COPPA Reviews: ‘FYI’

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 CTV app from the Roku Channel 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).

Manually reviewed in this post

FYI (Roku)

This Week’s Reviewer: Crystal Pearson

The 10 COPPA Rule factors

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.

Manual Review: FYI

Likely audience after manual review

Developer: A+E Networks
Roku App Store ID: 90147
Privacy Policy
Tabitha’s take: FYI is a collection of lifestyle and reality shows that include genres and topics such as cars, outdoor adventures, cooking, and home living.

COPPA factors used to determine audience

The FYI app brings together a wide range of lifestyle programming, home renovation, culinary, and pop culture shows. The app features shows such as, Sell This House, Zombie House Flipping, and Storage Wars. The subject matter of these types of shows would be more appealing to adults than children.

On the Roku App Store landing page for this app, the app description says “Stream your favorite FYI TV shows including: Barrett-Jackson LIVE Auction, Sell This House!, Ultimate Rides, to name a few.” These descriptions are targeted to attract adults as opposed to children.

Privacy

The operator’s privacy policy states, ”Our Sites are not intended for or directed toward children under 13 years of age and nor does A+E Networks knowingly collect or store personal information on our Sites from children under 13.”

Screenshots of FYI:

About Pixalate’s Trust & Safety Advisory Board

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.