Markey, Blackburn Ask FTC to Probe YouTube Over Kids’ Privacy Claims

The FTC should investigate whether YouTube violated kids’ privacy law and a 2019 consent decree when the platform tracked children without parental consent, Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., wrote the agency in a letter Thursday. Citing a report from The New York Times and Adalytics, the letter claims the platform facilitated “rampant collection and distribution of children’s data by serving targeted advertising to viewers watching child-directed content.” The platform provided troves of data to data brokers and third parties without consent, they said. Google said in a statement Thursday this is the second time in recent weeks Adalytics published a “deeply flawed and misleading report.” Personalized ads have never been allowed on YouTube Kids, and that policy was expanded in January 2020 to anyone watching made-for-kids content on YouTube, the company said. “The report makes completely false claims and draws uninformed conclusions based solely on the presence of cookies, which are widely used in these contexts for the purposes of fraud detection and frequency capping -- both of which are permitted under” the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, said Google. “The portions of this report that were shared with us didn’t identify a single example of these policies being violated.” The agency confirmed receiving the letter.