I disagree with some of your points. Having owned several businesses in the past, I have talked with lawyers about this very issue. I have written some of my own legal disclaimers and release of liability contracts and submitted them to my lawyer for review. In every case, where they found language that they deemed to be vague, they instructed me to provide excruciating clear definitions. The reason for this, was this, "A person cannot agree to something they CANNOT understand". My lawyers told me that a judge will immediately throw out any contract that contains language that the signing party has no possibility of understanding because it is based on information not contained in the contract, that the signer has no access to, or the relies upon the subjective interpretation of the party presenting the contract.
I completely agree with Mr. Johnson's statement that the FTC has expanded the scope of COPPA way beyond the legislative authority granted in the 1998 law. Laws must be CLEAR in order to be effective and enforcabe. The 1998 law was clear and narrow in scope. It prevented the "Collection" of personally identifiable information, such as, Name, Address, Telephone number, etc, on children without parental consent. What the FTC is doing now has "ZERO!!!!!" to do with the original law, and thus is beyond their Constitutional authority.
The FTC is not a legislative body of elected representatives. They should not have the power to expand the definition of the law "BEYOND" the original scope of the law, and that is EXACTLY what they have done here. Their power was to be able to adjust the ENFORCEMENT of the law to accommodate the changes in technology, NOT to make new laws. Nowhere in the COPPA law did it address targeted ads as being a violation. Nowhere in the law did the collection of behavioral analytics fall under the definition of "Personally Identifiable Information".
It does not matter if you agree that children should not be targeted for advertisements or not. The USA is a representative republic in which the very foundations of our nation are designed to be a constricting system of checks and balances, the very purpose of which was to "Restrict" the Federal Government's ability to arbitrarily use its power to regulate the actions of the citizenry. There is a system in place for the creation of new laws. The FTC is not part of that system and they have way overstepped their authority on this issue, whether you agree with them or not. Mr. Johnson is 100% correct that they need to go back to the 1998 decision and let Congress address any additional legislation to protect children.
Now, as far as YouTube's involvement in this. Mr. Johnson revealed something that I did not know. The 170 million was not a FINE, It was an out of court settlement! That is huge information. What it reveals is that, YT was the one that went to the FTC with a proposal to stop the FTC investigation. YT was the one that offered the proposed restriction and implementations that the FTC is now enforcing over it. The ideas on how YT was going to handle this, did not originate with the FTC, they originated with YT. So, while YT claims they are just "Obeying the FTC", they are obeying rules that THEY set for themselves, in their own settlement proposal to the FTC to stop the investigation.
Why would YT do this? It is very simple. YT wanted to stop the investigation because if this had gone to court, what would have been uncovered by the FTC, might have been so damaging that it would have resulted in BILLIONS of dollars in fines. Essentially, if the crime you are being accused of, it way less then the crimes you know you are guilty of and are afraid will be uncovered during the investigation, go ahead and confess to the lesser crime to stop the investigation.
So, YouTube is the one that came up with how the FTC should monitor them. They also came up with this whole idea of holding Creators responsible for which videos are kid directed or not as a further way to protect themselves. I suspect this from the very beginning because the whole "Creators have to make the choice" thing, just wreaked of a CYB (Cover your Butt) maneuver by YT to pass the buck of responsibility for where they show ads on to the creators.
On a third note, I have never considered YT to be my friend. YT is a "For-Profit" business and I expect it to be 100% selfish and do everything in its power to protect its bottom line, at the expense and sacrifice of everyone and everything else. What YT has done is consistent with my thoughts on them and so I am not upset about it.
But when it comes to the FTC, which is part of the government of the United States of America; well, they ARE supposed to represent We the People. This is where mine and every true American's concern should really be. Our concern for online privacy protections should never outweigh our concern for the preservation of the Constitutional restrictions on our government, without which, we are all at risk of far worse than kids seeing a few targeted ads.
