Following a 2018 complaint alleging violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the company was fined $170 million by the FTC for collecting personal information from minors under the age of 13. YouTube was also ordered to create systems to increase children's privacy. Following criticisms of its implementation of those systems, YouTube started treating all videos designated as "made for kids" as liable under COPPA on January 6, 2020. Joining the YouTube Kids app, the company created a supervised mode, designed more for tweens, in 2021. Additionally, to compete with TikTok, YouTube released YouTube Shorts, a short-form video platform.

During this period, YouTube entered disputes with other tech companies. For over a year, in 2018 and 2019, no YouTube app was available for Amazon Fire products. In 2020, Roku removed the YouTube TV app from its streaming store after the two companies were unable to reach an agreement.

After testing earlier in 2021, YouTube removed public display of dislike counts on videos in November 2021, claiming the reason for the removal was, based on its internal research, that users often used the dislike feature as a form of cyberbullying and brigading. While some users praised the move as a way to discourage trolls, others felt that hiding dislikes would make it harder for viewers to recognize clickbait or unhelpful videos and that other features already existed for creators to limit bullying. YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim referred to the update as "a stupid idea", and that the real reason behind the change was "not a good one, and not one that will be publicly disclosed." He felt that users' ability on a social platform to identify harmful content was essential, saying, "The process works, and there's a name for it: the wisdom of the crowds. The process breaks when the platform interferes with it. Then, the platform invariably declines." Shortly after the announcement, software developer Dmitry Selivanov created Return YouTube Dislike, an open-source, third-party browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that allows users to see a video's number of dislikes. In a letter published on January 25, 2022 by then YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, acknowledged that removing public dislike counts was a controversial decision, but reiterated that she stands by this decision, claiming that "it reduced dislike attacks."

In 2022, YouTube launched an experiment where the company would show users who watched longer videos on TVs a long chain of short unskippable adverts, intending to consolidate all ads into the beginning of a video. Following public outrage over the unprecedented amount of unskippable ads, YouTube "ended" the experiment on September 19 of that year. In October, YouTube announced that they would be rolling out customizable user handles (e.g. @MrBeast6000) in addition to channel names, which would also become channel URLs.

On February 16, 2023, Wojcicki announced that she would step down as CEO, with Neal Mohan named as her successor. Wojcicki will take on an advisory role for Google and parent company Alphabet.
Extract the dollar values from this page:
$170 million: COPPA fine by the FTC for collecting personal information from minors under the age of 13