Walt Disney Co. is paying $10 million to settle allegations regarding the labeling of videos aimed at children on YouTube, the U.S. Department of Justice reaffirmed Tuesday.
The DOJ’s announcement follows a disclosure of the same regulation last September by the Federal Trade Commission.
According to the FTC complaint originally filed by the DOJ, Disney allegedly violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. By failing to properly label videos uploaded to YouTube as “Made for Kids,” the FTC said, the company allowed the collection of data from children under 13 without parental consent.
The videos at issue were posted between 2020 and 2022, according to the FTC complaint filed by the Department of Justice.
The DOJ had filed the FTC complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. In announcing the settlement Tuesday, the department said the court ordered Disney, in addition to the civil penalty, to create a program to ensure adequate COPPA compliance on YouTube in the future.
“The Department of Justice is working hard to ensure that parents have a say in how information about their children is collected and used,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Department’s Civil Division. “The ministry will take prompt action to eliminate any unlawful violations of parents’ rights to protect the privacy of their children.”
COPPA, which came into force in 2000, has recently been revised in light of the growing use of social media by children and adolescents and the ubiquity of digital content. A modified version of the law passed the U.S. Senate in 2024 but did not receive House approval. Republicans in the House of Representatives recently revived it and committees have conducted hearings.
Disney is not the only company to be found at fault by the government for its offerings aimed at minors. Microsoft paid $20 million in 2023 to resolve allegations that it violated children’s privacy by signing up for its Xbox video game platform. In 2024, the FTC recommended that TikTok be sued for alleged COPPA violations.
A Disney spokesperson said last September: “Supporting the well-being and safety of children and families is at the heart of what we do. This agreement does not involve Disney owned and operated digital platforms, but rather is limited to the distribution of some of our content on the YouTube platform. Disney has a long history of adhering to the highest standards of compliance with children’s privacy laws, and we remain committed to investing in the tools necessary to continue to be a leader in this domain.”
The media company had no further comment Tuesday when contacted by Deadline.
After a settlement in 2019, YouTube began requiring content creators to indicate whether videos uploaded are “made for children” or “not made for children.” Content creators mark videos or entire channels this way. The FTC claimed that Disney learned in mid-2020 that YouTube had changed the designation of more than 300 videos to “made for children,” but the company did not change its general designation policy at the channel level. The videos in question included content from films like Frozen, Upside Down, Finding Dory, And Charm.
The FTC complaint stated that the Pixar channel was marked as “not intended for children,” while similar videos on the Pixar channel Cars The channel has been designated as “made for kids”. The complaint states that this disparity “illustrates Disney’s failure to mark children’s content as MFK when such content is uploaded to NMFK Channels.”
Axios first reported on the settlement last September.
