YouTube enacts promised measures to protect children using its platform
- Wednesday, January 8th, 2020
- Share this article:
YouTube has deployed new measures to protect children on its site, four months after it was fined $170m by the Federal Trade Commission to settle allegations that it collected information on children using the platform without its parents consent.
In the wake of the fine, YouTube announced that all creators would be required to designate their content as made for kids or not made for kids in YouTube Studio, and that, in the future, data from anyone watching a video designated as made for kids will be treated as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user.
YouTube has now revealed in a blog post that this second measure has now been enacted, with the result that on videos made for kids, data collection and usage is limited. The upshot of this is that personalized ads will no longer be served alongside kids’ content, and features such as comments, live chat and will not be supported.
In making these changes, YouTube conceded that they would have “significant impact” on the many creators around the world who have created quality kids content for their audiences, since they will no longer be able to make money from personalised ads around them. “Responsibility is our number one priority at YouTube, and this includes protecting kids and their privacy” the post concluded.