People
are lazy. Does that mean they must be protected from themselves?
It
was another thought-provoking Privacy Law Scholar’s Conference this
year, although it was held in the virtual environment. Law
professors Daniel Solove and Chris Hoofnagle did an amazing job
taking this annual event and trying to translate some of its best
features into the virtual space. I did not manage to see everyone I
usually run into or chat with at the annual conferences, but on a
positive note, I actually had less trouble hearing people as I sat
there in my office with my little pink earbuds.
Because
Chatham House rules apply, I will not name names, but it was clear
that across a number of papers and perspectives, privacy law scholars
and activists seem to have all come to the conclusion that “notice
and consent” is a failed approach. Giving more “tools” to
consumers that just puts more burden on consumers to read and take
steps to protect ourselves does not and will not work. It’s time
to stick a fork in notice-and-consent or approaches that require us
to spend all of our time reading policies or trying to figure out how
to opt out. It’s time to look at other solutions. And to that
end, there were a number of proposed approaches.
I
can’t say that any of the proposals I read struck me as
sufficiently fleshed out yet to evaluate, but the fact that there
seemed to be a consensus that we need a radically different approach
than what we have been doing was a powerful take-home message.
So
we have our work cut out for us. Whether it’s taking a more
critical look at COVID-19 tracing and contact apps or policies, or
looking at whether always-on listening devices are violating state
and federal wiretap laws, or how we shift the courts to recognizing
privacy harms so that cases are not thrown out of court for lack of
standing, there’s a lot that needs to be addressed. Although there
are those who will continue to try to tell us to “get over”
privacy and to just resign ourselves to a more dystopian world, I
think some of us are more resolved than ever to protect privacy —
for society’s sake and for our own personal sake.
A
number of privacy law scholars are writing books that will help
inform the public and hopefully, legislators. I hold out little
hope, though, that Congress will do anything useful and they may
actually do things that are counterproductive, but I do hope that
state legislatures will take action to protect their residents.
NYS’s SHIELD Act gives me some hope that way.
Perspective.
What happened to Sesame Street?
Kids
now spend nearly as much time watching TikTok as YouTube in US, UK
and Spain
A
new study on kids’ app usage and habits indicates a major threat to
YouTube’s dominance, as kids now split their time between Google’s
online video platform and other apps, like TikTok, Netflix and mobile
games like Roblox. Kids ages four to 15 now spend an average of 85
minutes per day watching YouTube videos, compared with 80 minutes per
day spent on TikTok. The latter app also drove growth in kids’
social app use by 100% in 2019 and 200% in 2020, the report found.
… Kids
are now watching twice as many videos per day as they did just four
years ago. This is despite the fact that YouTube’s flagship app is
meant for ages 13 and up — an age-gate that was never truly
enforced, leading to the FTC’s historic $170 million fine for the
online video platform in 2019 for its noncompliance with U.S.
children’s privacy regulations.
The
app today is used by 69% of U.S. kids, 74% of kids in the U.K. and
88% of kids in Spain. Its app for younger children, YouTube Kids,
meanwhile, is only used by 7% of kids in the U.S., 10% of kids in the
U.K. and wasn’t even on the radar in Spain.
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