So I am blitzing on “Stan Against Evil” just now (up to Season 3, Episode 2) on Roku, and an advert comes on for some online gambling game, but without the usual warnings about gambling or clarification as to who is behind it, followed by an ad for insurance that posts a QR code for 30 seconds, but no info telling us what company is being linked to at all. I know that broadcast television and cable television are regulated, albeit in different ways…but Roku isn’t either of these. It is a computer program.
Who or what, if anyone or anything, regulates Roku?
Are you asking about who regulates the ads on Roku or who regulates Roku itself?
For the ads themselves, it would be the FTC.
For Roku, or at least the streaming part of Roku, ISTM, they’d be regulated like youtube or Netflix, so, not at all. Roku is a private company sending videos over the internet to you. It’s a coincidence that it’s typically viewed on the same display as you’d use for [regulated] broadcast or cable TV.
FTC for ads
The FCC comes right out and states that streaming services are in an “FCC Regulatory Free Arena”.
https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2018/06/01/fcc-regulatory-free-arena
That’s funny, because I can find no record in the FTC’s official case database of a Federal Trade Commission enforcement action or ruling directly against Roku. Low numbers would be suspicious, but no rulings is pretty damn weird, your press release from 2018 notwithstanding.
I don’t know what you’re looking at, nor am I familiar with their official case database, but if it makes a difference, Roku is a hardware company and a streaming service. Maybe the streaming side uses a different name for official purposes.
I suspect it’s not a Roku-specific thing; it’s probably endemic to most, if not all, streaming channels which accept/run advertising. When my late father was in assisted living earlier this year, and watching TV all day, he wound up spending a lot of his time watching an LG channel that was Law & Order, 24/7; the ad breaks had a lot of strange ads, including very spammy ones for an online casino, and it struck me that those were ads which would never be allowed on broadcast/linear TV.
@Joey_P 's link is about a specific case (in which Roku was not one of the eight named services), but also noted that, broadly, the FCC doesn’t have regulatory jurisdiction over streaming services. And, thus, it apparently falls into the FTC’s purview.
Joey_P
Oops, sorry, will fix.