Google just agreed to fork over $30 million to settle yet another lawsuit about spying on kids through YouTube. This time, parents accused the tech giant of continuing to collect children’s personal data even after promising to stop following a massive 2019 scandal.
Back in 2019, Google paid a record-breaking $170 million to federal regulators for the exact same thing: collecting personal information from kids under 13 without asking their parents first.
You’d think that would be enough to get the message across, but like the popular idiom says, “Old habits die hard.”
This latest lawsuit covers a seven-year period from July 2013 to April 2020, meaning Google allegedly kept up its data collection habits right through that expensive 2019 wake-up call.
Parents of 34 children claimed the company violated state data privacy laws by letting content creators dangle cartoons, nursery rhymes, and other kid-friendly bait to help gather personal information from young viewers.
YouTube would collect data about what kids watched, then use that information to serve up targeted advertisements. It’s the same business model that powers most of the internet, except there’s one big problem: it’s illegal when you’re dealing with children under 13.
The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), a US federal law, has been around since 2000, back when the internet was still a novel product.
This law states that if you want to collect personal information from kids under 13, you need to get their parents’ permission first. No exceptions, no creative interpretations, and no “but our business model depends on it” excuses.
For a company like Google, which built its empire on data collection and targeted advertising, COPPA is akin to a speed bump. YouTube’s business model relies heavily on knowing who’s watching what so it can serve relevant ads.
When you can’t collect that data from a huge chunk of your audience, it creates a real problem for the revenue machine.
Court documents suggest that somewhere between 35 and 45 million Americans could be eligible for compensation. That’s roughly one in seven people in the entire country, which gives you a sense of just how many kids were using YouTube during that seven-year window.
Of course, massive class action settlements rarely result in life-changing payouts for individual claimants. The lawyers estimate that if only 1 to 2 percent of eligible people actually file claims, each person might see between $30 and $60 before legal fees get deducted.
Meanwhile, those same lawyers are planning to request up to $9 million from the settlement for their services.
Read: Find Out If You’re Entitled to Compensation from Google’s $700M Android Lawsuit
Initially, the lawsuit targeted not just Google but also major content providers that create kid-friendly YouTube content, including big names like Hasbro, Mattel, Cartoon Network, and DreamWorks Animation.
The theory was that these companies were working with Google to help attract children and facilitate data collection.
However, the federal judge dismissed claims against these content creators in January, ruling that there wasn’t enough evidence connecting them to Google’s alleged data collection practices.
This left Google as the sole defendant, which probably simplified the settlement negotiations considerably.
The settlement still needs approval from U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen before it becomes official. If approved, eligible families will be able to file claims for their share of the $30 million fund.
