This story was originally published on Passionfruit.
An appeals court in California is allowing a class action lawsuit to continue against Google and YouTube, as well as several kids and family media companies and creators that operate YouTube channels—including Dreamworks Animation; Hasbro; Mattel; Cartoon Network; Ryan’s World, a kidfluencer channel formerly known as Ryan’s ToysReview; Pocket.watch, which has a partnership deal with Ryan’s World; ChuChu TV Studios; and CookieSwirlC, an independent VTuber with 19 million subscribers.
This December opinion from the appeals court potentially expands legal exposure and liability for creators with children in their audience, despite Google and YouTube arguably being responsible for user tracking and data gathering of audiences.
The class action was first filed in October 2019 by a class of children through their parents and guardians. The claims of the class action center around the use of targeted advertising, powered by persistent identifiers, that allowed Google and YouTube to collect data and track the online behavior of children without proper parental consent. In August 2021, the district court upheld a motion to dismiss filed by YouTube and the channel owners, so the class of children appealed the dismissal to the Ninth Circuit—aka, the federal court of appeals—to overturn the lower court’s decision and allow the class action to proceed forward.
