author: Konrad Serafinski
Because of YouTube, Google May Have to Pay $200 Million Fine
The Federal Trade Commission ruled that YouTube had violated the Children's Online Privacy Act by displaying advertisements personalised for children. It is said that Google may have to pay a $200 million fine. Many people think, however, that this amount is hardly enough.
Last Friday, the Federal Trade Commission ruled that YouTube broke the law by displaying personalised advertising to children. The whole situation was reported by Politico, and the reports were confirmed by the editors of the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg agency. Details of the fine imposed on Google (as the owner of the YouTube platform) have not been disclosed to the public. However, a fine ranging from $150 million to $200 million is qouted the most. It is worth noting that according to the Act, the word "children" covers persons under 13 years of age.
The fine was voted through by 3:2 and the exact amount of the fine will be made public next week. By law, Google is guilty of violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The company has not hesitated to accept the verdict. Among the critics of YT, the fine is considered to be scandalously low. One of these people is Senator Ed Markey, who has long been calling for an investigation into data privacy violations:
“Once again, this FTC appears to have let a powerful company off the hook with a nominal fine for violating users’ privacy online. We owe it to kids to come down hard on companies that infringe on children’s’ privacy and violate federal law.”
The same is true of members of the Consumer Protection Group of the Public Citizen, who claim that COPPA could have imposed a fine of tens of billions of dollars. What is more, the group believes that a $200 million fine will not even hurt Google, and will fail to discourage other companies from committing violations. Let us recall that similar doubts arose in the case of the $5 billion fine imposed on Facebook - at that time, too, it was considered not enough. After all, if we compare 5 billion dollars to (up to) 200 million dollars, it still seems as if YouTube got away very cheap.