Google will pay $170 million to settle allegations that the U.S. federal law violated its YouTube video service, reports Concise News. According to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Concise News collected that the video channel took private data about kids.
The settlement is the biggest since a law was adopted in 1998 that prohibits the collection of data on kids under the age of 13. Some Democrats and advocacy bodies for children do not believe the penalties are sufficiently powerful.
A statement by YouTube on Wednesday said in four months it would start treating all data taken from people watching children’s content as if it came from a child.
“This means that we will limit data collection and use on videos made for kids only to what is needed to support the operation of the service,” YouTube said.
Aside from the fine, the settlement needs the company to create a system for identifying content targeted at children and to inform channel owners about their obligations to get consent from parents before collecting information on children.
According to the FTC Chairman Joe Simons, “No other company in America is subject to these types of requirements, and they will impose significant costs on YouTube. ”
Also, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Andrew Smith said, “that $170m is roughly the budget of the Bureau of Consumer Protection for one year.”
Once the settlement takes effect, the FTC plans to “conduct a sweep of the YouTube platform to determine whether there remains child-directed content” in which personal information is being collected.
The FTC could take actions against individual content creators or channel owners as a result.
YouTube, in August, said it would launch YouTube Kids with difference niches for children, depending on their ages and created to exclude disturbing videos.