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The Digiday Podcast
What this year’s COPPA update means for marketers, with privacy expert Debbie Reynolds
00:51:48
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- [00:00]
Debbie Reynolds
Foreign hello.
- [00:11]
Kameka McCoy
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Digiday podcast. I'm Kameka McCoy, senior marketing reporter here at Digiday.
- [00:17]
Tim Peterson
I'm Tim Peterson, executive editor of video and audio at Digiday Media. And I almost forgot my title again. How's it going, Kumiko? Happy Monday.
- [00:26]
Kameka McCoy
Happy Monday indeed. How has your week been thus far?
- [00:32]
Tim Peterson
Busy. I am a few hours into the week, but it already feels like it's been more than a day. How about yourself?
- [00:40]
Kameka McCoy
Yeah, been in the same boat this weekend. I went to Nebraska to visit some family. And wouldn't you know it, that's my first time seeing like real snow in a long time. I'm talking it's piled up as high as me and frigid, so I won't be going back.
- [00:55]
Tim Peterson
Okay, but I mean, you were able to get in and out. Your flight wasn't affected, surprisingly enough.
- [01:00]
Kameka McCoy
Yeah, it was. It was easy peasy. But a girl was praying hard to get in and out of there. One, the weather and two, the stuff that's been going on with the planes. So lots of please, Lord have mercy, let me make it to my destination in one piece.
- [01:14]
Tim Peterson
Absolutely.
- [01:16]
Kameka McCoy
Goodness gracious. Well, we've got a lot on the agenda, some exciting topics, some news happening. But first, talk to me about who we're going to have as our guest.
- [01:24]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, so we had Debbie Reynolds, who's a privacy expert. She's the founder, CEO and chief data privacy officer at Debbie Reynolds Consulting, someone that I've turned to a good amount in the past for help understanding what's going on in the privacy regulation landscape. And so I wanted to have her on because in late January, the U.S. federal Trade Commission finalized changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Oh, yeah. Which we talked about on the show a few weeks ago. And so I wanted to talk with her to just kind of unpack. Okay. What are these changes? What do these changes mean for companies? Where are the gray areas? And as she covers in our conversation, there are very much gray areas. So we could talk about kind of the state of privacy related to kids, but then we also just get into the privacy picture in general, including the ever present question of will the US Pass a federal privacy bill? But we'll get into that later in the conversation. I think we got a bunch of news to cover before then.
- [02:32]
Kameka McCoy
Wow, they're juicy scoops, Tim. One day I'll get you to say it.
- [02:35]
Tim Peterson
I said it last week, I think.
- [02:36]
Kameka McCoy
If I'm not mistaken, normalized juicy scoops. So this week we're talking X cracking down on advertisers, specifically pointing things at ipg. ESPN has dropped the MLB and Nike has partnered with Skims. But first, like I said, let's talk about about X and that platform. So, long story short, X has said, advertise us or we'll sue you.
- [03:01]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, give us your money or we will in this case. You know, that's a nice merger you're about to try to do with Omnicom. Would hate to see something happen to it.
- [03:14]
Kameka McCoy
Yeah, would be a shame if you don't get your clients to spend more money on this platform. So what's happening is there. You know, the Wall Street Journal reported that a lawyer from X called a lawyer from IPG just ahead, you know, during the time of the merger and things like that, and basically said, get your clients to spend on this platform or else. And as to your point, there was truth in the trope that could be interpreted as, given Elon Musk's position with the current presidential administration, you know, as this merger is supposed to happen between ibg, ipg, excuse me, And Omnicom, you know, it's advertised with us or your merger goes to shit.
- [03:57]
Tim Peterson
Right? Yeah, which is. I mean, we've seen X has been playing this game in various respects. There's the World Federation of Advertisers lawsuit where they've added more brands to that a few weeks back, which we talked about on the show. And now there's this. And problematically, in a way, this strategy seems to be working. IPG has signed a deal with X, an annual ad spending commitment deal. So that's worked out, apparently. In the Wall Street Journal report, Suzanne Ranica reports that X is also leaning on WPP to do something similar. Publicis seems to be working on a similar kind of deal. So everyone's.
- [04:47]
Kameka McCoy
Falling in line.
- [04:50]
Tim Peterson
It seems like it. Which is just wild. You wonder, is this the kind of thing that will lead others to other platforms to do a similar thing if they face similar boycotts? Or is this just because Elon Musk is so buddy buddy with President Donald Trump that he has a certain leverage that other platforms don't? In which case, what happens in four years if election term limits continue to apply and there's a new president around? Does this advertiser money go away or has it become so entrenched that there's an ex vig built into budgets, starting with the budgets that will be planned in fall of this year for next year?
- [05:42]
Kameka McCoy
Yeah, you do have to wonder if it now sets a precedent. As with everything in this hellscape of 2025. But you know, naturally these holding companies and agencies are going to say, oh, you know, ultimately it's up to the clients to determine how they want to spend their money and whatnot. Although, you know, they do make the recommendations, which kind of does put them in the, in the seat to be responsible for that. So.
- [06:04]
Tim Peterson
And a lot of times they're also making the commitments at the agency level. Like when we had Marcy Greenberger from UM which is part of IPG on the podcast talking about the upfront B in October, I think the episode went out, she talked about how they were doing some agency level commitments where, UM says, okay, TV network or streaming service, we'll commit to spend X millions of dollars with you over the next year and we'll kind of go to our clients and figure out how to like get that money from them effectively. Who wants to fill that inventory? Seems like that's what's going on here. What's going to be interesting is to what extent these agency holding companies are able to get their clients to be buying on X to make good on those commitments. What flexibility, if any, X is built in. Because a lot of times with these types of deals, there is a level of flexibility. You make the commitment, but you don't always fulfill that commitment. Sometimes you exceed the commitment. But there is an understanding of like, okay, we want to do business after this deal expires, we want to renew it. So from the sell side perspective, you provide the flexibility so that, that you can keep the renewal because eventually you hope the money's going to be there and there's going to be a surplus of it. I don't know that X is so much worried about, like, preserving the goodwill of a relationship. Even though Yakurino was at NBCUniversal in 2020 during the pandemic, that was one of the companies that agency execs I talked to at the time cited as being flexible and understanding now that she's running X under Elon Musk, that flexibility seems to have gone away. I also just wonder, like, advertising is free. Speech is advertising is speech. We live in the land of free speech. The right to not speak, if you will, to not advertise would seem like, I don't. This doesn't square with Elon Musk and X really wrapping themselves up in freedom of expression, freedom of speech, flag. But then compelling advertisers to buy on the platform to, you know, compelling speech in a way or a form of speech.
- [08:17]
Kameka McCoy
Tim, that's because you're thinking of it in the terms of free speech, as it was at one point defined when the Constitution and things like that was written. So I think that would the law of the land. I think that may be where the issue lies. But moving on to somebody who will not be renewing their contracts is the MLB and espn. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. I'm a sports ball girl, meaning all sports look the same to me. So you tell me what's going on there.
- [08:48]
Tim Peterson
I was wondering what that sports ball girl that seems like someone who's in sport. Okay, I got you. Is according to the Athletic, ESPN decided, nah, we're paying a lot of money for Major League Baseball rights. Like estimated $550 million each of the next three years. So that amounts to what, $1600 $1.65 billion.
- [09:13]
Kameka McCoy
Oh, God.
- [09:15]
Tim Peterson
I mean, in some respects that's not as much as like NFL rights, for example, or even NBA rights. It's still a lot of money. At a time in which ESPN has a traditional TV network business that isn't doing as well because the traditional TV network business in general isn't doing as well. So they seem to over at ESPN and its parent company, Dizzy, seems to have decided, is this an investment we want to keep making or do we think it's not going to return as much and maybe we just drop it? And they decided in this case to drop it. They also a couple weeks ago decided to drop Formula One rights after this coming year. So ESPN's kind of just cleaning house. And then from the Major League Baseball side, as much as the Athletic reported that ESPN made this decision, informed Major League Baseball of the decision, and MLB said, oh no, we were planning on breaking up with you too. So this is mutual. But MLB seemed to take issue with feeling like ESPN didn't do enough to promote baseball games across, I imagine, like SportsCenter as well as its various TikTok feeds, Instagram, YouTube on down the list. So an amicable breakup, maybe not so much, but a very definitive breakup, it seems.
- [10:34]
Kameka McCoy
It's almost reminiscent because we talked about, like the NBA, well, you know, streamer streaming platforms clamoring for NBA rights deals here as well. And this kind of seems reminiscent of that for this situation. Who would want the MLB rights?
- [10:50]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, I mean, you could see kind of any Netflix potentially could want it. Any of the. Like anyone with a streaming service that's trying to really establish the streaming service from a streaming from a live sports perspective. So Apple and Roku already have some Major League Baseball rights. It's unclear how much that's paying off for either of those platforms, but they could decide, oh, here's an opportunity to grab Sunday Night Baseball, which is, aside from playoffs, probably the most marquee programming that Major League Baseball would have available. So maybe they jump in there. Maybe you get a Netflix coming in. Maybe to be just had the super bowl as part of Fox. Fox has a very good relationship with Major League Baseball, as far as I can tell. Fox aired the World Series last year, which was has got a lot of viewership. Obviously Shohei Ohtani was part of that. The Dodgers and the Yankees were part of that. Two major like the two biggest markets for Major League Baseball were in the World Series. But Fox could see this as an opportunity to secure these rights to build up Tubi, or the upcoming streaming service that Fox is developing and plans to roll out. Maybe I don't know what money Warner Brothers Discovery has for this, but they're not spending so much on NBA rights anymore, so they have some money to work with.
- [12:25]
Kameka McCoy
Mayhaps the only thing that I do know about the MLB is that baseball can be tough to watch with blackouts depending on where you are. So does that kind of have an impact here as to who would want those rights?
- [12:38]
Tim Peterson
I don't know to what extent that has an impact on who would want those rights so much as maybe it has an impact on why ESPN feels like those rights aren't as valuable. Because that seems to be the sticking point is ESPN wanted to didn't want to pay as much going forward as it's been paying for Major League Baseball rights. And Major League Baseball didn't take very kindly to that of espn, effectively trying to lowball them. But as someone who used to watch a lot of baseball, I stopped watching baseball as much when my hometown team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, did deal with Spectrum, the pay TV service, to make local games only available to Spectrum subscribers. For a time I was a Spectrum subscriber. That worked out. I was able to see like Vin Scully's last season. Eventually I canceled my Spectrum subscription. And with that I lost Dodger rights. If anything, not a horrible business decision for Spectrum, because I probably kept Spectrum for longer than I would have otherwise because of wanting to watch the Dodgers. But then once I, you know, kind of fell out of the habit of being able to watch the Dodgers. Eventually I fell out of the habit of really watching baseball in general. And there have been a number of issues with regional sports networks over the past couple years, and I think it was Diamond Sports Group like a year ago filed for bankruptcy. There was efforts to salvage it. And yeah, it's just been so carved up that it does make it harder to feel like baseball is as much part of the monoculture as certainly the NFL, but maybe even NBA, which has had viewership issues of its own lately.
- [14:32]
Kameka McCoy
Man, oh man. I guess this is another we'll see how this pans out situation.
- [14:37]
Tim Peterson
As with everything.
- [14:39]
Kameka McCoy
As with everything, indeed. The last news nugget that we've got here is Nike's partnerships with Skims that was announced last week. So ultimately, Nike and Kim Kardashian's brand, Kim Kardashian's athleisure brand, excuse me, Skims have come together for a partnership. Part of it is Nike, seemingly they'll, you know, launch a new line and everything called Nike Skims. Part of it is tapping to Nike, tapping into women's sports and whatnot. That's something that we've seen on the rise for a while now. They even came out of super bowl ad retirement with an ad featuring Sha'carri Richardson, Caitlin Clark and a handful of others that are their athletes. But on the other hand of it, I think they're trying to get them. Well, not they're trying, they are trying to get themselves out of the slump that they've been in. You know, our sister publication, Modern Retail, Anna Hensel and Julia Waldo, did a really, really good job of kind of doing a deep dive into Nike's lagging D2C business, if you will, which kind of led them to do some of the initiatives, hence the partnership with Skims now.
- [15:40]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, which is, I mean, Nike got, you know, the new CEO last year. So a lot of big changes. And this seems, I mean, this is the first time, I believe the New York Times reported that Nike has worked with an outside brand to basically like create a joint brand. So it is a big deal. It's. You wonder if they're going to change the name eventually because Nike Skims, it's very clear branding. But it also reminds me of like Viacom, CBS or Warner Brothers Discovery, which is like we're just going to mash company names together now. We can't think of something new. But it does show that Skims has grown to a point where it's brand strength is on par with Nike's and in some respects maybe carries a bit more clout, at least with this audience that, you know, this customer base Nike is trying to go after here in terms of women in the athletic market, well, that's the gear market.
- [16:38]
Kameka McCoy
That's the thing. So Heidi O'Neill, who's the president of consumer product and brand at Nike, made the comparison to Michael Jordan and what he was able to do for Nike. Right. If you remember back in, like, this is the 90s, I think, where you had that big partnership predate in my time back in the 80s and 90s, there was a, you know, I think the partnership between Nike and Michael Jordan was like, really, really iconic where the two were, you know, heavily associated with one another. And I think the bet here is that Kim Kardashian can provide that same level of clout.
- [17:16]
Debbie Reynolds
Right.
- [17:16]
Kameka McCoy
And being able to do, to do that. But it is interesting to see Nike now kind of working like double time to, to, I guess, get their place back culturally and financially.
- [17:28]
Tim Peterson
Right. And it also, like, does indicate Nike hasn't done a great job serving its customers. And whereas, like, Skims seems to have done a really good job in making shapewear and clothes that people really like to wear. And so it's, it makes a lot of sense, this deal, as surprising as it is, just because again, it's Nike kind of acknowledging very publicly it needs help from an outside company and a.
- [18:00]
Kameka McCoy
Final wait and see moment, if you will. I don't know how much seeing, wait and seeing this seems pretty guaranteed, but.
- [18:06]
Tim Peterson
Nonetheless, it's going to be a year until this rolls out. So there is definitely a wait and see, which is also interesting because it's like, okay, they felt some need to announce this, you know, a year before any of these clothes are actually going to roll out, or at least the full line is going to roll out. So that kind of goes to show how much Nike needs the, I guess, credibility that it would kind of get from announcing this deal with Skims.
- [18:37]
Kameka McCoy
Yeah, I would envision that there's going to be a lot of marketing that happens around this. This just seems kind of like the first leg of that. And, you know, not for nothing else, Kim Kardashian is really good at that as, as well. So, you know, we will see.
- [18:52]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, I mean, it makes you wonder, like, why not just buy Skims or is that in the cards now potentially?
- [19:00]
Kameka McCoy
You know, what are the, the cost analysis here for partnering with Skims versus just buying the brand and kind of what that would mean for the company. That's an interesting take. What I'd give to be a fly on the wall during that meeting, I'll tell you that. But those are, those are all the juicy scoops that we had for this week. Remind us one more time of who we're Going to be talking to here in a bit.
- [19:23]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, we got Debbie Reynolds, who's a privacy expert and founder, CEO and chief data privacy officer at Debbie Reynolds Consulting. And we talk about the latest update to the Children's Online Privacy Protection act here in the US as well as just the US Privacy landscape at the moment in general.
- [19:41]
Kameka McCoy
Another hellscape. So very excited to get into that. Thanks so much, Tim.
- [19:47]
Tim Peterson
Thank you. Hey Debbie, welcome to the show.
- [19:59]
Debbie Reynolds
Hey, great to see you. Great to talk to you. Haven't talked to you in many years now.
- [20:03]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, we are overdue for catch up and I'm glad to have you here. Thanks for joining the show because I've been trying to think of like, okay, what's the privacy landscape look like this year between FTC finally updating COPPA here in the US but then also we have a new administration, an administration that didn't really care for the old Federal Trade Commission. So what does that mean for the privacy landscape? It also just feels like as much as they're has been movement, particularly on the state level, there has not been too much movement on the federal level in terms of a federal privacy bill. So I've just felt a bit at a loss for understanding what the privacy landscape looks like in 2025. You live and breathe this stuff. So again, I thought first of you, of who do I want to talk to who can help me to understand what all is going on? Deb, is there any one development with respect to privacy right now that you are tracking most closely?
- [21:07]
Debbie Reynolds
That's a great question. First of all, it's complex, I would say. And so I don't think there's any one. I think there are a multitude of things that are converging at the same time, which makes the complexity even more challenging for people.
- [21:25]
Tim Peterson
I guess the one that stands out to me because it was such a recent thing, is the US Federal Trade Commission updating the Children's Online Privacy Protection act to make it where parents would have to opt in for advertisers to be able to target children with ads. That felt pretty monumental. And I do think it got a fair amount of attention when it was announced in January, but it felt like almost a blip. Like I don't know to what extent it's had like wider ripple effects or not or why that would be. What, what's been your perception?
- [22:02]
Debbie Reynolds
Yeah, first of all, it is a big deal. And I think because there has been so much other activity in the news, people haven't really paid attention to it. But a lot of Times with these things. As you've probably seen through your career in watching these privacy movements, whenever a change happens, there may be some chatter about it, but really people don't start to feel it until those things really are enacted and they start seeing the changes. So I think it'll be a while before people kind of feel that change. But one thing I will tell you what's happening globally that's impacting this is that, you know, the US is one of the five eyes countries and a lot of the five eyes countries over the last several years have been really targeting child privacy. So they've been trying to do different laws. So there are people who are advocates like, hey, we need more protection for children. And then we have this other side where people say, well, we need less encryption because that'll make everyone more safe. And so there are kind of these factions that are fighting in these different countries try to articulate the best way to move forward. And so I think part of confusion around privacy and the challenge the companies will have with the update of COPPA is trying to figure out how to do things like, you know, how do you get verifiable, quote unquote, parental consent beyond just having someone click a button and say, hey, yeah, my parents said yes, right? And then so many, so many children online are between 13 and 18 and right. And so think about gaming, think about social media. You know, most of the people who are online are in that age group. So thinking about what that means for companies that serve those audiences and how, you know, how do you tell a 14 year old from a 16 year old or a 16 year old from a 15 year old, right? So it's not just, you know, COPPA at a federal level is all also these little state laws that may have some bearing on that and how companies navigate it. So I think it's just going to be very confusing for a while and then from a, from a consumer perspective, it's going to be extremely difficult, right? Because it depends on, it's going to depend on the service that you use, right? So they're not telling you, you know, unlike let's say the ccpa, they're not saying put a button on your website that looks like this or says this, right? So they're saying, hey, you know, give verifiable parental consent. And they're like, how do we do that? Or do age verification? Well, how do we do that? Right? So for a consumer, let's say you have a kid and they use five different apps or something, you know, you may have five different experiences or five different things that you as a parent have to probably give your ID for to have your kid do something. And I think it's just gonna be bananas really.
- [25:11]
Tim Peterson
Right? Well, yeah. Cause I mean there's also the question of is it just a one time opt in that's required or will it be every time I'm firing up Disney, Disney would need to ask like hey, are you a child or are you the parent of a child and is the child in the room? Because we're going to show you some ads and we would like to target those but we have to have your permission. Now do you know if like what the requirement is in terms of how often this opt in is going to need to be acquired?
- [25:41]
Debbie Reynolds
Well, I don't think there is a requirement turning in terms of how frequently it happens, I think it's really going to be incumbent upon a company to figure out how to do it. One thing I will say is some of the more recent cases that have gone against companies around child privacy. You know, there's been something that's been developing around actual knowledge. Right. So I think Weight Watchers got into trouble a couple years ago. They had an app, it was like a parent child app or something, something about health. And you know, they said can't be under 13 to be on this app. Right. But then you had kids who like, oh today's my birthday and I'm eight. Right. And then so the FTC said, well, they actually said on the, you have the data that says this person's 8 years old or they changed their birthday to a date that was before that. So I think it's gonna be, I think in the future. And it's very interesting because I, I basically just did a talk with TikTok yesterday and I told them this, that I think in the future it's gonna be more around actual knowledge. Right. So, so the fact that these companies collect so much data about people, they're, they may, it can't, it won't be like a gate. So maybe you have a gate to start, but maybe as you're dealing or as you're going through these experiences, they may be getting clues about what your actual aid is. If you have a fifth grade graduation, should you be on this parental guidance app or something like that?
- [27:22]
Tim Peterson
What's an example of a gate? I don't know if I'm familiar with that term.
- [27:26]
Debbie Reynolds
So gate will be, you know, you can't enter unless you prove that you're X age. It's almost like, almost like you go into a bar, you have to like show your id. The problem with the online is that it's not just that you're flashing your information and then the person forgets about it and they're not storing it. Right. So anything that you give to these companies, they're collecting, they're storing. And then that brings up, you know, do I trust this company enough to give them my id? Especially seeing like the rash of data breaches and things like that. And so I think it's just going to be challenging going forward to see how companies really try to handle this issue.
- [28:02]
Tim Peterson
Right? Yeah. Because I mean, if, yeah, if I'm visiting just a website and they're asking for a copy of my driver's license just so I could read some article about whatever game was on yesterday, I'm not, I'm not giving up my driver's license just to read that article.
- [28:18]
Debbie Reynolds
No. And then, you know, think about the apps that your kids use. You're not going to do that for every Apple. Right? This is not going to happen. So I think the regulation has to meet some reality. And so I'm interested to see how companies try to grapple with this.
- [28:34]
Tim Peterson
Right, yeah. And then you mentioned something around, I forget the term that you used, but like known data or like being able to, like it seemed like there was actual knowledge. What's that mean?
- [28:45]
Debbie Reynolds
So actual knowledge means there may be bits and pieces of information that you know about someone that will help you to discern their identity or their age or something. Right. So like I give you an example. So this is, this is not age related, but let's say, you know, like LinkedIn, LinkedIn does this thing like, hey, we should, you should verify yourself because it'll make you more cool online and stuff like that. Because they want to tell whether you're a real or fake person. But if I've been posting something on LinkedIn every week for 10 years, I'm probably not a fake person. Right. So you probably shouldn't ask that person whether they're a real or fake person because chances are they're a real person. Right. So they're not operating in a way that makes them suspicious in any way or make you feel like maybe they're not who they say they are. Right. And so from an age perspective, you know, especially as we see so many really, really young kids online, you know, I see five or six year olds in the grocery store store on phones, on apps and stuff. I mean, they can navigate. I saw a four year old navigate like a Netflix menu. Like I couldn't even do that. Right.
- [30:00]
Tim Peterson
It's also like you can read, you are four.
- [30:06]
Debbie Reynolds
Exactly, exactly. So I think it's just going to be, you know, it's going to be interesting to see how they, they handle that, but it's going to put a lot more work on parents as well.
- [30:15]
Tim Peterson
Right. And, and as you were saying, more work on companies too, because then they're having to figure out, okay, how do we comply with this new requirement? Get the data that we need to comply, but also we don't necessarily want to be touching that data. Right. Any more than we absolutely need to.
- [30:33]
Debbie Reynolds
Exactly. So we're seeing some, like, some companies like, I think Instagram, they're trying to go towards more tech. So like they're trying to do like facial selfies, try to discern whether a person is of a certain age. And it's extremely hard for kids of those ages. Right. Between you know, 13 and 18, you know, depending on like their, their growth. I mean, you just, sometimes you can't tell how old a kid is really. Or you know, especially let's say they're, they're 12 and they're not supposed to be on their, they look 14 or so, you know, so it's just crazy.
- [31:12]
Tim Peterson
Well, plus, imagine if you're like, I don't know, a baby faced 24 year old, you get kind of the ego hit of Instagram being like, you're not an adult. It's like, dude, I pay rent, I am an adult.
- [31:24]
Debbie Reynolds
Exactly, exactly, exactly. So true, so true.
- [31:29]
Tim Peterson
You have a consulting business, you consult with a lot of companies. You mentioned, you know, you met with TikTok yesterday with this COPPA change. Like to what extent are you getting questions from clients about this and you know, are you picking up any nuances in those questions that go beyond just like, hey Debbie, what should we know about this Copa update?
- [31:49]
Debbie Reynolds
Yeah, yeah, I'm actually getting a lot of calls about this because people are concerned like, how do we comply? Right. So it's one thing to say, you know, you need to get verifiable consent or you know, from a parent. But what does that mean operationally? You know, what does that mean in terms of maybe a company like Facebook can do it better than maybe a mom and pop shop or a small, medium sized business that doesn't have maybe the apparatus or the technology to do anything super advanced. It does create friction there and it does create concern about how to do that. Not all of this will be done with emerging tech. A lot of it will be you know, literally someone said, take a picture of your ID and fax it to us, or something like that, which is terrible, just bad. But, you know, we're seeing a lot of that very different. Different companies are handling it different ways.
- [32:48]
Tim Peterson
Right. And it seems like it'd be more complicated for some companies than others. Like, you know, an example that I think of is a streaming service or even just a connected TV platform. Like, this is a device where everyone in the household can be using. Can be using the same account. How is a Netflix or a Disney plus or a Roku, an Amazon Fire supposed to know and manage if there's a kid in the room at a given time, or if it's a kid who's using the parents account, things like that, especially if they don't have different profiles set up. Plus, like, when it comes to a household device like ctv, a lot of times you're getting data that's being pulled across the different members of the household, and it may not be cut up, you know, to like, okay, this is, you know, this data is associated with just one member of the household. Like, no, now it's getting kind of commingled across the entire household. Is this. It's something I love thinking about. I don't know to what extent, like, that Many people are thinking about kind of the complications of CTV as a household device when it comes to these privacy laws, especially children's privacy laws. But maybe I'm completely mistaken or I'm misreading the situation.
- [34:13]
Debbie Reynolds
No, I think you're absolutely right. It's almost like you're a Netflix. Like when someone uses your Netflix account or something, and they watch, like, a trashy movie that you would never watch. And then you get, like, terrible suggestions because you're like, oh, you messed up on Netflix. Right? So the algorithm is trying to figure out, you know, who are you? What do you like? And different things like that. And it's very common that parents, you know, that children use accounts of parents, right? And they don't have their own logins, or they don't have their own accounts, or people use computers. You know, maybe you have a household computer that anybody can use for whatever, Right. Maybe they don't have the same profile. So, you know, it's always been a hard problem, but I think these age verification requirements are making it more difficult, especially around, you know, for companies who decide they want to go the ID route. I think that's really hard. So you're like, hey, Tim, you know, you give your ID to five different companies to prove that you're the parent of this kid and then people can use it for nefarious purposes. Right. Where, you know. So I'm not. How do they know that you're the parent? They don't know. Right. So. So that it just makes it more complicated, I think.
- [35:26]
Tim Peterson
Right. Yeah, no, it's all. It's all just so complicated. The, the state, like, privacy law patchwork. That's been a big complication for years now, ever since, like, really, ccpa, California Consumer Privacy act was introduced and then passed. Because since then, I forget the, like, the latest count maybe, you know, but it's something like 19 or 25 different states have privacy laws at this point.
- [35:55]
Debbie Reynolds
Yeah, I think it's like in the 20s, maybe like the low 20s now. It's hard to keep up. And actually, I have to applaud you. You were the only reporter I can think of in the US at the time that was talking about CCPA and why it was important as the bill was coming through. So I feel like you're an expert on this, especially as it relates to the California stuff and how that's been influential. But, yeah, I think, you know, so we have not seen any significant movement on the federal side around trying to create something more comprehensive in privacy.
- [36:35]
Tim Peterson
Do you expect to see anything? Yeah, right.
- [36:38]
Debbie Reynolds
It could be yes and no. So I would say right now, I would say no because it seems like people are more interested in other types of chaos right now. But so, you know, it's not super high up on the board, but one of the big reasons that privacy has stalled on the federal level for so long is that the parties could not agree on preemption and private right of action. So now that we see Congress, Senate, executive branch, lending more rights, those are the people who did not want a private right of action. So if they wanted to, they could pass something federal, say, oh, you know, well, we don't need a private right of action. You know, I don't know. I think maybe pitch people have pitchforks out on the street at that point because they feel like they've been so harmed by, you know, how companies are handling their data. So I don't know if anyone wants to go there, but, you know, I'm not sure there's enough inertia right now to push it on a federal level. But I think states know that. And so what we're seeing is that states are continuing to pass legislation. We're actually seeing states try to coordinate with one another and say, hey, this is the thing that we want to run in our state, maybe here's a playbook for you and your state if you want to do that. Right. So that's pretty interesting because I think for better or for worse, I feel like privacy regulation in the US Is going to go the way the data breach notification went, which is California started in 2013. They were the first state to have a data breach notification law. By 2019, all states had them, but they were all different. Right. So all of them were different in terms of reporting. They were different about what personal data was. Some said it's not a breach because the data was encrypted and someone got it instead with the bananas. I mean, you know, so it's been a patchwork, and so we're seeing a lot more of that. But I'm hoping in the future on the state level at least, there are some level of coordination where there's, you know, more laws are more similar than dissimilar. But I think what we're seeing now is kind of two camps. So we're seeing, you know, I like to say it's almost like, you know, the barbecue battle. It's like the Carolina barbecue versus the, you know, Kansas City barbecue. Right. So we have California and the California like laws, and we have the Virginia and the Virginia like laws. So it seems like the states are kind of falling into those camps.
- [39:27]
Tim Peterson
And can you break down those two archetypes for us?
- [39:30]
Debbie Reynolds
Sure.
- [39:30]
Tim Peterson
And for the listeners.
- [39:31]
Debbie Reynolds
So the California type laws tend to give the consumer more rights, and they consider the Virginia type laws to be more business friendly. So typically, the Virginia type laws probably don't have private rights of action. They may have an action from, like, Attorney General. They, if they have fines, the fines may be pretty low. They may have kind of, let's say, cure periods or say, hey, you know, you did this bad thing, but if you, you know, get your act together in like, 30 days, then we'll forgive. All right. And so CCPA had a little bit of that at one point, but they got rid of that. And then also, one thing that CCPA did that no other state had done up to this point is that they were able to provide some of these consumer rights to employees, which they never had before. So I think people are kind of nervous about that in other states because they were like, oh, my God, if they pass this in our state, that means that I have to give my employees more information about the data I collect about them and what I do with it.
- [40:39]
Tim Peterson
And I would hate to have to do that, be transparent with my employees.
- [40:43]
Debbie Reynolds
You Ask too much. You ask too much. Yes.
- [40:45]
Tim Peterson
Right. And for anyone listening who's not familiar with private right of action, Debbie, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but it's basically like I'm a California resident, so if I find out a company is selling or sharing my personal information in a way that I have opted out of under ccpa, I could take that company to court, I could file a lawsuit, I could get damages just as a private citizen, as opposed to needing to appeal to the attorney general and the state have to take some action.
- [41:15]
Debbie Reynolds
Yeah. And then California also has an agency which no other state has. So they have, in addition to the attorney general, who, who can take action, they actually have an agency that manages that. So it was actually a good play on California's part because I think there was so much uncertainty about what would happen if we have something federally, you know, would it, like, extinguish what California is doing? And so, you know, that didn' happen. So, you know, it's really interesting to see what's happening out of California.
- [41:46]
Tim Peterson
Right. Yeah. Not as a, again, as a California resident, as someone who pays a lot of attention to the privacy stuff. I love living here and kind of the protections I get as a resident. But it does make me wonder, I'm curious, like, why businesses or at least lobbying groups, like pro business lobbying groups, haven't been more vocal about trying to get a federal privacy law passed, given that Republicans have control of the White House, of the House of Representatives, and of the Senate. Because, as you mentioned, the Republicans don't want private right of action and they also don't want preemption. They don't want state laws to take precedence over a federal privacy law. What the Democrats have pushed for is, okay, sure, there can be a federal privacy law, but then if California has requirements of companies that exceed that federal privacy law, then the California law would take precedence, at least when it comes to California residents. Republicans don't want that. It would seem like businesses wouldn't want that because that complicates things. Because if you have a federal privacy law that is preemptive, that takes precedence over the state level privacy laws, effectively you don't, as a business, don't really need to worry about the state level having to comply with all of these different state privacy laws. You can just comply with the federal privacy law. And this is an oversimplification, but, like, be good, right?
- [43:13]
Debbie Reynolds
Well, you know, it's so complicated. So the problem with a federal privacy law, in order to get everyone to agree it would have to be like a super, like a wafer thin law. Right. So it almost be almost nothing. I would say for me, I would, I would, you know, if nothing else, even if there was no agreement on private right of action or preemption, just to get the terminology and the time frames and the definitions harmonized, I think that would be a huge deal for businesses. But you know, I think a lot of businesses are, you know, have a knee jerk reaction to regulation of any type. So even though this is, you know, crazy and it is hard, you know, they're almost like, oh, I don't want regulation at all or I want regulation. Exactly. That helps me as my business and doesn't really think about the consumer. Also you have to remember that the federal, even if we had a federal law, it wouldn't preempt all state laws. So that's a lot of people don't understand. Right. So an example of that is, let's say Illinois has a Biometric Information Privacy Act. It's the most stringent biometric privacy law in the world. They tried to water it down a bit, doesn't really help. Still pretty stringent. But you know, a federal privacy law, regardless would not ever preempt that law because states can pass things what they call general applicability laws. Right. And so the thing that the, the unique thing about bitba is that it's for everybody regardless of whether you're a consumer or not. Right. So in the US when we talk about privacy, we typically talk about consumer laws. Right. And so if you're not consuming, you really don't have a lot of privacy. Right. In the US So where BIPA says like it doesn't matter if you're a consumer, like if you're a human, you have rights. So an example of this is like there was a case with Google Photos where Google used people's Photos and Google Photos and they were doing something with AI or something with it and they didn't provide the right level of notice or get consent for people to use it. And so they had to pay a fine. I can't remember. It was pretty high in the several hundreds of millions, I believe. You know, I don't use Google Photos, okay? But someone took a picture of me that was in Google Photos and I gotta check, okay? So if you're a consumer mindset, the only person would have gotten a check would be the person who actually was the user of Google Photos. So that is the difference between a general applicability law and a federal law on privacy. And that's what people don't understand. So, you know, when I tell, when people say, oh my God, we had a federal privacy law, then do this harmonization. But I was like, but you can't change that. You can't change the, like the stuff that you don't like. Like on a state level, you can't change that. So, you know, the best that you can hope for is more harmonization around the language, I think. But you know, again, I don't know how much of a high priority. I don't, you know, it wasn't a super high priority before. I don't know if it's going to be a super high priority. But I think what I'm seeing from my own business and my consulting with people is that regardless of regulation, businesses are putting pressure on other businesses about this. So, so they're pushing, they're putting these requirements and contracts and you know, even though you may not be subject to it for your business, but if you want to do business, we want you to align with this. So that's where all the action is, right?
- [47:03]
Tim Peterson
Yeah, yeah. Because I think like 2021, there is a fair amount of. There are just like a lot of different privacy bills that were introduced. I think like around that time we even had a tracker going on Digiday's site of all the different privacy bills. But it was just like, well, none of these seem like they're actually going to pass. And then I think it was two years ago or maybe it was last year. I don't know about time anymore. But there was like one bill, it was. What was the acronym? Like ADA or something like adpa that seemed the most likely at that point, which isn't saying much of anything at all. And then obviously nothing happened to that. So I guess like every time I. As fun as these conversations are to have with people and actually, like, I am learning a lot from talking to you about this because I didn't realize about the general applicability dynamic with the state laws that could still preempt a federal privacy law. That's really interesting, but it still feels like, are we just wasting our time talking about a federal privacy law? Because I don't know that there's any actual reason to believe that's going to happen in our lifetime.
- [48:14]
Debbie Reynolds
Well, it's funny because people will write me because, you know, I do videos every week and I talk a lot about laws and they're like, why do you talk about adppa? I'm like, well, it's not going to pass. So what's the point of talking about it. Right. So once it got better. Yeah, once. If it comes the law, I'll talk about it. But other than that, no. Right. So it's so funny because I've had a lot of people who are like, sort of upset. I'm like, oh, you're not supporting. I'm like, it's not going to happen. So like, why are we. Let's move on to stuff that's actually happening.
- [48:45]
Tim Peterson
Yeah. And so on that note, before we let you go, Debbie, is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should talk about that folks who are interested in the privacy landscape today may not be on their radar or big enough on their radar, but should be.
- [49:01]
Debbie Reynolds
Oh, wow, let's see. You know, I think, to me, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head. Like all this child privacy, age verification stuff, I don't think people really understand what that means, really. Right, so it sounds good in theory, right? Oh, yes. Protect children online. Nothing wrong with that. But what they don't understand is going to be like a lot more work for parents a lot. Right. So a lot more of you pulling your ID out, giving it to some random company for you to do some type of thing. So I think it's going to have a bit of a chilling effect and it's probably going to help with some consolidation maybe around apps for children or, you know, maybe some of these. You know, something happened in Australia again, I talked about these five. You know, Australia is one of the five eyes countries and so they kind of do regulations sort of try to similar, similarize these regulations. But in Australia recently they made an update to their privacy law banning children under 16 from social media. And that was like a huge shock to a lot of these companies that, you know, do gaming and social media stuff like that. So they're concerned that other countries like the us, the uk, you know, New Zealand, New Zealand, I think they're part of the five eyes as well. We'll do similar types of litigation or regulation. So we'll see. We'll see. I think it's just going to be just very interesting to see how this goes and how, you know, I don't want companies to start asking people for IDs to, you know, because I feel like it creates more risk and it's just crazy. So they have to, you know, we put a man on the moon over 50 years ago. Surely we can solve this problem around verifying people and making sure they see the right content.
- [50:57]
Tim Peterson
You would hope so.
- [50:58]
Debbie Reynolds
Yeah.
- [51:01]
Tim Peterson
Hope's hard to come by these days.
- [51:03]
Debbie Reynolds
Yes, yes, exactly.
- [51:06]
Tim Peterson
Well, Debbie, really appreciate you coming on. It's always really helpful talking with you, so thanks so much for taking the time.
- [51:11]
Debbie Reynolds
Yeah, I'm excited and I'm always happy to support you and your work. You do a great job. I really appreciate it.
- [51:23]
Tim Peterson
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Digiday Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening. Get more from Digiday with our daily newsletter sent out each weekday morning. Visit digiday.comnewsletters to sign up.