The Walt Disney Co. is paying $10 million to settle allegations over the labeling of children-focused videos onto YouTube, the U.S. Department of Justice reaffirmed Tuesday.
The DOJ announcement follows a disclosure of the same settlement 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 the YouTube-uploaded videos as “Made for Kids,” the FTC said, the company enabled 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 Justice Department.
Watch on Deadline
The DOJ had filed the FTC complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. In announcing the settlement Tuesday, the department said the court had ordered Disney, in addition to the civil penalty, to create a program to ensure proper compliance with COPPA on YouTube in the future.
“The Justice Department is firmly devoted to ensuring parents have a say in how their children’s information is collected and used,” said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the department’s Civil Division. “The department will take swift action to root out any unlawful infringement on parents’ rights to protect their children’s privacy.”
COPPA, which took effect in 2000, has recently been revisited in light of the rise in social media use among kids and teenagers and the ubiquity of digital content. An amended version of the law was passed by the U.S. Senate in 2024 but did not receive House approval. House Republicans have recently revived it and committees have been conducting hearings.
Disney is not the only company to be found at fault by the government for its offerings for minors. Microsoft paid $20 million in 2023 to resolve claims that it violated children’s privacy with sign-ups for its Xbox video game platform. The FTC in 2024 put forward a recommendation that TikTok be sued for alleged COPPA violations.
A Disney spokesperson said last September, “Supporting the well-being and safety of kids and families is at the heart of what we do. This settlement does not involve Disney owned and operated digital platforms but rather is limited to the distribution of some of our content on YouTube’s platform. Disney has a long tradition of embracing the highest standards of compliance with children’s privacy laws, and we remain committed to investing in the tools needed to continue being a leader in this space.”
The media company had no additional comment Tuesday when contacted by Deadline.
After a settlement in 2019, YouTube started to require that content creators indicate if videos that are uploaded as “made for kids” or “not made for kids.” Content creators mark the videos or entire channels in such ways. The FTC claimed that Disney was told in mid-2020 that YouTube had changed designations on more than 300 videos to “made for kids,” but the company did not change its policy of a blanket designation at the channel level. The videos in question included content from movies like Frozen, Inside Out, Finding Dory, and Encanto.
The FTC’s complaint noted that the Pixar channel was marked as “not made for kids,” while the similar videos on the Pixar Cars channel was designated as “made for kids.” The complaint said that disparity “illustrates Disney’s failure to mark child-directed content as MFK when such content is uploaded to NMFK channels.”
Axios first reported on the settlement last September.