The Google and YouTube child-safety updates that affect advertising

The Alphabet-owned search firm Google and sister video-streaming service YouTube have announced a set of new safety options for children and young people.

Why it matters

While safeguards for minors have existed on Google and YouTube for a long time, there have been instances of criticism and even legal action that have caused PR damage. As Variety points out, these oversights led to the company paying $170m in 2019 to settle FTC and NY Attorney General allegations that YouTube had contravened COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) by collecting personal data from under-13s.

The measures

• For YouTube, according to the service’s official blog, autoplay will be off by default for 13-17 year old users, though this can be changed.
• In YouTube Kids a new autoplay option will also be turned off by default. The firm says it wants to “empower parents to be able to choose an autoplay setting that’s right for their family.”
• New uploads will gradually default to the most private setting, where the user chooses exactly who sees their video. This means that the choice to make content public is intentional.
• Meanwhile, in a related change to Google’s guidelines, the company is introducing a new policy to allow under-18s, or their parent/guardian to request removal from Google Image results.
• Google is also removing ad-targeting based on the age, gender or interests of under-18s, while strengthening safeguards to prevent age-sensitive categories like alcohol being shown to minors.

Sourced from Google, Variety