YouTube pays $170m fine for child safety violations, announces changes

The US’s FTC on Wednesday revealed that Google and YouTube have agreed to pay a $170-million fine to settle allegations against it regarding child safety and privacy on YouTube.

In response to the settlement, YouTube announced further steps it’s taking to keep children’s information safe on the platform, including a $100-million investment into creating better content for kids.

“We are establishing a $100-million fund, disbursed over three years, dedicated to the creation of thoughtful, original children’s content on YouTube and YouTube Kids globally,” the company said on its blog.

In addition to this, YouTube will no longer collect information from users who watch child-related content on the platform, even if the viewer is not a child.

“We will treat data from anyone watching children’s content on YouTube.com as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user,” the company said in a tweet.

1. We will treat data from anyone watching children’s content on https://t.co/alxrZsi5Vw as coming from a child, regardless of the age of the user. This means we will only collect the data needed to support the operation of the service.

— YouTube (@YouTube) September 4, 2019

YouTube will disable comments, notifications and personalised ads on videos aimed at children as well.

“Creators will have to identify content made for kids, and we’ll additionally find videos in this category using machine learning,” the company noted.

In August, YouTube also announced that it will remove videos with “misleading family content” that actually contain adult themes.

The company further noted that children should watch videos through the YouTube Kids app for further safety.

Feature image: Shereesa Moodley/Memeburn