The Walt Disney Company has just been sued in California by the Justice Department. Their lawsuit accuses Disney of breaking the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Yet this antiquated federal law places the onus on creators to inform parents. They are required to get parental consent prior to collecting any personal data from kids under 13.
Starting in 2020, Disney began posting content to more than 1,250 YouTube channels owned by these subsidiaries. The Justice Department’s complaint claims these actions contravene COPPA guidelines, raising concerns about how children’s data is managed in the digital landscape.
What Disney’s practices could do is unnecessarily collect personal information from millions of the app’s young viewers, the complaint says. This information can in turn be used to serve more personalized ads. Per lawyers for the government, this creates an incentive for YouTube to gather personal data. So now, the factory that is YouTube sells focused ads on children’s videos for supporters Disney.
In a larger scope, YouTube followed suit by enforcing stricter regulations. These regulations mandate significant content producers identify videos that target the youth audience, in light of a 2019 agreement between the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Google’s parent company. This settlement was meant to strengthen protections for children online, making sure their privacy is protected.
Brett Shumate, the Justice Department’s counsel, testified that the department would defend the rights of parents. He reiterated that the parents need to be able to speak up about how information about their children is collected and used. This announcement marks the White House’s intention to take parental rights seriously as parents navigate the digital age.
The case illustrates once again just how important it is for all of us to comply with COPPA. It equally exposes the ever-present hurdles companies face as they attempt to pay heed to privacy legislation for children in digital spaces. If successful, this smartly-conceived complaint would open the door to much better treatment of similar cases in the future. That’s especially true for big companies such as Disney, which maintain massive digital footprints.