather is limited to the distribution of some of our content on YouTube’s platform. Disney has a long tradition of embracing the highest standards of compliance with children’s privacy laws, and we remain committed to investing in the tools needed to continue being a leader in this space.”

In 2019, YouTube began collecting data on children and agreed to pay $170, starting to require channels to mark their videos as either “Made for Kids” or not. In June 2020, YouTube notified Disney that about 300 videos from movies like The Incredibles, Coco, Toy Story, Tangled, and Frozen had not been marked “Made for Kids.”

YouTube allows channels to either designate videos individually or at a channel level if they are “Made for Kids.” Disney’s policy was to have its channel marked as kid-friendly, but it then added many child-oriented videos to its “Not Made for Kids” channels. These included cartoons, sing-alongs, and storytimes with actors reading children’s books.

Because there is ad revenue on the videos, “Disney’s failure to accurately designate child-directed videos as [Made for Kids] in YouTube collecting personal information and placing targeted advertisements on child-directed videos on Disney’s behalf.”

“Made for Kids” also includes safety features like disabling comments and autoplay.

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