In 2018, kids were 40% of all new internet users globally. Across the world, new laws for kids privacy, screen-time and online identity are being passed in reaction to this trend. This has significant impacts for the world's biggest technology companies. Read More
Data is a currency. Before May 2018, users — who provide or create this data in the first place — were secondary to this economy. The Data Protection Act gave the public recourse, but very little transparency, and there was little understanding of the value of the data they were giving away daily. GDPR has put power in the hands of the users, and many companies have yet to understand that they need to explain exactly what their users are getting, at what costs, and why they should trust them, before they hand over their valuable data. Read More
Click here to listen! Hosted in the Radio Waves building in New York – the original home of Nikola Tesla – Dylan sits down with Dona Fraser, Director of CARU, the children’s arm of the advertising industry’s self-regulatory group. An experienced data privacy and entertainment lawyer, Dona… Read More
I posted earlier about my functional CTO story, detailing how my role of CTO evolved over time which can be found here. It’s one challenge to be CTO in a ‘normal’ startup and quite a separate challenge to also be at the forefront of a new category. Read More
Under GDPR-K and COPPA you are responsible for any data collection that happens on your site, or by your brand, even if by a third party. These are the questions you should be asking all of your agency partners (e.g. any party that plans your kid-focused campaigns or implements your… Read More
YouTube is a challenge for brands. On one hand, despite the fact that YouTube is an over-13 platform, it is one of the best places to reach under-13 audiences at scale. The vast subscriber bases of channels such as Sis VS Bro and Ryan ToysReview have sparked an increase in the number of kid-focused channels on the platform, and sponsored collaborations are beneficial to both the influencers and the brands. Read More
Apps and games that need to collect personally identifiable information (PII) from kids require the parents to give their consent. Given the sensitive nature of this information, we take extra measures to make sure that the parent of the child is really the one giving the consent. Under COPPA and GDPR-K, one of the ways to do so is by performing a credit card transaction for a small charge ($1). Here are some of the interesting things we’ve learned while iterating on our parental consent flows: Read More
The announcement that Oath has just been hit with the largest fine in the history of COPPA underlines the volume and quality of child-directed inventory being bought and sold within the mainstream (adult) programmatic exchanges. Read More
If you’re building a game or app for kids (under-13 in the US or under-16 in Europe), you need to consider how you’re going to manage age gates and parental permissions. Both are essential to ensure compliance with data privacy laws (COPPA and GDPR-K), but both are complex user flows and mismanaging them can create barriers to engagement for your easily-distracted young audiences. Here’s what you need to remember: Read More
