Welcome to Pixalate’s CTV & Mobile App Manual Reviews According to COPPA, a series containing the detailed factors the Trust & Safety Advisory Board educators used to assess an app’s child-directedness.
The educators manually review thousands of mobile apps available in the Google Play & Apple App Stores as well as connected TV (CTV) apps from the Roku Channel Store and Amazon Fire TV App Store using the COPPA Rule factors shown below & make those results available to the public at ratings.pixalate.com.
This post takes a look at a popular mobile app (1 million+ downloads) from the Google Play Store. Our reviewer discusses how the subjective factors set forth in the COPPA Rule apply to the app and factor into the reviewer's determination as to whether the app is child-directed or general audience (i.e., it is not targeting children).
The teacher will indicate the factors they relied upon in their assessment using the 10 factors shown below that reflect the 10 child-directed factors in the COPPA Rule.
Bubble Champion is a bubble-popping puzzle game. The gameplay includes the usual bubble popping where players spend hours of fun popping the same colored bubbles. Once players clear the board they win coins. Players have the ability to use power booster flames to burst all the bubbles The app also has a connection to Facebook in order to play with friends and family. Players can improve their matching abilities while blasting around various puzzle challenges. It is filled with simple vibrant visual content and colorful graphics.
There are advertisements shown at the bottom of the app in a banner. Those advertisements are, “Temu and Amazon Prime,” which are directed to a general audience. During the game, in order to proceed to the next level, “Sweat Fitness for Women and Thursday Night Football-Amazon Prime,” are advertisements shown and directed to a general audience.
The app is rated E for Everyone in the Google Play store. The app is ready to use after download and there is no age gate. The app does offer in-app purchases in order to remove advertisements and buy tokens.
Privacy:
The developer’s privacy policy states, ”Our games are not intended for or targeted at children. If we learn we have collected or received personal information from a child under the age of 13 without verification of parental consent, we will delete that information.
Screenshots of Bubble Champion
Pixalate’s Trust and Safety Advisory Board was created to bring in individuals with experience using child-directed apps in the classroom to review and assess which apps are child-directed. This manual review process serves to quality check Pixalate’s automated review process. See our full methodology for more information.
Disclaimer
This blog post published by Pixalate is available for informational purposes only and is not considered legal advice. By viewing this blog post, the reader understands and agrees that there is no attorney-client relationship between the reader and the blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in the applicable jurisdiction(s), and readers are urged to consult their own legal counsel on any specific legal questions concerning any specific situation. The content of this blog post reflects Pixalate's opinions with respect to factors that Pixalate believes may be useful to the digital media industry. Pixalate's opinions are just that, opinions, which means that they are neither facts nor guarantees; and this blog post is not intended to impugn the standing or reputation of any entity, person or app, but instead, to report findings pertaining to mobile and Connected TV (CTV) apps.
