The Federal Trade Commission and the New York state attorney general made headlines earlier this month when they announced that Google LLC and its subsidiary YouTube LLC agreed to pay a record $170 million to settle allegations that YouTube collected personal information from children in violation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
Notably, the total civil penalty paid by Google and YouTube is nearly 30 times larger than the largest civil penalty previously imposed by the FTC for COPPA violations and three times larger than any privacy penalty assessed against Google anywhere else in the world.
While the $170 million monetary judgment received most of the headlines, the recent settlement includes notable provisions that will result in significant changes to YouTube’s platform, which ultimately could expose content creators and YouTube channel owners to COPPA liability.