On July 8, Bloomberg reported that US's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has proposed that YouTube disable advertising on individual channels to ensure that the platform aligns with American law on protecting children’s privacy. The FTC chairman, Joseph Simons, along with its commissioner, Noah Phillips, in a July 1 phone conversation with Commercial-Free Childhood (CFC) and Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) had suggested that YouTube wouldn’t need to move all children’s content to a separate platform, as children’s rights advocates have proposed. Instead, individual channels could disable advertising to make the site align with American law on collecting information on children under the age of 13 without parental permission. In response to the July 1 call, the two organisations wrote a letter on July 3 that argued that merely disabling presentation of ads would not stop data collection. The letter was released to the media on July 8. What did the July 3 letter say? Problem with letting children’s content remain on the main YouTube site Problem with shifting the burden of responsibility to content creators to opt out of “interest-based” advertising Reiterated their call for “structural separation of the child-directed channels and videos, substantial civil penalties” This letter basically recalled the demands that the two organisations had raised in their June 25 letter. Here are the key takeaways from that letter: Any consent order must mandate “meaningful” changes in YouTube’s business practices, such as: a separate platform for all child-directed content where “targeted advertising, commercial data collection, links to other…
