Duane Pozza Discusses FTC’s Shift Toward More Aggressive COPPA Enforcement

September 10, 2019

Duane C. Pozza, partner in Wiley Rein’s Privacy, Cyber & Data Governance and FTC Regulation practices, was quoted by Law360 in a September 6 article about the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) recent settlement with YouTube, and its promise to conduct a sweep of online content owners for compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Mr. Pozza said these developments signal a shift by the FTC toward more aggressive COPPA enforcement with respect to online platforms and content creators.

“It is highly unusual for the FTC to announce an enforcement sweep in advance, and it’s clear that the agency will be looking very closely at content uploaders in the coming months,” Mr. Pozza said. He added that the sweep will likely impact content uploaded on other platforms.

According to Law360, the settlement requires the company to notify channel owners that their child-directed content may be subject to the FTC’s COPPA rule, and provide content owners with a way to designate content they post as being directed toward children.

“This settlement shows that the FTC will target online platforms to try to police third-party content that it believes is unlawful, [and] the result will be substantial burdens on platforms that host a large amount of content,” Mr. Pozza said.

The article can be found here (subscription required).