YouTube is one of the most prominent video sharing social media outlets, and certainly one of the most enduring platforms of this technological age. The company, founded in 2005, has around 500 hours of content uploaded every minute. According to one data firm YouTube’s content makes up around 15% of overall traffic on the internet. The pandemic helped raise the platform to new heights, allowing for YouTube creators to begin exploring new types of content and YouTube watchers to have the time to consume the new content.
YouTube profits mostly from advertising revenue, but their other sources of income include things such as paid subscriptions to YouTube Premium and YouTube TV. Since the site makes the bulk of its income from advertising third party goods and services to its consumers, some have called into question whether YouTube engages in the same shady data collecting practices as companies like Facebook. This idea becomes increasingly worrying when you examine YouTube’s target age demographic, which has a significant portion of watchers being under the age of eighteen. YouTube even has a section called YouTube Kids, in which it specifically tailors all of its content towards a much younger audience.
Many parents feel safer letting their kids have access to YouTube as long as their child remains on the “kids” section of the website, however most parents are unaware of the predatory nature of the site’s privacy policy and data collecting issues. In 2019 YouTube (by then a subsidiary of Google) had to pay out $170 million dollars to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in a case involving YouTube illegally collecting data from children. The issue of this case was that YouTube failed to obtain parent consent when it collected and profited from data obtained from minors.
YouTube has now fallen under fire yet again for violating federal regulations regarding children’s privacy. According to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, up to $50,120 can be charged per violation. YouTube could be charged billions of dollars if the FTC charges them for every violation, meaning every time YouTube let companies track kid's data or violated privacy policies regarding children. The court may also force YouTube to give up all of the money that they obtained from selling children’s data. YouTube would also have to make drastic changes to its policies regarding minors and how it selects the ads that will be given to them, or even whether ads should be given to them at all. A common complaint is that targeted advertisements on videos that YouTube specifically markets towards children contain content that is meant for adults.
This case is a reflection of a larger issue that is reflected across the entire tech sector, but can be seen most notably in social media platforms like YouTube. Companies can sell data regarding things such as the websites you visit, the products you buy, the content you watch, and even the words you type. In an era where electronic information can be turned into profits, the FTC is looking into cracking down on corporations that fail to protect vulnerable consumers from predatory privacy violations.
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