YouTube to pay $170-million fine after violating kids' privacy law.

Google will pay $170 million to settle allegations its YouTube video service collected personal data on children without their parents' consent.

The company agreed to work with video creators to label material aimed at kids and said it will limit data collection when users view, such videos, regardless of their age.

Some lawmakers and children's advocacy groups, however, complained that the settlement terms aren't strong enough to rein in a company whose parent, Alphabet, made a profit of $30.7 billion last year on revenue of $136.8 billion, mostly from targeted ads.

Google will pay $136 million to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and $34 million to New York state, which had a similar investigation. The fine is the largest the FTC has levied against Google, but it's tiny compared with the $5 billion fine against Facebook this year for privacy violations.

YouTube 'baited kids with nursery rhymes, cartoons, and more to feed its massively profitable behavioral advertising business,' Democratic Commissioner Rohit Chopra said in a tweet. 'It was lucrative, and it was illegal.'

The federal government has increased scrutiny of big tech companies in the past two years-especially questioning how the tech giants collect and use personal information from their billions of customers. Many of the huge Silicon Valley companies are also under antitrust investigations aimed at determining whether the companies have unlawfully stifled competition.

Kids under 13 are protected by a 1998 federal law that requires parental consent before companies can collect and share their personal information.

Tech companies typically skirt that by banning kids under 13 entirely, though such bans are rarely enforced. In YouTube's lengthy terms of service, those who are under 13 are simply asked, 'please do not use the Service.' Yet many popular YouTube channels feature cartoons or sing-a-longs made for children. According to the FTC, YouTube assigned ratings to its video channels and even had a 'Y' category directed at kids ages 7 or under, but YouTube targeted ads to those kids just as they would adults.

The FTC's complaint includes as evidence Google presentations describing YouTube to toy companies Mattel and Hasbro as the 'new Saturday Morning Cartoons' and the '#1 website regularly visited by kids.'

'YouTube touted its popularity with children to prospective corporate clients,' FTC Chairman Joe Simons said. But when it came to complying with the law, he said, 'the...