Org Report

Fairplay FTC Complaint Reverberates in $10 Million Settlement with Disney

Sep 2025 🇺🇸 Fairplay

This September 2025 Fairplay statement covers an FTC settlement requiring Disney to pay $10 million for allegedly mislabeling child-directed YouTube videos as general-audience content, a violation of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Fairplay frames the case as a direct outgrowth of its own 2018 complaint against Google's YouTube, which produced the 2019 COPPA settlement that first required video creators to self-designate child-directed content — a labeling system Fairplay had warned created a financial incentive for creators to mislabel their videos and evade the rule. Executive director Josh Golin is quoted describing the Disney enforcement action as an important signal that content creators, not just platforms, must follow children's-privacy rules. TechKids Foundation includes this as a documented, years-later policy and legal outcome directly traceable to advocacy Golin's organization initiated in 2018.

$10 million FTC-Disney settlement

The FTC's 2025 settlement with Disney over alleged COPPA-related mislabeling of child-directed YouTube videos included a $10 million penalty.

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CITATION

Fairplay. "Fairplay FTC Complaint Reverberates in $10 Million Settlement with Disney." September 2, 2025. https://fairplayforkids.org/fairplay-ftc-complaint-reverberates-in-10-million-settlement-with-disney/

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