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How to Stop Big Tech from Surveilling Kids: Activist Josh Golin on Child Privacy

Jun 2022 🇺🇸 Open Markets Institute

In this June 2022 interview published by the Open Markets Institute, Fairplay executive director Josh Golin discusses how children's apps and platforms are associated with widespread noncompliance with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). He says a large share of children's apps share young users' data with third parties without verifiable parental consent, and describes the FTC's enforcement history under COPPA as historically thin. Golin walks through Fairplay's role — alongside the Center for Digital Democracy — in building the 2018 complaint against Google's YouTube that led to the 2019 FTC settlement, calling it the largest reduction in behavioral advertising to children achieved to date, while also flagging a persistent loophole: creators face financial incentives to mislabel child-directed videos as general audience content, which he says has undercut the settlement's intended protections in practice.

Majority of children's apps share data with third parties

Golin states that more than half of children's apps share young users' data with third parties without adequate parental consent, in violation of COPPA.

About one COPPA enforcement action per year since 1998

Golin describes the FTC's historical COPPA enforcement record as averaging roughly one case annually since the law took effect in 1998, mostly against smaller companies.

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CITATION

Golin, Josh, interviewed by Open Markets Institute. "How to Stop Big Tech from Surveilling Kids: Activist Josh Golin on Child Privacy." Open Markets Institute, June 9, 2022. https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/publications/how-to-stop-big-tech-surveil-kids-activist-josh-golin-on-child-privacy

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