Disney To Pay $10 Million After Feds Say It Violated YouTube’s Children’s Privacy Rules



Disney has agreed to pay $10 million in civil penalties to resolve allegations that it violated federal data collection laws designed to protect children.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday that a federal court has entered a preliminary injunction resolving a lawsuit against Disney Worldwide Services and Disney Entertainment Operations.

In a complaint filed in a California district court, the DOJ alleged that Disney failed to properly label some of its YouTube videos that were directed at children. By not doing so, Disney and its partners were allegedly able to target ads to children on YouTube and unlawfully collect children’s personal information without notifying parents or obtaining their consent.

The lawsuit claims that this mislabeling violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The law, first passed in 1998, prohibits website operators from knowingly collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 unless they first obtain permission from a parent.

“The Department of Justice is strongly dedicated to ensuring that parents have a say in how their children’s information is collected and used,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said in a press release. “The Department will act immediately to remove any unlawful infringement of parents’ rights to protect their children’s privacy.”

Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo. However, a Disney spokesperson said Axios when the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) first disclosed the details of the settlement: “Supporting the well-being and safety of children and families is at the heart of what we do. This settlement does not include Disney-owned and -operated digital platforms but is limited to the distribution of some of our content on the YouTube platform.”

According to the DOJ, Disney’s YouTube content gets billions of views in the United States alone. The complaint alleges that the improperly labeled videos spread across multiple Disney-owned YouTube channels, including the Pixar channel, the Disney+ channel, and the Disney Animation Studios channel. The videos feature popular cartoon characters from films such as The Incredibles, Coco, Frozen, and Tangled.

After a $170 million settlement with the FTC in 2019 for similar COPPA violations, YouTube began requiring creators to indicate whether the videos they upload are “made for kids” or “not for children.” Videos marked as made for children have certain features blocked to comply with COPPA, including personalized advertising, collection of personal information, and comments.

The case is one of the first in which a content creator has settled with the DOJ since YouTube’s own COPPA settlement.

Beyond the financial penalty, the court order prohibits Disney from violating COPPA on YouTube and requires the company to establish an ongoing content review program to ensure that its videos on the site comply with the law.



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