Am in adams and, the Vice President of policy at freedom, the organizer of this event, we are a non profit, non partisan technology think tank, and we tend to work on charting the path forward for policymakers towards our Bright Future where Technology Enhances freedom and freedom enhances technology. We are delighted to have you here today for our event. A just a couple of housekeeping matters. Were going to go right through the various panels and presentations or if you have to get up please just do so. The will not be a break in the middle but i would urge you to try to avoid the camera shot to the extent possible and doubly urge you to not trip on the wires because thats no good. And so with that i i suppose the only other thing is hashtag is coppa and if you need to log into the wifi, the password is constituent at the moment. With that we will turn to our first panel which is creators in this space, and this produced some introductory videos which we will play to start off with. So enjoy. Thank you for coming. We have a stand up and shout body. Our team of educators be devoted to grading original content that will delight and inspire children. We make preschool videos that are thoughtful, educational and entertaining kids worldwide via our mother goos club. Kids love them because they are fun. Parents love them because they encourage learning and family bonding. How do we know . On any given day Families Watch our videos millions of times. Altogether, that comes out to billions of views and millions of subscribers. Plus our fans show us through videos, pictures and emails and by commenting on our videos. So who are our fans . Our audience is Young Children and their parents, grandparents and caregivers. They rely on Mother Goose Club. Our broadcast quality videos are short, 100 safe, and, and full of color and fun. Thats why kids to and from around the world. They know mother goos club has music, dancing and learning. Mother goos club is a true interactive experience. Kids dont just watch. They sing, dance, lap and clap and giggle alone. Parents like what they see so they come back again and again. As one of youtubes leading family channels we are a trustworthy choice for any device in any situation from earth day parties to road trips to cozy afternoons at home. So join mother goos club where learning is fun, where kids love to play, where families come together, Mother Goose Club, preschool to the world. As a canadian i want to say thank you for not having below freezing level of weather because its pretty cold up here. My name is jackie from the channel nerdecrafter. We focus on celebrating geek cultures even though these things behind me might seem like toys they are, in fact, collectibles pick the average age of conventions is, in fact, between the ages of 2534 and the way we celebrate on my channel is by using crafts, materials like polymer clay. The main goal of my channel is to entertain while learning new skills. In addition to that my channel also does reviews of craft kits. The reason i do reduce is to give parents and people with purchasing power the ability to make smart decisions. So we test out whether the kit is good or if the shortcomings really dont merit bank purchase. At 12. 99, we should be getting more color. Mind you the quality of the booklet and presentation does. My biggest concern is as a female creator any of the hobbies we have seen to be going into the category of traditionally childlike hobbies, whereas many of us who do craft whether it be with dolls and turning them into works of art or squishes and transferring them also into works of art should not be deemed as child type content just because the materials themselves might traditionally be something that children might have enjoyed. If this does go through the biggest impact in the crafting community will, in fact, be hurting female creators come many of our male counterparts did use power tools. However many of us and female crafting Community Like to use things like clay, colored pencils, watercolors, and squishes. Id like to have this open dialogue with you and see not only protect female creators but also everything celebrating geek culture but channels that you focus on childhood content to keep them open. We are working hard on being patient with each other and sharing enough. The storm has begun. You can hear the rain coming down. Spirit it definitely says pregnant. Were starting a law firm. We are not trying to display the ideal, not trying to display perfection that by any means. We tried to share that jeremy and i have gone through marriage counseling. I struggle with depression and anxiety. Today is a big day for our service celebration. There are two main reasons we decided to homeschool our kids. Now on to our final destination. Good night. My name is forrest and i run the kreekcraft channel on youtube and i am a daily live stream on youtube gaming. For the people unaware of what that means exactly its a lot like sitting down every sunday and watching on your tv. Instead of on your couch it usually in your computer chair and instead of on tv its actually on your computer monitor and instead football it is video games. As far as the videogames i play and live stream you guys mightve heard of a few. I mainly do mine craft, fortnight. They are the top three most popular games in the world now. The great thing about streaming these games is that viewers can join in to my games with me and they can play with me live on live stream. What you are seeing in the background is footage of a recent live stream of me doing just that, playing with my viewers. Thats pretty much my career in a nutshell. Its much more complicated than playing video games. Theres lot of, its entertainment. You have to be entertaining. A lot of numbercrunching, a bunch the goes into it but for the most part thats what i do on youtube. Awesome. Thank you, guys so much for those videos. Im sure some of her audiences more familiar with the work, some of them are just discovering it. On a personal i want to thank all of you because i have siblings at different ages 19, 15, and 12, and i think that really covers all of the content you create and what to thank you for quieter car rides and timeouts when i could do Something Else that is very important, a lot of people watch your cartoon and obviously to the kids who learn from it and develop. Were going to dive right in and going to talk about how coppa changes your business can make great. The second panel cover more of a legal aspect. Were going to start with the money and follow the money. So how did the coppa changes affect your business, coppa changes, revenue stream in any way . Who wants to start . Ill start. So the changes for some like to apologize my voice. Im afraid im getting over a very bad cold right now. The changes have come into effect beginning of this year. So we are still seeing what the impact is. Having said that, knowing that these changes would come into effect, the substantially altered our Business Plan and come fourth quarter, to premuch frontload as as much production that were planning for 2020 into the last quarter of the year. What that meant for us was whatever production streams we plan to do this year we identified the minimum we need to do to keep our channels viable. And then tried to get as much of the production done while we had a budget that we knew we could plan around. In our case as you seem from the summaries our content is video producer we work with professional animation houses so that as quite a bit of overhead and requires us to spend a minimum amount to make videos that we have a lot less flexible than many other channels. We took advantage of knowing what our budgets look like for the fourth quarter, made those, execute on those plans of what thats meant for 2020 is a much reduced content pipeline and production pipeline. And for contractors and employees, that much less work. So when the changes took place with the ftc on september 4 announced as a First Impression application of the coppa there would be considering youtube creators individually as operators, i as an attorney i started looking at what that meant, how it would apply to us and our channel. We do a family blog which is like a reality documentary show of our family with five kids showing just what were doing in our day. I knew within our business and major component of it was the personalized ads that we received from you too. We were told by youtube that with these changes personalized ads would be turned off on content that was considered directed to children. At that time our family have been working on producing a new channel those going to be called j house junior. We wanted it to be specifically edited and directed to children. We wanted it to be really popular on youtube kids. We made about ten videos. We had to make editors set up fulltime to make that and trying to do a higher level production that would make shorter and much more entertaining video specifically for kids. When the announcement came out that coppa is now apply specifically to creators we said look, theres all kinds of risk we could be facing the penalties. With coppa its over 42,000 per video is the potential risk we could face up to, and as a channel right now are j house vlogs jim has over 1400 videos, over 200 hours of content and so that was a lot for us to be sifting through which sent to shut down production of j house junior because of all the unknowns, uncertainty and the loss of revenue and youtube came out and said this will have significant Business Impact on those for making child directed content. Like terry said, the implementation of that just happen within this week and so its too early to say is exactly what happened but what we plan to do is to compare analysis of what happened a year ago and do that month by month to see what the differences are but its too early to say for sure what that looks like. I my cells have a few friends that were also you tubers and theyve been directly affected by this myself. A few of them have reached out to me and reported they have lost revenue up from like 60 to 90 of their total ad revenue, which obviously thats not viable. Some of them are having to completely shifted the content to be more mature, more energy, more untold adult focused so it doesnt qualify under this coppa bill. And a lot of them are completely having to just quit youtube and the channels altogether. I dont think mine is so, for my channel usually when i do crafting id like to think my channel is there a inclusive. But with all the changes that have been happening i find myself intentionally slowly starting to use kind of alienating type language. So instead of thing you can do this with your kids, i could say you can do this with beginners. So im starting to shift my language, even though this is supposed to be, crafting is a medium we can all use in order to relieve stress and have fun. But when it comes to all these roles i find that im starting to shift my language and how i want people to see my channel as that something thats just child directed. In addition, because the changes have been fully, we have seen the full wrath of it yet, a lot of people in the crafting community who are using watercolors and colored pencils have been flagged and have their Comment Section to know. These are channels that make content for people who are above the age of 18 or teenagers and. But at this point they also did get it and their comments section were turned off and they started panicking as well. Sorry guys i mentioned to like things are already happening. Its the comments section and the target ads that are being taken away. What else on the changes in how youtube operates in the space has affected you . Any other kind of structure or infrastructure opportunities that were taken away . Yeah. On a video thats designated as made for kids, not only do you use personalized ads, and the commissar big dipper think about this as a creator, what sets us apart from tv is were able to interact with the audience. For us with family content we regularly have people ask about the recipes are asking questions or theyre giving advice like one of our site just had seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. We have people want to reach out and tell us about their story or experience and creating a Community Around these different topics. Comments getting shut off a such a loss. We spent hundreds of hours responding and delete those comments and then they are just gone. The other thing thats a big deal is on videos theres a feature called eye cards and drove out to put five of them on each video. We do a poll on every single video, i can that interactivity were asking a question do you know someone who is epilepsy and your family or extended family or whatever, and youre also able to recommend videos that are related to what we are currently going through. Researchers had some serious earthquakes and a sample made a video about that. When we talk but about it i can put in an eye card says heres another video we have worked with earthquake or none with what with through a tornado as a family. Those features are being removed along with into carts. A lot of features that allow us to connect and engage in a good expenses with audits are being removed on videos that are child directed. I would say think of a common section because were going to talk from experience. Im also a College Professor in addition to doing youtube. So think of the Comment Section in the classroom and you tell your students you cant ask questions and you cant have anything in terms of an enrichment other than just watch me lecture in front of the classroom. The classroom, it will evolve. You wont have a sense of community or sense of engagement. Students will not learn. You are moving everything makes a classroom engaging in terms of the method. Thats what the comments section is for most of us here on youtube, is that were engaging, enriching, and its a learning experience not just on one side but both sides as well. There are many times where ive used the material at people like doing it wrong and then give me the right way to do it. So im also been enriched by this experience as well. I also want to say on the topic of live streams, if live stream gets marked as for kids, they completely shuts off the live chat as well which pretty much completely defeats the purpose of live stream because they cant live interact with you. Theres no way to donate. That gets removed so at that point are basically like talking to a wall. For our audience i would say the major loss was playlists come for the parents of Young Children, i would say perhaps the most important tool that the jews to generate and manage their childs expert on youtube was by having their own private playlists. Within to lose the ability to create playlists with the family, i would say has affected quite a lot of families. I was in a playlist front we do have our own playlist we put out there and users to use our playlists i would say we used to have a situation where we would take our playlists and then change around the videos after a while, especially new videos that would promote our latest video. What we got feedback from a number of families was many comes to want to watch the videos of particular especially if the children are special needs and the change in the program affected them. We just create new playlists and basically just live our playlists the way that they are and and i know many families had their own playlists. A lot of parents were relying on it and its a blow to lose that feature. With Mother Goose Club its more clear the main audience, but with the rest of our creators you guys might come your elaborate a can for people who are not thinly with much of your work, like to have a sense of percentage of who watches your videos . What age groups are they in . So on that topic it gets very hard, which is one of my primary concerns. One of the games i play is minecraft and while mine craft was probably originally made for teenagers is one of the biggest games and will and it has seniors playing, little kids, adults. The thing about the internet is everyone is completely anonymous. I can make an account and sent him a 55yearold who watches my little pony. Its not true but i could. As a result you really dont know who is watching your videos. In terms of me, only 5 of my audience ever comments or interact. The other 95 i have no idea who it is watch my videos. There is no way for me to tell. Youtube does provide us analytics but its for ages 13 and up. We do use that. We have done brand deals on her channel with tmobile, bed bath and beyond, google, amazon, Different Companies and will send in those analytics and say heres the demographic by age and the demographic by gender and location. All that is aggregate together and given to us and we can send that and use it but as relates to coppa were told us that reliable information if we determine whether our content is made for kids or not. We are left a lot of ways guessing what is and what is not like the craft was saying. I know i predominately make content for a very specific audience, which is geeky, female crafters and to say that i have about 85 of the audience are female above the age of 18. So i do have that information but again these are analytics that we are given only as the age of 13 and up. The majority of my audience is, in fact, according to the analytics between the ages of 18 to about 45. Just wanted to note that its one thing we learn from this process and this conversation is that theres very Little Information about how Little Information we have about our audience. There is quite a lot of privacy on youtube and on the internet quite frankly. We just dont know. Theres information we will get about our audience is very much aggregate information outside the u. S. On the country level. In the u. S. Is aggregated to the state level. We have information on login users but again its only 13 and plus. For example, with our audience we know that most of the audience under the age of five of course the actual demographics will show a sickly primary people in her 30s and 40s, event people over the age of 60, right . Again, probably the parents and the grandparents. For us that is actually in many ways the key audience because theyre the ones who are selecting our program, right . The Young Children who watch our program are not the ones who are in control of the device, not the ones who are necessarily deciding to watch our program. We need the parents, the caregivers to be fancy and to understand what were trying to do and to want to put us in front of the kids. In many ways when we talk to our fans, they are the ones we are talking to, the ones are reaching out to us and the ones were engaging with. Thats a very different dynamic than each of the other creators on this panel. It goes to show how wide and diverse range of different audience segments are on youtube. Yeah, my wife and i regular use mother goos club and hope one thing i want to point out is this is such a small group of you tubers when you consider all the different genres. We have gamy, family blogs, crafting a preschool education. You consider all the content that may be attracted to children that will fall under question question mark areas, think of the music. Go to you to kit for another how make music videos can you find . A lot. Think of sports like i like watching the of highlights with my kids. Thats on youtube kids. You think of all the Different Things related to toys and education that is a for preschooler called the sites that use and Creative Things like that, comedy, food, beauty, animation, all of these categories are up on youtube and the creators are confused and not sure what to do. And you tubers are great if were combining and clever and all this content in a bunch of new and different and diverse ways. All of these questions come up of who is watching, what is the audience and we know its likely that children 12 the old and again with the protected act if you race at the 15 lecture, 15 and 12yearoldsyearolds like watching all these different types of content. You guys also nail it on the head when you said you mention my little pony. There is a huge amount of adults who watch it. You know, a lot of nostalgia about it. I personally have looked up like member from my childhood sailor moon figures. Theyre also on youtube and oh, my god, rendered when i was like six and this was it for me . There such a hard line you have to walk you create any country because it obviously theres a lot of adults who would be interested and sometimes children would be interested come, you mentioned beauty, a huge following amongst preteens and teenagers for beauty you tubers and their content sometimes. If im watching it, i want my little i dont love my little sister to hear these words yet. Its very tricky and i think we should go to the next question and ask the question of what do you do, do click the private information, do you collect personal information . Because coppa was supposed to protect persons children personal privacy and information. That was the whole goal and its obviously you as creators, your goal is to engage children, engage imagination and their development. But at the same time they are still out there, people who paint you as bad guys. I dont how they saw you, they would think that what they do. Do you guys collect personal information . What do you do with it, if you do . I mean we have to think of what kind of information we get from youtube. We practically just get pie charts. Thats it. We are getting just big charts that have division and thats the deepest kind of data that we have, which is age where geographically our audience could be from. Thats about it. We dont have any deep dive information or personal information about anyone at all. I would say that on that front, this goes what of the things that also a surprising about the settlement which was when we creators were being identified as operators, that was a surprise because we dont control youtube. We dont really have any capacity quite honestly to do very much about the platform at all. They provide it to us. They tell us what we can see and what we cant see. Having said that, what do we see. We see information at the country level in the states, at the state level. But i can its how the information is obtained and what it relates back to. Doesnt get shared with us, and quite also i would say thats for, if you think about the logistics its quite impossible for us to really do much more with information beyond that. I dont think anyone, im not aware of anyone, ive never been interested in information that was more granular than that. If youre talked about hundreds of thousands of views and some of us has tens of millions of views a day, its just not practical to really go to look at anything more than general trends at a very kind of zoomed out level. You are looking at what the audience is, how the audience is behaving may be in terms of when did they click off. The stuff they dont really share with you in detail of when you stop watching your video. You will find out generally when people were click off your video, but other than that we all noted, with quite a lot of communication with our fans because they reached out to us. Theres when no way for us to reach out to them. We dont have the ability. We have subscribers. With no ability to match its impact will it way is posting a video. They message us and then we respond to them. Certainly when we had comments we could respond in the commons but again we are not who they are in the comets and we dont have access to gmail. We cant send them emails. I would say nearly every creator response to almost every comment. We get millions of views a day. People respond to everyone, not right away but eventually and thats a big part of the experience and thats why people engage with youtube so much. They know they can reach out to nerdecrafter crafting vice, reach out to us for parenting and preschool education device and they will engage and respond to people. If im not mistaken, doesnt mother goose have millions of views . Yes. If you had all the information that would be amazing. If that would be some Fascinating Research but you dont. I guess my question is and how you guys are you let a petition on change. Org which of with us almost 1 million signatures now thats asking the federal trade commission to look again into this issue and because all the creators are being heard and the content is being heard and hence the children and their experiences also being heard by these rules. Would you say what feedback if any in reaction have you gotten from your subscribers, support, comments and thoughts on this change that is happening . I think one of the big things, the primary purpose of coppa was to put parents in control of protecting children personal information online. When you look at the rally of whats happening now in 2020, there was a poll that showed 81 of parents were allowing their Young Children to watch youtube. The reality is parents are taking devices that they purchase and handed it to the kids to watch youtube. What this regulation does in some ways is bypassed. By saint were going to now be putting my build on the creators composer maybe dont have control over notification, they dont have control over the requirements of complying with coppa, but one of the concerns i know from creators is that where is the responsibility on parents . And also are we ignoring parents preferences . And we have a lot of what the ftc settlement is doing is trying to protect children from their Parents Choice to allow them to watch youtube which that was never the intent of coppa compass to protect children from the parents, which is whats actually happening. Lets make sure we are putting responsibility should be and we should be passing on liability to those who lack control, like the creators. Another thing i want to say is that my generation especially the younger one, we primarily watch youtube. People come home from school, they dont watch tv. They watch youtube. Whats going to happen here is if kid content is no longer monetarily viable, that people are not going to make kid content but the kids look away for you too. They will stand youtube tonight have an entire generation of kids just hearing people swear and watching more mature adult content because thats the only kind of content that can be monetarily viable. One of the things i would really like to see is a more defined, i guess less vague definition of what kid appealing or child appealing content is. Because when you look at the list, things like pets. I have my parrot whos in my video sometimes but again i dont have parent its not child directed at the same time these definitions of pets or colors or music, these things make entertainment. They dont necessarily make child content only. If you have a video with no music, its that necessarily going to be in terms of editing at least more appealing. These are things i would like to see in terms of something a little more to find, less vague and also removing the fact that adults are adults. Youtube started to treat adult viewers as coming from children when theyre watching content that they deem could be child directed to thats pretty condescending would you think about as an adult who is being treated as a child. So that Something Else i would like to see revised as well. I would say that again, the impact is only really been implemented for the audience this month, so i would say the one thing that somewhat surprisingly to some degree that we have been hearing from people even like my friends, does this affect you, and i think that was obviously we made child directed content but everyone assumed that while they have their own experience with youtube and that this would affect their expense with youtube, it would affect them at elses experience with youtube especially if you are not based in the u. S. And so for a lot of the conversations weve had its been it will affect you, too. Theres nothing you can really do about it. As a parent or a user, as an adult user, and thats been a surprise to nearly everyone and something even this past weekend i was getting messages from people i knew saying, you know, does this affect you . How do i stop this . How do i stop this for myself . How do i get my experience back . I dont control the platform so theres nothing i could really do about that. And again one of the things ive mentioned in my video is that primarily in the crafting community, the Gaming Community has a lot of also issues but kind of overlap but at the same time in the crafting community specifically we are hurting female entrepreneurs because we are putting female type hobbies as child hobbies, which again is not the way to go about it. If you like to customize dolls. A lot of the material we do use are not for children either were using epoxy resin and using different kinds of sharp blades and trembled but not using power tools per se in the same way that our mail how to persecute them in the crafting community. Im really, really worried about the definition of what a child appealing type hobby in terms of what female type hobby is an putting them all in the same basket because this idea is really, really going to hurt female creators and entrepreneurs. A lot of them could be stayathome moms to figure out a way to use their talents to make a living. The other thing, we talk about how vague the standards are. Theres these three different categories comes your content can be child directed, mixed audience, or general audience content. We have the ten factors the ftc has given in the coppa ruled that were supposed to consider whether not the continent is, in which category and out coppa applies to us what it does not depends on which category its in. You look at the ten factors. We dont know as creators what they mean. One of the factors is language. There was a document from the ftc back in 2002 that says is the language simply not that a 12yearold can understand . What Youtube Content isnt . Are the characters from movies that are talked about . All of these definitions that are giving the subject matter the visual content, the age. The fact that there are children in my video, does that mean it is child directed . Theres a lot of general audience content that has children in it. One of the things where needy is a lot more clarity. For me its been concerning its even questionable and theres a station of the constitutionality of it. We should know whether a regulation applies to us not to wenders a speed limit sign you know whether your speedy enough because theres a number. With the empty seats almost like were giving a speed limit sign the just as dont go too fast. We dont know whether were going to fast or not and we ask for examples from the ftc and they are saying if youre going five miles per hour, thats slow, okay but if youre going 125 miles a note miles an note thats too faster you talked about a conversation you had with a said door the explorer is for kids and grays anatomy is for adults and its like we know the extreme examples but what about the cosby show . Whats concern is in the complaint they highlighted a family blog that has over 2,600 invidious, about a teenage daughter and daughter agenda than 13 and to make prints and they said the whole channel is child directed and they highlighted one of the biggest with a teenage daughter dyed her hair purple and he said look, you do best doesnt this as for kids and you to put on youtube kids and youtube had emails with employees the said this and that. Its like what did the greatest do . The creators said they were familyfriendly and thats not okay. They have these figures about dyeing their hair purple. We just come begging as you consider changes to coppa it has to be more clear because we dont know where to does it ourselves. Theres so much in the middle. What about those going 20, 30, 40, 50, 50 miles an hour . We are all left guessing and we will be judged could face these penalties and could face losing our businesses. Yet the thing is just the magnitude of the it. Like i said i have 1400 videos so i have to consider those ten factors in the totality of the circumstances with every one of the videos. And then say where should i lighten up . I talked to probably ten attorneys about this and that all interpret it different. Where do i draw the line and i really dont know and im trying really hard and im an attorney as well. Has fastened to the creator standalone attorney because youre doing my job for me is awesome. To wrap it up this room is full of staffers and privacy experts and advocates. We are also in cspan which is peak nerd d. C. , if you want to address all of those people, we have commissioned coming in later and ask them, and plead your case, now is the time. Lets just go down the line. I know its a lot, but like what would be your ask, what would you wanting to look into and to hear you out . Thats heavy. Ill start. Changing the age from 13 to 16 just makes things more confusing. Because you are measuring the nature of the content rather than the users. And that creates all kinds of enforceability problems and potential theres so much confusion, you can start to feel discriminated against because youre getting called out but then the guys who are doing trick shots are not getting called out on, you know . What i would look at the nature as a measure to determine and raising the age . We all know the difference between content made for threeyearolds and content made for a 33yearold. Who in europe until the difference of consummate for a 12yearold and 413yearold . Its indecipherable. How could you dont give 20 content for c15 and a 16 year old. That change, yes, it will bring in more general audience content but it just confuses the issue. The other thing is the ftc in their 2013 changes said they wouldnt put more emphasis on one factor above another but theyre beginning to that. They are starting to put emphasis on the factors that you tubers dont have control over. As you put emphasis on the audience itself, we do have control over how youtube is suggesting us and youtube kids and how many of the kids are seeing are based on the recommendation. I can never figure i posted back in 2014 that is general audience content but then in 2019 youtube could suddenly start promoting it on youtube kids and they can get 1 million views. That means after the monitoring that content every checking to see what youtube is doing with it and do their recommending it to to see if the balance has shifted to where the ftc may consider that content made for kids. As you put the liability onto people who lack the control, thats bad policy. As you think about changes for coppa dealt with the libel of people who dont have control. The people who have control of the parents who of the best control but the creators who cant get notification and consent should be the ones are getting the liability here. Something want to say is the internet is not black and white anymore. So like spongebob, for example, i grew up watching spongebob just because i turned 18 and i became an adult i did a movie like i cant watch spongebob anymore. If i see a spongebob video on youtube i will still watch it. Im sure is a lot of content on youtube that may be deemed or looked at as for kids, but im sure it has a big adult audience. Number one would be to keep stuff like that in mind. Number two is when making laws like this, please consult with people that do use the internet, and dont make laws for stuff you dont understand. Also one of the things that are think is really important is getting adults the choice to decide what the kids and what they want their kids to do. So consider consent as truly important and i dont think that should be removed from parents or people who are giving their tablets to their kids basically. Thats one of the important things here the other thing is definitely, i mean, a lot of collectors whether it be video games or figurines, these are people with purchasing power. Saying that again spongebob or Ninja Turtles as just for children is kind of detached from the rally that we live in, especially since a lot of the conventions are extremely popular and again the majority of the aged between the ages of 2534. Just like to echo the point about making sure parents are empowered. Parents should have the right to decide what kind of internet expands them want to have for the families and for themselves. And i would also like to stress the need to really identify and identify the harm that were trying to solve. There are a lot of problems on the internet that we would all agree should be addressed. Whats being described about certainly, for example, whether or not we collect information and how we target kids. We dont and most of whats been alleged about the creator involved issues not technically true. There are things that you need to be addressed. We would love to partner with you and share our insights in how the internet works with you to do all of that. Lets make sure were addressing the right things and not compromising what we have, which is to be clear for the first time in history, we have the ability for anyone in the world to have access to an unlimited amount of video content. Some of it is not great but most of it is awesome. It has benefited and enriched billions. Most of whom never be able to afford a Subscription Video Service or have access to videos like the videos that we make and the videos that hundreds of thousands of other creators worldwide make. Should appreciate that and celebrate that. We should make sure content gets better, not worse. Thank you so much for making the case, for listening to create a for sharing your experience. If anyone in the audience once again in touch with you and you just expressed your happy to collaborate you guys can come to us, we will put you in touch with our amazing creatures. Please join me in thanking all of them to coming all the way to d. C. And sharing this with us. The next panel will start without any intervention so please stay in your seats. Im berin szoka, techfreedom. You may mistake me for harry because were wearing the same outfit, which was not planned. Thanks again for coming. I think this is the fourth coppa event i think weve done over the years, and phyllis, i think youve done all of them. So thank you, including back in the days when you at the ftc. We just jumped into the middle of things with our content creator panel. So you have heard from them what the frustrations are and the practical concerns that they have. This panel we will talk about why do in that situation. You heard a lot of terms tossed throughout, tossed around in the last discussion directed to kids, collection of information we will unpack those now. We thought it would be better to just start with you to and from people in the real world. I want introduce you to our expert panel today. As they said we had a number of these folks on panels in the past. Angela campbell is for us are at georgetown law clinic represents a campaign for commercial free childhood and the center for digital democracy. They have been among the groups that a been leading the charge to the ftc to do more about childrens privacy and they filed the complaint that ultimately lead to the settlement that we have been hearing about on the last panel. Angela will explain the concerns the letter and her group to do that. Jim dunstan is my calling packed tech freedom, our general counsel, and someone who has done a lot of work on representing content creators online and childrens media for television. Thank you jim. Sarah is a Public Policy manager at google, she advises teams on privacy and Data Governance in hand has been working on childrens privacy for over a decade. Fearless, i got to know, when i started working in 2000, you were mrs. Copper at the time, and you worked on the 2013 rulemaking, and work their third 2015, and have been out there representing clients in private practice, trying to deal with coppa since then. Amelia, i didnt get a bile from, you some when you introduced yourself . I am director of youth and education privacy for the future of privacy form. And you focus on coppa . Coppa, youtube and the student privacy laws that have been passed since 2013. Well talk about the intersection of those two things. To get started here, we keep talking about this term coppa, this is the third attempt to regulate the internet. Those first two loss, and then copa, those are both struck down as and its constitutional. So coppa what congress is first attempt that survived. And it survived and has avoided constitutional challenge because it has been focused on trying to not affect result, but also the collection of information from children that could include things like kids putting in their names and their home addresses and free text field online. Theres also some other information that we will talk about. One, where the creator has actual knowledge, and as weve heard from the internet, nobody knows youre a, dog so that doesnt always apply. Second, where the content is directed to children, and that is what we talk about on the last panel. So just to get us started here, i want to ask jim to tell us what carpet was intended to do, and then fill us to update us on what the ftc was trying to do. So, jim . What were they trying to do . So really, when you look at legislative history of coppa, there are two areas generally that coppa what designed to do. First and foremost it was designed to give parent control over the information of their children, so its very was a parental control. The protections were twofold, one, and primarily, it was a great fear that half they would camp out on the internet, reach out and find children and do horrible things against them. If you look at some of the testimony, then he talked about the ftc working together that they would be safe. Secondly, this was a form of coordination, where the congressman were concerned about, and specifically about the ability of advertisers to pick out individual children, find them, and market directly to them as individuals. So that was the benchmark on coppa. As we go forward, we need to understand that in the statute, the definition of information was limited to the things that you would think are really important information, it presents a name, serial number. You know address. Things it could be used to contact directly and individual child. That has been expanded, and we will talk about what happened in 2013, increasing things like Deal Location information, and this really pesky thing called persistent identifiers, where the crux of the debate is around today. That is where we came from, when he talked about the dangers of tradition and pedophiles online, and said theres little evidence to these processes. Its clearly troubling because it teaches children to reveal their information to strangers, so that is the link back in 1998. Theres been a debate because its unclear and always difficult, and a debate on what that means and what congress intends to do with that. The ftc was given some wiggle room because the one term that the ftc was able to use was the meeting of personal information. So initially it with names, address, that sort of thing, and then any additional criteria that they determine allows the contact of a specific individual. So that changed happened back in 2013, i want to ask angela to provide her perspective, but fillers can you update us on what happened in 2013, and then we will talk about the debate today and the deflecting views to what that should mean. As he said nicely, everything in the ftc ability to regulate childrens policy came from a statute that was enacted in 1998. There were some mandated reviews that had to occur under the statute, and then periodically the ftc reviews its rules to make sure that they are current. So there is a wholesale review that took place from 2000 from 2012 to 2010, and the advisory went into effect in the middle of 2013. There were a number of major changes that took place in the real review, one of which was the expansion of the definition of personal information. The constraint was that the statute indicated that the ftc could only expand the definition, where the ftc had made a determination that a different identifier permitted the direct interaction between an operator and a child that is permitted the operator to engage with a child. So there was a full scale analysis opposed by some in the industry, strongly supported by others. And ultimately the ftc decided that there were sufficient evidence that a persistent identify that could be used and across a body of properties. However defined. Mobile apps were relatively new, and weve moved beyond applications to other types of internet connected devices, but overtime, and across a body of properties to communicate however you would define communication, oneonone with the user. What that meant, boiling it all down was that it targeted advertising, from its an operator to track a user overtime and then tailor particular Marketing Communications back to that user, would now be in. There we were until last year, and critically in that 2013 update, they said that this amendment would not provide to uploading photos or videos on general audience site, such as facebook or youtube. Absent actual knowledge that the person uploading such files as a child. In other words, this is the two critical distinctions. Those two prongs, the actual knowledge, and the question of is this is a general sight or something geared towards individual users. Until the two settlement last year, the ftc had said that they were like other sites, and so the only way was if someone had actual knowledge from a child. So what changed last year . There was a complaint filed in 2016, and all that ends will jump in and describe this, a fundamental shift has been the cop a settlement, which for the first time has done away with what the ftc set in the footnote, and said that you do is no longer going to be a general audience site overall, but will look at the specific channels, specific videos on site to assess whether those are child directed. That is why the last panel is now talking about being liable to, coppa because of those who changes intersecting. We will talk about that today, and if you have questions for the audience, were little bit tight on time so we will not have a question session. Feel free to treat at us on the hashtag, keep an eye on the discussion. But what prompted you to file the complaint that you did . When you two kids of his first announced, we conducted and investigation and found multiple complaints about it, which they did nothing about. Youtube kids did not violate copper, because it did not have behavioural advertising, it had some advertising and it was contextual advertising. There is no cookie that tracks the user . There may be, but its not used for sending personal advertising. It is used for recommending videos. Internal operations of the site. What we realized was that all of that programming on youtube was coming from youtube. My clients kept asking me, they said, how can youtube get away with this, because they know they have childrens content, but theyre pretending it is not. In 2018 he found, we filed a complaint against youtube. Let me clarify, we did not file a complaint against any creators at all, only against youtube, and we had several different theories on which youtube was violating coppa. One was the actual knowledge standard and part of the evidence of actual knowledge was that they knew that they were having these channels that they were also putting on youtube kids that were intended for Young Children. We had other evidence as well, but we also argued there were two other grounds, and that youtube was in fact directed towards children that the largest audience is children, that is where children are. So also, youtube as a youtube parent google as the main Advertising Network knew there were kids and were advertising using personal behavioural advertising. They were actually doing the advertising for kids. So we had several different grounds on which we thought youtube was liable under coppa. When the ftc ruled, it was actually we were kind of per side that based on this very narrow ground of saying they had actual knowledge and therefore, to settle this thing, you have to tell them whether they are child directed or not. You cannot do behavioral advertising. That was not really the result that we expected or wanted. I have a lot of sympathy for a lot of the creators. I do think that youtube should be taking more the responsibility of complying with the law. Part of the reason we did it was a practical reason. I think that as a matter of law, all the creators are responsible. I also think that there is a lot of misinformation. A lot of things, i mean, mean, i understand why you are worried. I agree. Child directed with 10 different factors. There is no case law on it. The ftc has never brought, no cases they have actually litigated. I have a lot of sympathy. I think that there needs to be improvements in the current situation. I do think it is really important to protect children. Keep in mind we have a lot of people in the cspan audience that will not be familiar. Can you summarize what exactly did they do . I think im probably not the best person to speak. Lets have it. I think there has been a lot of focus on youtube. One of the reasons amelia here has a broad impact. You tube is very much a big name in the conversation, but by far not the only. Representing a lot of different clients affected by this as well. Perhaps more helpful for someone outside of the settlement to talk about it. We can obviously point people to a lot of information on the record as well. We are short on time here. Someone give us a really quick overview on what the settlement requires. Do want to jump in, amelia . We have a commissioner in the audience. He can also speak to it as well. My understanding is with every childrens privacy settlement that the ftc has entered into, the entities involved, google and youtube, have to have to comply going forward. They have agreed within the settlement to pay a large sum of money. Also, to implement a system system and maintain it whereby individual operators can flag for youtube that they are directed to children. Youtube has decided, from what i am understanding, that it will implement the rules by turning off particular features or altering particular experiences that there are choices to be made weird the baseline requirement is to comply. Altering experiences as we have heard in the room. Youtube is offering a number of resources for the operator to understand whether they do or dont fall into particular categories. The features being turned off are those that implement collection. Weve been talking about, i think its important to draw the distinction. Having a system that will accomplish this. They dont say you cannot have comments, you can not have playlists, you cant have all of these things that youtube has decided you cannot have. Maybe the way to set up right now, they cant let you, but there is no reason in those cases that they could not have comments and playlists and these other things without collecting personal information or without allowing children to comment. I think this is all a really good point. You have to talk about what is in the settlement. What google is required to do in the settlement which is actively seek out knowledge that something is directed to children and then train the content creators on youtube. And then there is how it is actually in practice through turning off the comments, playlists, that sort of thing. Additional steps that each of us have taken such as using ai which was rolled out by commissioners as not part of the settlement. To determine what is directed to children. Exactly. The features we are talking about here, the reason they are implicated is because they involve collection information. When they hear that they are thinking about the cookie that enables the ad that shows you it is relevant not just on the content you are seeing, but other things you looked at. A wide array of features here. Comments because you can put in free text. That is considered collection. Quite intuitive. You dont want kids saying, hi, my name my name is soandso. My name is 10 years old and you can reach me at. That is what congress was intending to cover in writing that in the first place. I just want to make sure we are making a connection. The content creators were explaining that they are seeing features disabled like playlists. A wide array of features that reduce their ability to build an audience, especially small content creators trying to attract detention. Now the question is, why those features being disabled. Why isnt there practical way to enable them with a verifiable parental consent. Can you help us to understand . I think that thats. I work there. Getting forward to google and youtube as a platform for the creators. Everyone else that they touch. I think that there is a way to do that. Something that came up on an earlier panel. Something called rebuttable presumption. Something we thought we put in our comments that we filed with the ftc late last year. A large number of questions about, okay, should we look at that, what are some of the questions that we have in light of the settlement. It is this idea about how you treat users who are watching made for kids content. There is a declaration for youtube greater say this is content directed for kids or not tiered youtube is implementing a system using Machine Learning and ai that we can talk more about. Basically check that and making sure there is not abuse in terms of the declarations. We all know that ai is not perfect for that type of system. We dont want to over rely on that. If any content is made for kids, the assumption is whoever is watching that is a child. No question about whether or not there should be an ability to rebut that presumption. Me, as an avid harry potter fan or avid lego fan, i dont want to call people out, but i know someone in this audience that is an avid lego fan. We could all go down and list our guilty pleasures. The question is, should you be able to, if a platform goes through reasonable procedures to verify that that viewer is in fact an adult be treated as an adult and have the comments features turned on. Be able to have the playlist features, the notifications and Everything Else that establish youtube as a platform from traditional broadcast or other platforms. That is something i think the mothers in the industry have called for. Void this idea you have to be treated as a child no matter if you are or not to play because of the content you watch. The ftc can look at that going forward. Kind of help strike this balance. Really help to get to what the heart is supposed to be. The protection of kids very much. The protection of their personal information. Nobody argues that we should not do that and do that job very, very well. You want to make sure that that law is clear and easy to follow. People that want to do the right thing have a really good clear rule of the road on how to do the right thing and that there is strong enforcement when that is not the case. That comes with the clarity. With things like that, a lot more clarity about what is supposed to be made for kids, about one is not considered made for kids content, because that can be unclear, it can also be ephemeral. Audiences something a lot of people have talked about, but i think what is lost and all of that conversation is the context, and how important that is. And that kind of clarity and balance and trump with those things can help us navigate this post 2013 world. The challenge of any discussion is the first half setting the table for everyone, and procedurally there are two things going on here, that settlement that they reached last year, and the requests for comments to update the rule what they did every five years or so. So right now, they have taken comments, and they are working on this over the next few months. The fundamental issue i want our panel to talk about is this question of, are we in a position now of treating adult as if they were children. That is the fundamental balance that congress is trying to strike. On the one hand, yes protected children, and the critical question there is, what counts as directed to children . You heard the last panel talk about it, you heard some of our creators explain that maybe applied in fair ways that maybe even more likely to label as directed to children. So what can the ftc do right now to make that more clear, the absence of anything that say things like, well, if you have cartoons or dolls or things like that, or toys, maybe considered, what can the ftc do right now. Im going to do this as a lightning round so please pull out your thoughts. I disagree with the question because when you say treat an adult like a child, what it really means for coppa purposes now their privacy is protected, and all these other things about not being able to comment and so forth are not requirement of the coppa law. Everyone had privacy protections, we will be in a different position. So its not an insult to get people privacy protections. We did not clarify this before. What does it mean if coppa is triggered, and why does it interfere the connection between content creator and user . Anyone . So, it seems very technical, and it can be viewed as very technical, especially if you are an operator who is coming to this without the context, so youve been operating in an environment where these particular requirements were not implemented, and now are being implemented. So theoretically, you could see couple as a staple, they are within reason, particular prohibited practices, but you have to insert a parent or someone as an adult into the Decision Making before particular collections and disclosures to do what . What is it that copper requires . Its more than just a check box, in particular in situations, for, example in a situation where comments are permitted, and you can have used during gauge mint you would want to put in place a system, where someone has indicated, i mean adult and i then consent what will go on in this, environment. It is complicated, when youre talking about, the operation, by individuals, on a larger platform, and that is somewhat different, in terms of what we are looking at now, although as you pointed out in 2013 the question, is and what i heard on the prior panel, from operators is that, theres very little control, of the platform, in which the operators are engaging and maybe there isnt a uniform way for an operator to seek that parental cant sent, on a platform, in order to continue with some of the features like comments, or behavior targeted advertising, but there is this kind of stop, pause, dont engage with kids, in whatever way before you get that consent and then continue, if you dont get, it youre supposed to stop. So jim, we hear this all the, time people, say well copper all requires parental consent, and maybe youre good to, go isnt really so simple . Its, not and thats probably the biggest feeling of coppa think with, congress it is assumed that there would be, an automated mechanism, in which people could get back parental consent, in no good mechanisms indeed have actually evolved, to the only thing thats out there, is hand mayor credit, card i will charge you five cents, and then give you a five stand refined, and in that way i know its an adult, because presumably only adults have a credit card, that part has it was been a big gaping hole, that congress saw was going to be sort of the safety net. The other thing i want to talk about is, stepping back and talk about procedures, especially for the staffers, think about where we are, and where we just came from, again, you heard there are new cases, well the ftc generally doesnt bring cases, well they do bring cases, but then they all settle out, its between the ftc, and whoever the defendant was, to sort of define what the terms of that sentiment, is unfortunately as we see in the youtube, settlement that now has secondary, enter thierry, all the way down seven eight, levels of impact, and those people were not invited to that party, to have that settlement, and they did that the exact same time, we are now feeling comments on a proceeding, that is essentially been superseded by settlement what he got to play, it its even worse because of the way the ftc brought this particular action, was there is no ability for anybody to even comment on the settlement. It really was a totally smoke filled room, and frankly probably, people on both sides, would like to have a stay of what happened with that settlement. Normally settlements get submitted to a court, you could file comments. At least thats one of the options they have. It wasnt taken in this, road so nobody, got to engage, in this discussions, an hour trying to play this sort of ketchup game, a filing comments in a proceeding, about a settlement we dont have any right to file comments on, but which really is going to have probably more impact on what happens with coppa, to anything ftc could do going, forward weve already charted this new course, and i understand it you too is one player in this ecosystem, but is really a large player in this ecosystem, and nobody is going to do anything, that doesnt sort of follow what youtube is doing here, for a risk, for 2500 bucks a pop, in potential liability. I just want to make one thing clear, civility talking about operators, cop is not new, that ftc is brought plenty of Enforcement Actions against operators in the, past but theyve been websites you are doing their own business, court in their own content, this is the first time, that coppa is being applied to a platform, where there are a long tail of content creators, for now themselves subject to cop, by they dont have a legal departments, there usually single operator, small, team they knock to figure out how cop applies to them, they are now struggling with that direct standard, given the lack of clarity, from the, ftc and its much more difficult than when bigger Media Companies had to do that in the past. I just want to pause for a second, though because we were talking a lot about the, settlement as we, showed that was big news, but, also since the 2013 rule, theres been a lot of change in terms of technology, in terms of content, how people consume, it the audiences, its not just that there are new questions as a result of the, settlement the settlement does bring new questions, but its also, there are a lot of questions that have been opened, since 2013, and so i didnt want to lose, that its only the case they were asking these hard questions about, copper its also nice to kind of pressure test, roles and loss after theyve, been written, but there has been this change, i think, theres more research thats been done about the content thats created, and how is consumed, thats really really important, to bring into this, and not just the settlement. We have less than 15 minutes, so what can they do to provide greater clarity on what counts . He is certainly open the role for the role they could have a lot of rules in the tool, box it could just be guardians enforcement policy statements, fill us probably knows, theres that question about whether or not they should open up and consider ruffle im asking more like how do you go from a list of words, to something this more helpful to people . I will say, in the ftcs events, i guess i put myself in that position, when you have this list of factors, in a way i can be viewed as a gift, i think thats the way the ftc would have viewed it, that its better, for operators to kind of match themselves up against a broader array of factors, some of which are very common. Some are, i saw this in one of the comments, context and Something Else, whats the look, and the feel, and the taste, and then theres the, who am i intending to get to . And he was actually there. You could put it all, all of these ingredients in a, soup and cook it, and youre supposed to come out for the most part with an answer. I do understand that there are the margins, and im looking directly at you, but im not sure that the margins are as wide, as you said, that were directed to a four year, old that were directed to a six year old, and after you see, i think you would dispute how active the ftc has been, the ftc hasnt taken the hard part cases. Theyve left that to some discretion, and the case is primarily, you understand whether a property is directed to kids or not, and so, if i were to put on my, hat i think crafting, would fall within the not directed to kids, funding because of the very broad appeal. Directed to families isnt out there, but thats a tricky one directed to families, in thats where i think there, could be quite a bit of Additional Guidance that comes out. Because there is some confusion, your general audience he might have some kids, there is one, thing directed to kids and that is your sweet spot is another thing. Or do cove you wing of kids and families, that falls within this middle bucket, and where does that, get you what is your implementation look, like the ftc did kind of throw all of this wide, open and maybe scare some people, in the questionnaire that they issued, where they are asking, what to do, about properties that are not intended to be directed to, kids who are designed for kids, but they have a large number of children participating. You can see people getting very nervous about that potentially broadening beyond the ten factors, and having the law reach a whole other category that it might not have intended to, reach i would say, wearing my best advocate hat for operators, then having those ten factors, can be a gift, because you could make your best argument that you are not directed to kids or there are black lines. We havent had a real shift, year were not talking about legal departments, and limited liability for performers, are talking about university professor, young person whose courage to youtube channel, and a person whose family is now creating content, were talking about small entrepreneurs, who have to make a decision about, can they risk an enormous legal reliability . Ill ask a question, what would you do in the case of somebody, who believes theyve been misidentified . Thats a great question i think there are processes in place to consult with that appeal i think we play this out in a blog post, last week and there will be more information i think about that, there is a chance to kind of consult with youtube and say, we didnt think this designation was correct, and again theres ai system, where a month in, it so i think its going to take a while. But theres two different risks here there is the risk that youtube makes a mistake, takedown, puts them out of business, or fortresses them to change the, content that bat, that may actually put someone out a, business but its not as bad as the ftc, coming after somebody, and then slapping them with penalty, they might say the ftc may not do that, but angela from not mistaken, reading your, comments it sounds like some watchdogs out, there intend to be on the, watch, and understandably so, to look to see if there are content creators that you think are covered by the, role that are putting their content out there, and after think about that first and everybody may meanwhile, but if youre doing this as a passion project, you may just decide is not worth it or you may decide, to really, as some of our creators were noting you may start putting more adults content into your videos, in order to make them less obviously directed towards children, and that in turn is one of the things that the petition talked about, that in turn is going to change the nature of content out there for kids, and make it ironically more adult, it might be more of all guarantees, it might mean change content overall, these are the second order consequences were dealing with, so how do we think about that balance . I dont think from speaking from my groups that we will be coming, after lets say the crafters, because really we want to protect kids and so, all creators are not the same. Nickelodeon, is a creator, but they do have legal counsel, they do have the ability, so what drives me crazy more, is when you have disney saying well none of our shows except for the penguins, one or actually child directed, ha . The problem is, there is a big middle area, theres also a lot of things that are very clearly trial directed, but a lot of companies, will then say oh no were not shot directed, and we see this especially with apps. So the people running go after, people that are either, their big and are still doing something, wrong like youtube, or theres something where there really, truly misrepresenting are not going for the borderline, cases just like the ftc is gonna go for borderline, cases it is not worth the effort. I, wouldnt feel reassured either but its a problem the way the ftc is chosen to define, but you cant know whether something is child directed in their view, until theres been a case brought, under still cases, theres no real explanation of what that means, i thought about whether or people could just say we are trial directed, were not child directed, is i think a lot of parents think things are child directed, and i think their kids are protected, when they dont actually know. What about viewing out about the hair, he creates on ten weather goose club thats really for parents to watch with their very very Young Children, preschoolers. The parents dont have the choice to say we dont want behavioural targeting, unless cop applies feeding the fact of the parent might be watching with a, kid that doesnt change the fact that children could be, manipulated through behavioural advertising, i dont see how having, if theyre not in the room they havent given actual content, and the child isnt protected the question is, are they essentially giving consent, theyve locked into their youtube account, and theyre allowing their children to watch these videos, arent they giving, consent to that . Why not . Because they havent consented to the behavioural advertising, their choices you can watch, it and let your kid be targeted in advertised to, or you can watch it at all thats not really a choice. Yes it is. It really is, and the problem is, if we just say, you cant have targeted advertising, we know the impact, the revenue impact, that what is that going to do, for the future of new creation . We dont know the impact of that. Its difficult to know, we have some reports. And theres plenty of people making a lot of, money with advertising. Heres the thing about that advertising, some people can make a lot of money with the context in which advertising is very valuable, if youre advertising lets say its a product opening, its a non, wrapping you might make a lot of, money because the unwrapping,s are for a toy, and you targets to, that thats a very valuable form of contextual advertising, but if youre just create a general purpose content, pretextual advertising is it worth very, much is the people who need to, have advertising that is targeted, we say behavioural, what we really mean is targeted to something other than the immediate context youre seeing, only a few minutes and sarah noted there a bunch of other issues here we want to talk about, so, i just want to go down the line here if each of you could just tell the audience what the other Critical Issues that you think they need to be aware of in this context, emilia . To some extent i think its out of the ftcs hands at this point, we saw from the previous rulemaking, it took three years, even if we sped it up thats probably at least another year and weve seen two major crop of proposals at the federal level we have the California Consumer protection act which has protections up to age 16, we have over in europe with Companies Like google, who operate all over the world, have to deal with a regime that has different protections, for kids under 16, to some extent, i think the key here is to provide as much insight, about, what laws creators in particular, after, follow but with that law should, be and whether we should be more, flexible i feel like that at that point is almost lost, and we should be talking about how to make it more practical for the people who have to actually implement, these new provisions. And one of the excessive peoples in schools and, educators who work a lot on the intersection, between coppa and education policy, whats a very short version of that . That is impossible, many state laws have found, and rolled, back having an opted regime, saying that, parents have to proactively consent to each and everything, because unfortunately you dont always have engaged, parents and you have in louisiana for example parents going two, or teachers going to parents, homes as there were kids that were added to this stage scholarship, fund because they couldnt get parental sign off they couldnt get the, signature and so its really important to remember that there are unintended consequences, here i think as i said we were going with all of this and what weve seen with the sun privacy protections is an underlying framework of privacy protections that apply across the board not protections parents have to consent to, it so exactly what the boundaries of that are going to, be are yet to be seen. Oren lightning round here, we need to leave some time for a chat with rachel phillips, phillips. So many ideas, okay, one thing that we havent spoken a, bought that i do think its kind of fascinating about the, rule is that it governs the entire life cycle of personal information that is collected from an individual, i found kind of fascinating angela, your organizations comments the idea of the orphaned parts, of the rule, that the data minimization, requirements and the security and confidentiality requirements, while they are a key part of the rule those parts have been flushed out, not as much as they could, be to give Additional Guidance on the back and this isnt even on the front and, when youre talk about information collection, but what happens when you have that information and how you protect the users information when you have, it thats a part that i think is interesting, and i know theres been a lot of concern, about how voters and convince said really, works you had a long time to grapple with this, role its so interesting to me, that its been around, for x number of years, and people seal at every conference we talked to are like wow the ftc should educate us more about, it im not sure that there are other laws that really have this kind of sense that people just, if they only knew more about, it they will comply a little better, and why is it not better . Yes because of the inherent empathy of coppa central definitions . I dont know what it is due to i really dont, maybe because its complicated and also because the ecosystem in which it applies, is constantly evolving. Last words we have to wrap up here. Theres 1 million issues with it which is why the ftc has a number of questions and probably the average number of ages of comments are about 50 to 20 for everyone to fall comments if not longer, i think i was reading yours angela, so i think there is an extraordinary number of issues i think to pull up a little, bit the big question, is its a noticing consent framework, so how do we achieve that without creating notice fatigue so that were really focusing people on that how do we balance these really good protections with ensuring that there is this nice diversity and democracy of content coming on, and how do we get people who are complying in this push 2013 post settlement world information so they can do the right thing and those are my three really high level points i think the biggest ones for us, would be the presumption issue, and clarity on what is a general audience and what, isnt it is questions of their attentions of data minimization the notice and, consent theres a lot there i think one of many panels in the future to come. Ill dive down into the, weeds one particular issue, the ftc has to grapple with, is the question of voice and speech, recognition in fact of the matter is, the way we interact, with computers, human computer interfaces are changing very very rapidly, and what the ftc said in 2007 i think it was the voice collection was essentially a violation of, coppa that they would not enforce it, so long as soon as a voice pattern was collected it was immediately the function for which it was requested would be done, and that it would all be completely destroyed thats fine the problem is is that Companies Need a way of being able to finetuned their ai, so they can actually understand child speech, which is very different, than not old speech, is essentially believing or children behind, no the generation is probably going to want to use voice to mission a voice interaction with computers, we really need to take a hard look of a ways in which we can allow companies to better their ai, better their ability to do speech recognition, without recognizing individual voices are collecting that data. I think the biggest problem is it the whole model of noticing it is that it doesnt work anymore theres people they dont read privacy policies, even if they did, not understand them, and no one knows whats really going on behind the scenes, and boy how this information put together news by all the Different Companies would never even heard of. I think we have, two this will obviously take legislation but move more to dayton minimization. But also just prohibiting certain uses of data, ill stop. There thank you very much to our panel its been a pleasure to have all. If you were to have commissioner phillips come join me for a little fireside chat a, little known since we have an overwhelming lead female panel that arch can cause aarian, there is an ongoing women in tech series, of them listen to, that it might be, interesting as long as many wonderful interviews, thank you all for joining, us Richard Phillips is going to come up here and join me. So thank you. Mr. Phillips is one of our commissioners on the federal trade commission, he worked on the hill, before that which is how i got to know him as one of the most awful, and humorous people in washington ill try not to set too high or from, today he is spoken several times about coppa, and how to interpret it, so thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me. I just want to ask for any an initial reactions for any of the panelists you are today, and also you cant comment on pending proceedings, which includes the rule update, and Enforcement Actions, so i will put you on the spot about those. The other really important caveat is that everything i say is just what im saying, not necessarily the boos of my colleagues, as a whole. There is a lot this one said over the course of the two panels of these really interesting i think there are two big, better takeaways, that i take from it, the first is that, these are complex issues, and there is a tendency, i think unfortunately, in the context of the privacy debate, to simply say, privacy, thats a word, its good, i want more of it. But its rather like freedom, i want more freedom to, when youre talking in specifics, and youre thinking about what the application of the principal it, is your view of weather in particular a Law Enforcement mechanism rule, may depend a lot of what the specifics, are the short of the first takeaway that i have, and the second takeaway, is this, initial or intuitive, first time you hear it appeal, of a given policy position, may not adequately or take into account all of the followon effects, and the really interesting part of this debate, weve been talking a terrific amount, of oh privacy nationally, in particular in the last few years, i think its bubbling up as an issue in a way, i dont believe that weve seen in my life, tuning certainly not outside the context of national security, fourth amendment, people i think he will privacy a, law those issues tend to pop up, more but promotional data privacy, my lifetime, i dont know that weve talked about these issues so much, oftentimes, its a very onesided conversation this is an instance, where we are seeing, in life, and in effect in peoples careers, and their jobs, some of the costs of privacy, were seeing a bit of balance in the way that were having the conversation here about, coppa. Thank you for get your corrupt view even saying the cost of privacy, we break down more quickly, and break it down, how should we think about privacy here in the copper context . What are the sub components, that we should be looking at. In trying to talk about it more clearly. The context of coppa, weve got a law, and we talked a little bit about what animated the law, in particular, and i will sort of pick on one of the earlier panels, we showed a lot of time talking about brocade your advertising, and the persistent identifier that enable, to make it possible, we also spent a lot of time talking about things like comments, from the perspective of crop of the law, and sort of the animating principles, they can be two Different Things like the ability of someone, to reach out to you, is much closer to what i think everyone agrees, we are talking about in the context of, coppa is a persistent identifier, maybe you think the ftc got a ride in 2013 maybe think they didnt, but its something different,. Is that potentially an scope to rethink the 2013 amendments, to think there might be ways to do a better job . You sort of said at the beginning were in the midst of a proceeding and weve taken a great deal of input, and i dont want to prejudged that. Youre hearing people talk about these questions. Im certainly, that something about which people are talking, i think what you can say is the changes that can be made, can have a great effect. Jim talked about this the youtube sullivan has had a tremendously large, impact that wasnt done through the making, it was an opportunity for people to come, just as a procedural, matter how do you think the ftc should solicit Public Comment from affected parties, would you want those things to go through rulemaking, . Understanding that you have to bring enforcement, actions how do you decide when something requires Public Comment . Its an extended statutory. And you were talking about a civil penalty enforcement action, a lot of what we do is administrative, and then you have that noticing comment and ability, fundamentally, a rule change requires under the law, depending on the context and what youre talking, about in this context, under the ap, it requires a sort of administrative procedure. Let me just add something, whats interesting about a case like youre suitcase. For a case like the facebook case. That was a preexisting order with the ftc, when you do enforcement with platforms. Things are almost by definition, out a scale. Which means they are going to have a more broad impact. If you are targeting a smaller entity. Im trying to think of good example, of the constants of coppa. Take talk on youtube neither which are small and. Todays we do all sorts of consumers production cases. Dark theres much broader ramifications if you anything with you. To it so far as a real, change i saw earlier from a footnote from the 13 ftc order, that specifically sided facebook a new to as examples of general audience. Sites and said they kappabashi to apply unless there is actual. Knowledge and yet, here we, are without it because of enforcement action. That has been. Changed the ftc has now come out and said. No. This is not just one general audience site. It is something that has so component. Some of which can be directed to children. They some capone idea, is in, capatides in the statute, it is never been applied before two channels like that. Thats a pretty big change. And thats why were here. Thats how people are raising these concerns. About a law thats now changed, without Public Comment. And that started january 1st i believe, they are dealing with that even as the update is underway. I argue, there are a number of Different Reasons were here. One is the statute. One is the rulemaking conducted under the statute. Another is the settlement reached in the case. You are this on the last, panel another is the implementation of that settlement. Essence that settlement i courses follow. Coppa and then theres discretion, what does that mean. Theres both the settlement and the implementation. Their consideration on another role changed. I think i heard a reference earlier theres also some talk in congress about expanding coppa. There are a lot of different phenomena. I want to move on to the big picture, to Everything Else to say to content creators out there about, in what way theyre important to be incorporated. In the first thing is to say thanks, when youre doing Public Policy, and youre thinking about policies and impact of a wide variety of people. Its really important to hear from the people who are impacted. And the opportunity to me to the folks here. Not so long ago. Jeremy came to our coppa workshop that we held, forest, he just made a video online. Where he called this. Out i think that gave us some engagement that was really important. Youve got almost 875, 000, i think signatures on that petition. , parents content, creators people whose content might be affected by the settlement. And then there were another 175,000 comments filed in the docket, it might actually be more we dont know. Or even sure how many there are but as far as i know, thats the most public attention that has been paid to an ftc proceeding. Maybe, ever but maybe since the late 1970s, and ftc tried to regulate the advertising of cereal to children. A prompted a big backlash the Washington Post called the agency. It prompted a furious response from congress, democratic congress. Which really clips agencies weighing. It is a historical parallel informer thinking today . Short answer is, yes i think that the nature of the agency, what step back from proper for just a moment, the nature of the agencies that our core jurisdiction is defined, more or less by the word unfair. And to some extent also by the word deceptive. Deceptive has more understandable meeting, but the word unfair its a very big word. It can capture a lot of things. Most importantly it can capture one thing for you and a different thing for me. Where you have capacious legal authority. Under certain historical circumstances the tendency to say thats bad i want to stop. But thats about i want to stop it. It can be very strong. Stuff comes in a particular from the bosses, the congress, this itll like, this you should stop, at all like that you should stop it, and its almost always earnest. People are often genuinely concerned. But there is also concern, running around, without thinking very carefully. Doing effectively what is legislation. So our wings were sort of clips for that. And as i sit here now, and a look out at the world, theres a big debate going on in congress above what kind of Rulemaking Authority they should have. In privacy. That debate is about implying the sort of easier, a, pa thats administrative procedures, Rulemaking Authority mechanism. To privacy. Thats what we have an coppa. In 2013, whether you like it or not, putting persistent identify ours under the category of information, that brings the subject to the requirements of crop, including where my parental consent. That was a big change in the policy. When you give rulemaking a thorough day. And you dont cabin that Rulemaking Authority. There is a lot of room for agencies that dont understand the policy. We get a lot from the public, thats really important, thats a great deal. Power receipt dont, one congress in cabinet authority, so that, earlier list of things that were personal information, name address and so, on and then it said in any other unique identifier that the commission determines, allows the context, of the unique individual, and that has been interpreted, that to me, any cookies and therefore has brought advertising into the scope, one that was a great surprise to many people. Thats the kind of discretion were talking about. You worked on the hill, you actually help to write laws. What advice would you give to congress about how to think about, how much of those decisions, to keep, to congress, and how much to give jeff stacey . I mean article one guy i believe the fundamentally the best place in policy is made is congress. Thats because theyve a mandate to do it is different from the kind of mandate in the agency. Has are you running for reelection this year . So its hard to figure out how to answer that question. The best answer is that i dont get near the word election. Im not running for anything. I never will. But when you think as congress. Or what kind of policy they have their. Going to be terrific moments of tension. Maybe youre in a place where you just want to get a bill done. Its going to be very important to youre boss. Its going to be very important american public. Which is why are there to serve. More specific constituency than that. But be wary of just delegating that authority, of unrealistic bureaucrats. There are acosta comes to. That when people say i want to provide flexibility. And flexibility is good. Everybody likes flexibility. Its great but it also means the end of the day many the bigger decisions can be made by the agency. Its up to congress to determine. How that will go move forward. Congress can put guardrails. Years ago we called out to sea. It is the regulator of technology in america. Whether you like a decision. Youre going to get stuck with. It either because fairness is broaden openended. And allows you to regulate. Or because a specific statute like. To this ends up getting triggered by technological change. Or because Congress Comes along later. And tasks you are dealing with privacy. Or whatever new technological issue is out there. What if you learned from. Sides this issue we just. Discuss what did you learn from the experience of coppa. And how to think about the ftcs role. And regulating technology, and trying to stay ahead of the curve . I think presuming that we as government can stay ahead of the curve. Is quite a presumption. I think fundamentally. The important lesson. For me on coppa. Is that number one its congress that sets the policy. Number two. As our economy digitizes. And as the use of data become endemic. And it is. Its everywhere in the economy. The ramifications of policy decisions. Are more broad that you might realize. Then you might realize they were. There is a tendency in the privacy debate. To talk about the economy as if its like for different firms. Its google its apple its facebook whatever. Thats not true. Were talking about tens of thousands. If not more firms all across the economy. Doing the wiper idea. Things in terms of content creators. Great i dont know whats the number its more than tens of thousands. Huge numbers of people are affected and thats just really important. What do you do with that . When you know that its not just for firms. Or even 40 firms but its that long tale of hundreds of thousands of people. You are creating content. You have to worry about legal liability. What does that mean for a regulator. And it agency that takes Enforcement Actions. How do you provide them enough assurance. That they can decide. They can assure their spouse, but theyre not going to lose their home. If the ftc comes after them, and it poses some huge penalty on them . Look, i think we have to engage in the kind of conversation that everyone is having now, i think thats important. I think its incumbent upon us to explain, through guidance, what we are doing, i think it is incumbent upon the bar and others to watch what we are doing, i will say this, it isnt as if there is a record of a force of action against content creators, i do want to add one note actually, just something for people to think, about there was a lot of discussion that the guidance thats being put out, on what is directed, but thats right there were gardens, to the extent you have a statute, that looks at that issue, thats actually a really hard thing to define, weve talked also today about the problematic setting a particular age, thats the only arbitrary bright line i can think, of when it comes to kids, beyond, that a multi factor test that involves a lot of things weve been talking, about however open it is to judgment, judgment is something that we as long forces have to exercise, maybe the right way to go about it, but that, said i do you think listening, providing information to the public, i think thats really important. Just to close, you talked about the need for humility, thats very admirable, of course many people on the congress, in Congress Just figure that they can just delegate these hard questions to, you and federal trade commission, and youll figure them out, so they be we actually eager to write openended language that just kicks the can oversee you. Thats a hard habit to break congress of. Is there anything that you can say to them, besides just dont do that, dont trust us to make these decisions . How would you skip in their spine and get them to take more of those policy making decisions for themselves . I mean, i think i would just, like to take today, again people have differing views, on the rule making that we did in 2013, when its a big decision, congress is go to making Big Decisions, its designed to make Big Decisions its hard to legislate. But the fact it is hard to legislate shouldnt in any way say to someone and so you shouldnt do, it the scheme of our constitution is one that makes making Big Decisions, for the whole of society, at that affect a wide variety of people difficult. But it requires basically. A broad consensus. But thats okay. Because youre making a law. And law comes with teeth. There is a democratic reason why congress are to keep the power that it has. But theres another reason. And it has to do with the ability of firms in the economy. To operate, and people to plan their businesses going forward. There are things that agencies do, or sometimes not done with that level of broad consensus. Not to pick on our sister agency, but take network traveling, what you can see overtime, depending on the context, is switches in policy. You want to adjust policy for the development of the economy, from the development of technology, what you dont want is rules the change back and forth, depending on when people are elected, thats a level of uncertainty that makes Business Planning really hard. Avoiding the delegation problem, not not allowing rulemaking, by making sure that its the details that are left to the agencies what the policy decisions are made by congress, they missed the degree to which the rules can change over time, and that allows for certain space, i want to come back to the content creators and all the other people who participated online, the more constant the rule is, easier it is to understand, both for the people who want to make money and whose careers are at issue, and for parents, making decisions about their, children and the people just going online, trying to figure out what to do. One of the most important themes we have in the privacy discussion is that people dont know whats going on, i cant count the number of times i have heard, from legislators, citizens, friends, whatever, we have no idea whats happening. The more complex the rule, the more the rule changes, the less you get that effect. Consistency, uniformity, allow for greater clarity, a very important, so when you hear someone say, i think we need 50 different states laws on this issue, think about the consumer, if youre thinking about the consumers ability to understand, what is, in what is, out or two after raise my hand for, what are they going to ask me or talk about opt, out versus opt, in the more things you have to take into, account the harder it, is the longer those privacy policies are going to be. Very important to have consistency, very important to have uniformity, were at time, this is great, ive been in this for 11 years, now organ as you many more offense on coppa, and supposed to for five years were doing it other crop, eventual were going to play video clip of you, just making some prediction, something that you want to communicate to that panel, if he had to pick one short thing to say to them, what would you say . I think im not supposed to make those predictions. No no you are, if you wanted to have a, seat i told you, so heres how you shouldve thought about, this heres the thing that i really try to emphasize back in 2020, what with that one thing be . I think the thing i would say, is were not going to answer all the questions, theres no application of copper, rule theres no structure of, crop others no federal privacy, law that will give everyone the sense that they understand everything that is going on in the economy as a whole. Theres no application of any of these, things that wont have an effect. Not sure if thats a prediction, and not only go to predictions. Like the star wars fractionalized, never, and i would just keep, going above ups and, downs will be here, we hope that you come back for all these future events, thank you commissioner phillips for coming today, thank you to our content creators, to all of our experts they came, today and stay tuned, because eventually were going to get an update from the ftc, i imagine second quarter, putting on the spot, something is going to happen, what it does will have another discussion about this, what it means for content creators. Thank you all for coming, all of us will stay around here and engage if you have any questions, thank you to our live audience, divider past discussions about, coppa which cspan also cupboard, also on line, will put those up on youtube, so you can watch the whole series. From start to finish, and figure out how the characters relate to each other. The longer acts of revenge. In the star wars of privacy. Thanks for having me
vimarsana.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.