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The Dollars and Sense of


Prioritising Child Safety Online Or, How To Not Be Fined Half a Billion Dollars


By Mike Pappas, CEO, Modulate O


n December 19th, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission in the US announced an agreement


by Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, to pay over half a billion dollars in relation to significant issues around the treatment of children online. A large block of costs will be in the form of reimbursements to customers, in response to what the FTC deemed “dark patterns” with respect to in-game purchases. But the majority of the costs relate to COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule) violations by Epic; and reveal an evolution to the way the FTC views COPPA protections and child safety issues, which every online platform should be taking notice of. Here we’re going to focus in on a particular aspect of the settlement - how it interweaves the topics of player privacy and player safety. Historically, many online platforms


have treated privacy and safety as being in tension with each other. And there is a sliver of truth to this - an absolutely private platform would lack the tools to actually protect its users, and no platform could offer absolute safety without watching every single thing each user did in intimate detail. It’s an extreme mistake to say that this means there’s no synergy to be had between privacy and safety, as we’ll discuss more


14 | MCV/DEVELOP January 2023


below. But thus far, these platforms, faced with what they see as a binary choice, have recognised regulations like COPPA, GDPR, and others have real teeth in the privacy sphere whereas safety-focused regulation has, according to industry perspectives, lagged behind. As such, online platforms have generally prioritised privacy, while often neglecting safety or relying on excuses like “we can’t be held accountable for what we weren’t aware of.” In this light, the Epic case takes on a new


level of significance. The FTC’s COPPA certainly noted some deficiencies with respect to direct privacy protections. But the meat of their case actually centered on the ways that lack of privacy resulted in worse safety outcomes.


“Default settings harm children and teens: Epic’s settings enable live on-by-default text and voice communications for users. The FTC alleges that these default settings, along with Epic’s role in matching children and teens with strangers to play Fortnite together, harmed children and teens. Children and teens have been bullied, threatened, harassed, and exposed to dangerous and psychologically traumatizing issues such as suicide while on Fortnite.” FTC Announcement, Dec 19, 2022


To briefly summarise, the FTC argued


that numerous safety issues, such as harassment, threats, and bullying, are prolific in online text and voice chat; and that Epic’s default privacy settings didn’t do enough to protect kids from being targeted through these channels. The conclusion in this case was that Epic must change its default privacy settings, such that children are not able to voice or text chat without their parents consent. Which does technically solve the problem,


except for the part where it cripples a key capability of modern online games - their ability to offer a space for kids to socialise, form bonds, explore their own identities, build confidence, mobilise communities, and so much more. Yes, you could argue that this capability


still exists, just so long as the parents consent to it. But not every child is fortunate enough to have tech-savvy, responsive, or even present parents. In addition, parental control and age verification features have a rocky success rate at best, and are well known for being gamed in a variety of top games. Requiring parental consent is a sensible intervention for the moment; but it’s a patch, and it raises the question of what it would mean to really attack this problem at its root.


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