September 2, 2019

Andrew Campbell 

Google’s YouTube was accused of violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA-- gathering the data of under 13- year-old children without their parents’ consent. The video site had earned much profit through putting ads of these children. Google promised to follow the sentence of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and New York's attorney general and paid a record fine of $170 million on September 4. 
The crackdown showed the regulators were putting big tech industries under closer scrutiny to see if there was any illegal competition. Child safety issues were the focus: YouTube’s comment zones on children videos were almost stopped because pedophiles would leave message there. In July, Facebook was even fined $5 billion after the FTC investigated its data practices.
Meanwhile, critics like Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, dismissed the fine to YouTube as paltry and demanded more required changes to protect children’s privacy. Commissioner Rohit Chopra denounced the Google deal lacks “individual accountability” and “remedies to address the company’s financial incentives” and that such fine cannot stop it from breaking law again. In fact, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made a profit of $30.7bn last year.

Photo:Webshot.