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technologyTechnology · 2019
Google LLC / YouTube LLC
The FTC and New York Attorney General imposed a combined $170 million penalty ($136M FTC + $34M NY AG) against Google and YouTube for violating COPPA by collecting persistent identifiers — used for targeted advertising — from viewers of child-directed content on YouTube without verifiable parental consent. Google had classified YouTube channels as child-directed yet systematically collected data from those channels' audiences and used it to serve behavioural advertising. This was the largest COPPA penalty in US history at the time.
Fine Imposed€156.4M
Authority
FTC-US
Regulation
FTC Act Section 5 — Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices
Max fine$51,744 per violation per day for post-order violations; initial enforcement via consent orders without direct fines
Statusactive
Key Takeaways
- Platform operators cannot permit child-directed content to generate targeted advertising data without parental consent — COPPA liability attaches at the platform level even when channel content is user-generated, not created by the platform itself.