US Federal Trade Commission proposes ban on targeted ads to children under COPPA

The United States Federal Trade Commission has proposed amendments to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Rule that would prohibit platforms from using personal information to target advertisements to users under 13, limit push notifications that encourage prolonged use by children, require platforms to provide separate opt-in for each use of a child's data, and extend data retention limits. The proposed rule updates are open for public comment and aim to address commercial surveillance practices that the FTC says have outpaced the protections established when COPPA was first implemented in 2000.

Restrictions on data use and advertising address the commercial incentives that shape platform design, but they do not directly intercept the interpersonal harms that occur within those platforms: the adult who befriends a child in a game chat, the peer who demands explicit images under threat of exposure, the coordinated abuse campaign in a group thread. These risks are behavioral rather than commercial, and they require detection of relational patterns rather than regulation of data flows. Technology that analyzes the shape of a conversation for escalation, coercion and predatory contact operates independently of the advertising model, identifying grooming and sextortion in direct messages and enabling intervention before harm occurs, complementing privacy protections with real-time threat recognition where children are most vulnerable.