Org Report

Advocates File FTC Complaint Against Google's YouTube Kids

Apr 2015 🇺🇸 Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (now Fairplay)

This April 2015 press release announces an FTC complaint filed by a coalition of child- and consumer-advocacy groups, including the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC, later renamed Fairplay), against Google's newly launched YouTube Kids app. The complaint alleges the app's design — intermixing advertising with content, running program-length branded segments for toy and fast-food brands, and not disclosing paid promotional relationships within creator videos — used techniques the groups linked to exploiting young children's limited ability to distinguish ads from programming, contrary to longstanding broadcast-advertising safeguards. Josh Golin, then CCFC's associate director, is quoted arguing the app blurs advertising and programming in ways aimed at young viewers. TechKids Foundation includes this as an early, formative instance of Golin's regulatory advocacy on children's media, years before the same core allegations resurfaced in the 2019 FTC-Google COPPA settlement.

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CITATION

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, Center for Digital Democracy, et al. "Advocates File FTC Complaint Against Google's YouTube Kids." April 6, 2015. https://fairplayforkids.org/advocates-file-ftc-complaint-against-googles-youtube-kids/

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