Amid pressure from federal regulators and consumers, YouTube might be planning to do away with advertising that targets children.
According to Bloomberg, YouTube is finalizing plans to take down targeted advertising, which relies on information collected from viewers, from videos that may be watched by kids.
The potential move comes as the Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether YouTube violated the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA). As the report points out, it’s unclear if the potential change is part of a settlement deal.
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Removing that ads would have a negative impact on YouTube’s advertising revenue, but it’s not the only financial consequences the company is facing. The report said that the FTC will likely still hit YouTube with a multi-million dollar fine.
YouTube has considered some other changes to potentially mitigate kids being exposed to inappropriate content on its app. The company is also reportedly considering shifting all children’s content on its platform over to its YouTube Kids app, a move that would be in response to recent criticism of YouTube’s handling of offensive content on its site.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the company also internally is discussing turning off the autoplay feature, which starts up another video as soon as the current video concludes, on children’s content. As the report points out, moving children’s content off the primary YouTube app and disabling autoplay features could both have negative impacts on advertising revenue.
As the report points out, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki internally admitted to mishandling recent decisions regarding hate speech, conspiracy theories and other potentially harmful content on the site. Google CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly took more of a hands-on role at YouTube amid the recent controversies.