September, 04 2019, 12:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jeff Chester, CDD (jeff@democraticmedia.org; 202-494-7100)
David Monahan, CCFC (david@commercialfreechildhood.org; 617-896-9397)
Advocates Who Filed the Privacy Complaint Against Google/YouTube Laud Improvements, But Say FTC Settlement Falls Far Short
The advocates who triggered the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) investigation into YouTube's violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) say the FTC's settlement with Google will likely significantly reduce behavioral marketing to children on YouTube, but doesn't do nearly enough to ensure children will be protected or to hold Google accountable.
WASHINGTON
The advocates who triggered the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) investigation into YouTube's violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) say the FTC's settlement with Google will likely significantly reduce behavioral marketing to children on YouTube, but doesn't do nearly enough to ensure children will be protected or to hold Google accountable.
In April 2018, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), through their attorneys at Georgetown Law's Institute for Public Representation (IPR), filed an FTC complaint detailing YouTube's COPPA violations. Twenty-one other privacy and consumer groups signed on to CCFC and CDD's complaint, which detailed how Google profits by collecting personal information from kids on YouTube, without first providing direct notice to parents and obtaining their consent as required by law. Google uses this information to target advertisements to children across the internet and across devices, in clear violation of COPPA.
Today, the FTC and the New York Attorney General announced a settlement with Google, fining the company $170 million. The settlement also "requires Google and YouTube to develop, implement, and maintain a system that permits channel owners to identify their child-directed content on the YouTube platform so that YouTube can ensure it is complying with COPPA." Content creators will be asked to disclose if they consider their videos to be child-directed; if they do, no behavioral advertising will be served to viewers of those videos.
"We are pleased that our advocacy has compelled the FTC to finally address YouTube's longstanding COPPA violations and that there will be considerably less behavioral advertising targeted to children on the number one kids' site in the world," said CCFC's Executive Director Josh Golin. "But it's extremely disappointing that the FTC isn't requiring more substantive changes or doing more to hold Google accountable for harming children through years of illegal data collection. A plethora of parental concerns about YouTube - from inappropriate content and recommendations to excessive screen time - can all be traced to Google's business model of using data to maximize watch time and ad revenue."
In a July 3, 2019 letter to the FTC, the advocates specifically warned that shifting the burden of COPPA compliance from Google and YouTube to content creators would be ineffective. The letter noted many children's channels were unlikely to become COPPA compliant by turning off behavioral advertising, since Google warns that turning off these ads "may significantly reduce your channel's revenue." The letter also detailed Google's terrible track record of ensuring COPPA compliance on its platforms; a 2018 study found that 57% of apps in the Google Play Store's Designed for Families program were violating COPPA despite Google's policy that apps in the program must be COPPA compliant. And as Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter wrote in her dissent, many children's content creators are not U.S.-based and therefore are unlikely to be concerned about FTC enforcement.
"We are gratified that the FTC has finally forced Google to confront its longstanding lie that it wasn't targeting children on YouTube," said CDD's executive director Jeff Chester, who helped spearhead the campaign that led to the 1998 passage of COPPA "However, we are very disappointed that the Commission failed to penalize Google sufficiently for its ongoing violations of COPPA and failed to hold Google executives personally responsible for the roles they played. A paltry financial penalty of $170 million -- from a company that earned nearly $137 billion in 2018 alone -- sends a signal that if you are a politically powerful corporation, you do not have to fear any serious financial consequences when you break the law. Google made billions off the backs of children, developing a host of intrusive and manipulative marketing practices that take advantage of their developmental vulnerabilities. More fundamental changes will be required to ensure that YouTube is a safe and fair platform for young people."
Echoing Commissioner Rohit Copra's dissent, the advocates noted that unlike smaller companies sanctioned by the FTC, Google was not forced to pay a penalty larger than its "ill-gotten gains." In fact, with YouTube earning a reported $750 million annually from children's content alone, the $170 million fine amounts to less than three months of advertising revenue from kids' videos. With a maximum fine of $41,484 per violation, the FTC easily could have sought a fine in the tens of billions of dollars.
"I am pleased that the FTC has made clear that companies may no longer avoid complying with COPPA by claiming their online services are not intended for use by children when they know that many children in fact use their services," said Angela Campbell, Director Emeritus of IPR's Communications and Technology Clinic at Georgetown Law, which researched and drafted the complaint. Campbell, currently chair of CCFC's Board, served as lead counsel to CCFC and CDD on the YouTube and other complaints alleging COPPA violations. She, along with Chester, was responsible for filing an FTC complaint in 1996 against a child-directed website that led to Congress's passage of COPPA in 1998. COPPA gave the FTC expanded authority to implement and enforce the law, for example, by including civil penalties. About the proposed settlement, Campbell noted: "It's disappointing that the FTC has not fully used its existing authority to hold Google and YouTube executives personally liable for adopting and continuing to utilize a business model premised on ignoring children's privacy protection, to adopt a civil penalty substantial enough to deter future wrongdoing, or to require Google to take responsibility for ensuring that children's content on YouTube platforms complies with COPPA."
On the heels of a sweetheart settlement with Facebook, the advocates said the deal with Google was further proof the FTC wasn't up to the task of protecting consumers' privacy.
Said Campbell, "I support Commissioner Slaughter's call to state attorney generals to step up and hold Google accountable."
Added Chester, "The commission's inability to stop Google's cynically calculated defiance of COPPA underscores why Congress must create a new consumer watchdog that will truly protect Americans' privacy."
Organizations which signed on to the CCFC/CDD 2018 FTC complaint were Berkeley Media Studies Group; Center for Media Justice; Common Sense; Consumer Action; Consumer Federation of America; Consumer Federation of California; Consumers Union, the advocacy division of Consumer Reports; Consumer Watchdog; Corporate Accountability; Defending the Early Years; Electronic Privacy Information Center ("EPIC"); New Dream; Obligation, Inc.; Parent Coalition for Student Privacy; Parents Across America; Parents Television Council; Privacy Rights Clearinghouse; Public Citizen; The Story of Stuff Project; TRUCE (Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Childhood Entertainment); and USPIRG.
Fairplay, formerly known as Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, educates the public about commercialism's impact on kids' wellbeing and advocates for the end of child-targeted marketing. Fairplay organizes parents to hold corporations accountable for their marketing practices, advocates for policies to protect kids, and works with parents and professionals to reduce children's screen time.
LATEST NEWS
Amazon Won't Display Tariff Costs After Trump Whines to Bezos
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said all companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
Apr 29, 2025
Amazon said Tuesday that it would not display tariff costs next to products on its website after U.S. President Donald Trump called the e-commerce giant's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, to complain about the reported plan.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with Amazon's supposed plan, Punchbowl Newsreported that "the shopping site will display how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs—right next to the product's total listed price."
Many Amazon products come from China. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed Sunday that "there is a path" to a tariff deal with the Chinese government, Trump has recently caused global economic alarm by hitting the country with a 145% tax and imposing a 10% minimum for other nations.
According toCNN, which spoke with two senior White House officials on Tuesday, Trump's call to Bezos "came shortly after one of the senior officials phoned the president to inform him of the story" from Punchbowl.
"Of course he was pissed," one officials said of Trump. "Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?"
Asked about how the call with Bezos went, Trump told reporters: "Great. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly, and he did the right thing, and he's a good guy."
Earlier Tuesday, during a briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Amazon's reported plan "a hostile and political act," and said that "this is another reason why Americans should buy American."
Leavitt also asked why Amazon didn't have such displays during the Biden administration and held up a printed version of a 2021 Reutersreport about the company's "compliance with the Chinese government edict" to stop allowing customer ratings and reviews in China, allegedly prompted by negative feedback left on a collection President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings.
Asked whether Bezos is "still a Trump supporter," Leavitt said that she "will not speak to" the president's relationship with him.
As CNBCdetailed Tuesday:
Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.
"The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products," the spokesperson said. "This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties."
But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was "never approved" and is "not going to happen."
In response to Bloomberg also reporting on Amazon's claim that tariff displays were never under consideration for the company's main site, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote on social media Tuesday, "Good move."
Before Amazon publicly killed any plans for showing consumers the costs from Trump's import taxes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber's floor Tuesday that companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
"I urge more companies, particularly national retailers that compete with Amazon, to adopt this practice. If Amazon has the courage to display why prices are going up because of tariffs, so should all of our other national retailers who compete with them. And I am calling on them to do it now," he said.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Tuesday framed the whole incident as an example of how "Trump has created a government by and for the billionaires," declaring: "If anyone ever doubted that Trump, and Musk, and Bezos, and the billionaires are all [on] one team, just look at what happened at Amazon today. Bezos immediately caved and walked back a plan to tell Americans how much Trump's tariffs are costing them."
Casar also claimed Bezos wants "big tax cuts and sweatheart deals," and pointed to Amazon's Prime Video paying $40 million to license a documentary about the life of First Lady Melania Trump. In addition to the film agreement, Bezos has come under fire for Amazon's $1 million donation to the president's inauguration fund.
As the owner of
The Washington Post, Bezos—the world's second-richest person, after Trump adviser Elon Musk—also faced intense criticism for blocking the newspaper's planned endorsement of the president's 2024 Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris, and demanding its opinion page advocate for "personal liberties and free markets."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Medicare for All, Says Sanders, Would Show American People 'Government Is Listening to Them'
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts," said one nurse and union leader. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Apr 29, 2025
On Tuesday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Debbie Dingell of Michigan reintroduced the Medicare for All Act, re-upping the legislative quest to enact a single-payer healthcare system even as the bill faces little chance of advancing in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives or Senate.
Hundreds of nurses, healthcare providers, and workers from across the country joined the lawmakers for a press conference focused on the bill's reintroduction in front of the Capitol on Tuesday.
"We have the radical idea of putting healthcare dollars into healthcare, not into profiteering or bureaucracy," said Sanders during the press conference. "A simple healthcare system, which is what we are talking about, substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would also make life a lot easier, not just for patients, but for nurses" and other healthcare providers, he continued.
"So let us stand together," Sanders told the crowd. "Let us do what the American people want and let us transform this country. And when we pass Medicare for All, it's not only about improving healthcare for all our people—it's doing something else. It's telling the American people that, finally, the American government is listening to them."
Under Medicare for All, the government would pay for all healthcare services, including dental, vision, prescription drugs, and other care.
"It is a travesty when 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are drowning in medical debt in the richest nation on Earth," said Jayapal in a statement on Tuesday.
In 2020, a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that a single-payer program like Medicare for All would save Americans more than $450 billion and would likely prevent 68,000 deaths every year. That same year, the Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system that resembles Medicare for All would yield some $650 billion in savings in 2030.
Members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest union of registered nurses, were also at the press conference on Tuesday.
In a statement, the group highlighted that the bill comes at a critical time, given GOP-led threats to programs like Medicaid.
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts and attacks so that we become too demoralized and overwhelmed to move forward," said Bonnie Castillo, registered nurse and executive director of NNU. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Per Sanders' office, the legislation has 104 co-sponsors in the House and 16 in the Senate, which is an increase from the previous Congress.
A poll from Gallup released in 2023 found that 7 in 10 Democrats support a government-run healthcare system. The poll also found that across the political spectrum, 57% of respondents believe the government should ensure all people have healthcare coverage.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Advocates Warn GOP Just Unveiled 'Most Dangerous Higher Ed Bill in US History'
"This is the boldest attempt we've seen in recent history to segregate higher education along racial and class lines," said the Debt Collective.
Apr 29, 2025
At a markup session held by a U.S. House committee on the Republican Party's recently unveiled higher education reform bill Tuesday, one Democratic lawmaker had a succinct description for the legislation.
"This bill is a dream-killer," said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) of the so-called Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, which was introduced by Education and Workforce Committee Chairman Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) as part of an effort to find $330 billion in education programs to offset President Donald Trump's tax plan.
Tasked with helping to make $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans possible, Walberg on Monday proposed changes to the Pell Grant program, which has provided financial aid to more than 80 million low-income students since it began in 1972. The bill would allocate more funding to the program but would also reduce the number of students who are eligible for the grants, changing the definition of a "full-time" student to one enrolled in at least 30 semester hours each academic year—up from 12 hours. Students would be cut off from the financial assistance entirely if they are enrolled less than six hours per semester.
David Baime, senior vice president for government relations for the American Association of Community Colleges, suggested the legislation doesn't account for the realities faced by many students who benefit from Pell Grants.
"These students are almost always working a substantial number of hours each week and often have family responsibilities. Pell Grants help them meet the cost of tuition and required fees," Baime toldInside Higher Ed. "We commend the committee for identifying substantial additional resources to help finance Pell, but it should not come at the cost of undermining the ability of low-income working students to enroll at a community college."
The draft bill would also end subsidized loans, which don't accrue interest when a student is still in college and gives borrowers a six-month grace period after graduation, starting in July 2026. More than 30 million borrowers currently have subsidized loans.
The proposal would also reduce the number of student loan repayment options from those offered by the Biden administration to just two, with borrowers given the option for a fixed monthly amount paid over a certain period of time or an income-based plan.
At the markup session on Tuesday, Bonamici pointed to her own experience of paying for college and law school "through a combination of grants and loans and work study and food stamps," and noted that her Republican colleagues on the committee also "graduated from college."
"And more than half of them have gone on to earn advanced degrees," said the congresswoman. "And yet those same individuals who benefited so much from accessing higher education are supporting a bill that will prevent others from doing so."
“In a time when higher ed is being attacked, this bill is another assault,” @RepBonamici calls out committee leaders for wanting to gut financial aid.
“With this bill, they will be taking that opportunity [of higher ed] away from others. This bill is a dream killer.” pic.twitter.com/UjTYvnOEKv
— Student Borrower Protection Center (@theSBPC) April 29, 2025
Democrats on the committee also spoke out against provisions that would cap loans a student can take out for graduate programs at $100,000; the Grad PLUS program has allowed students to borrow up to the cost of attendance.
The Parent PLUS program, which has been found to provide crucial help to Black families accessing higher education, would also be restricted.
"Black students, brown students, first-generation college students, first-generation Americans, will not have access to college," said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.).
“We cannot take away access to loans, and not replace it with anything else, not make the system better. We know the outcome here—Black, brown, and poor students will not figure it out. Instead, only elite students from the 1% will continue to access education.”@RepSummerLee🙇 pic.twitter.com/oGbRH154Ed
— Student Borrower Protection Center (@theSBPC) April 29, 2025
As the Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) warned last week, eliminating the Grad PLUS program without also lowering the cost of graduate programs would "subject millions of future borrowers to an unregulated and predatory private student loan market, while doing little to reduce overall student debt and the need to borrow."
Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director for SBPC, told The Hill that the draft bill is "an attack on students and working families with student loan debt."
"We've seen an array of really problematic proposals that are on the table for congressional Republicans," Canchola Bañez said. "Many of these would cause massive spikes for families with monthly student loan payments."
With the proposal, which Republicans hope to pass through reconciliation with a simple majority, the party would be "restructuring higher education for the worse," said the Debt Collective.
"It's the most dangerous higher ed bill in U.S. history," said the student loan borrowers union. "It strips the Department of Education of virtually every authority to cancel student debt. Eliminates every repayment program. Abolishes subsidized loans."
"This is the boldest attempt we've seen in recent history to segregate higher education along racial and class lines," the group added. "We have to push back."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular