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 and Apple App Stores. 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.
The gameplay screenshots of Slither io visual content have modern graphics with adorable snakes with interesting wide eyes. The animation is bright with lots of stimulating brightly colored images. Players start off as smaller snakes and must slither around eating dots to get bigger. If you collide with another player, your snake explodes. If they crash into you, they explode and you get to consume their dots and grow larger. It is suitable for young kids but should be observed by guardians as other online players' usernames may be improper.
The objective is to advance to the top of the scoreboard by collecting dots and growing in length by avoiding other snakes slithering on the screen.
The game is rated E for Everyone in the Google play store and 4+ in the Apple Store. There is no age gate. The app shows evidence that children do use the app. A review posted on Google Play in December of 2018 says, “I have the game installed on 2 different devices and my 8-year-old plays it as well. ” Another review on Google Play posted in June of 2023 says,” I found it very entertaining and it’s a great part of my childhood.” No specific age was given by the reviewer.
Privacy:
The developer’s privacy policy does not have a COPPA policy.
Screenshots of Slither.io
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.
