Disney to Pay £7.5m over alleged Children’s Privacy Law Violations

The Walt Disney Company will pay £7.4 million to settle claims it breached US children’s privacy laws on YouTube, regulators have said.

The settlement resolves allegations that Disney failed to properly label some videos as made for children. That failure allegedly allowed targeted advertising and the collection of children’s personal data without parental consent.

Disney agreed the deal with the US Federal Trade Commission in September 2025, following an inquiry into how children’s data was collected on the platform.

Regulators argued that Disney’s alleged mislabelling meant children were served targeted adverts. They also said personal data was gathered without parents being notified or giving consent.

Under the agreement, Disney will also create a compliance programme to ensure it follows children’s data protection laws in future.

Brett Shumate, an assistant attorney general in the justice department’s civil division, said in a statement:

“The Justice Department is firmly devoted to ensuring parents have a say in how their children’s information is collected and used.”

A Disney spokesperson confirmed the company had agreed to the terms originally announced in September.

Disney has previously stressed that the settlement is limited in scope. It applies only to the distribution of some Disney content on YouTube. It does not involve Disney-owned or operated digital platforms.

The agreement covers Disney Worldwide Services Inc and Disney Entertainment Operations LLC, according to regulators.

The case follows long-running scrutiny of how children’s content is handled on YouTube.

In 2019, the FTC reached a settlement with Google, YouTube’s parent company, over similar concerns.

After that settlement, YouTube began requiring creators to label whether their videos were directed at children. The rule was designed to prevent targeted advertising and data collection on children’s content.

Such practices are banned under the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

The law requires creators producing content for children under 13 to notify parents. It also requires them to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information.

Regulators now claim Disney failed to meet those requirements. They alleged the company did not identify certain videos as made for children, putting it in violation of the law.

Many of the videos were uploaded during the Covid-19 pandemic. Viewership surged at the time, as lockdowns drove families and children online.

Since 2020, Disney has uploaded content to more than 1,250 YouTube channels through several subsidiaries. That detail was included in a Justice Department complaint filed in California.

The complaint said many of the videos were “extremely popular”. It added that viewing figures rose sharply in the early months of the pandemic.

According to the legal filing, Disney was aware of failures to properly mark children’s videos as early as June 2020.

At that point, YouTube allegedly told Disney it had changed the labels on more than 300 videos. Those included clips linked to The Incredibles, Toy Story and Frozen.

Government lawyers argued that Disney’s alleged misclassification had direct consequences for children’s privacy.

Disney’s alleged misclassification “results in YouTube collecting personal information and placing targeted advertisements on child-directed videos on Disney’s behalf,” lawyers for the government alleged.