Human in the loop could redirect payments to their parent without a lifetime ban. Children do unwise things all the time.
Google's growth rates are starting to plateau, and they might want to revisit the legion of people they've robobanned from spending on their platforms.
It may not be possible for Google to do that redirect without incurring legal liability.
Fraud occurred here. Google just shuffling the shells might be aiding and abetting fraud.
(The law here isn't set up just to protect Google; nor is it set up to just protect the kid. It ties into broader societal protections against child exploitation and child labor. So Google runs the risk of tripping over criminal liability, in which case the end result is no longer in the hands of any of the immediate parties. Their policies are maximally paranoid to avoid that outcome).
Got banned from Amazon on my first purchase. For some reason the payment bounced even though everything should have been fine (correct payment details, enough money in the account etc).
Complained and got unbanned.
AWS has even a notary(!) based process to recover accounts.
It is pretty normal to recover bad things on non-Google sites by getting a human into the loop, especially if money is involved.
AWS support has left me really impressed. They were answering inquiries even when started and was playing around a free-tier account. (Even got a refund for a charge due to forgetting some stuff running beyond the free-tier limit.) Not surprised they dominate the cloud segment and GCP barely reaches two-digits usage.
Banned sounds strange. Going beyond the free-tier limits simply means they start charging you. Though to say the truth, as you, was expecting them to stop the service. Did you tried a chargeback or blocked them access to your card?
Was he told this? The submission appears to be a user comment from some anonymous guy named "busterjet", describing what would happen in a hypothetical scenario. There's no indication that such a scenario has actually happened or that busterjet represents Google.
If the 13-year old had killed someone, they could be prosecuted as a minor and they would go to juvie and their record would be sealed after they turn 21 and they could get on with their life.
But stealing a trivial amount of money from a corporation, well that's certainly deserving of an Internet Death Penalty.
> But stealing a trivial amount of money from a corporation
It was only $300 and it was never paid out (since it needed more verification to pay out). If anything Google /made/ and extra $300 (they made more than that since the $300 is after their take). Also it wasn't "stolen" it was earned on a YT channel.
Not really, since they can cash it out when they're 18, and unclaimed but earned funds on an active but unverified AdSense account don't just disappear into the ether - so on Google's balance sheet, they don't have an extra $300.
I'm pretty sure that's the whole point of this issue though right? The account is burned forever because it's stuck in limbo. I think there would be less consternation/anger if the kid just had to wait till they were 18 but the way the support forum reads this account is forever "in limbo" and even turning 18 won't fix that.
Surely Google writes off old "debts" after a period of time. Maybe not? I guess they will make interest off it at a minimum.
> but the way the support forum reads this account is forever "in limbo" and even turning 18 won't fix that.
I think this is poor writing from the 'Product Expect' person - the 13 year old already has an adsense account that is 'active' but 'unverified', but verification is still possible.
> If he tries to apply again when he is 18 he will be refused on the grounds of already having an account, even though he will have abandoned it, it's still there.
but he's not re-applying, just verifying the existing account. The parent here did not indicate that 'verification' is now unavailable, just that the parent can't input their own name into the verification form.
If the teen entered into a lied about his age in a labor contract, performed the labor, and the employer hold the money after discovering the correct age, he would probably end in jail. Yet it's almost the same situation.
I tried advertising a startup website I had, setup the payments wrong on adsense. Something with an old invalid card being linked or something, and google banned me for life through an automated system. The system thinks I tried to commit some sort of payments fraud.
It's very unwise to lie to a service provider when they explicitly ask, especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud.
Google's not gating out under-18-year-olds for fun: they're a business, they'd love to make more money. Contract law in the US forbids people under 18 from entering into broad categories of contract, and Adsense use operates under electronic contract between user and Google where money changes hands in both directions. Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
The "under-18-year-olds can't enter into contracts" laws are, broadly speaking, derived historically from child labor protection concerns, and tend to be state-level law.
There's very real risk that legitimizing a contract with a child opens Google up to expensive-to-litigate criminal liability.
Children technically can enter into contracts. But they're voidable contracts, so it's essentially no upside and only downside for those that would contract with them.
That would depend on whose laws you were applying. In a lot of places, fraud requires a misrepresentation that's actually material to the transaction, and a court could come down on either side of the question of whether the user's age was material in the necessary way.
> Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
No, they really don't. They might open themselves up to limited liability if they let a minor do something that lost said minor money. They also might not be able to enforce some of the "take it or leave it" provisions of their terms against minors (of course, in a sane legal system they wouldn't be able to enforce those terms against anybody, but you don't see many if any sane legal systems).
But they do not open themselves up to "huge liability".
Nonetheless, they don't choose to take even those small risks. Mostly, I suspect, because the response wouldn't be automatable. Google hates anything that's not automatable, and vehemently resists manually fixing anything. That applies to interacting with adults, too, and to cases where you haven't even actually violated their policies, but the automation happens to be wrong, which happens all the time.
Which is why nobody of any age should be depending on Google.
If Google was so worried about this, their AI and behavior analytics can %99.9 know you are underage. They could show a BIG RED alert multiple times about this. Plus, I don't see heavy upload traffic from these young people becoming a liability on their end which is basically free work.
> especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud
no, that's not fraud. It might be an element of fraud if it was a loophole you were exploiting to use the account for some fraudulent purpose, but fraud requires theft or similar, not just technical violations of terms.
I received a lifelong ban on using Google Ad products when I was 16 after experimenting with clicking my own ads (and asking my high school friends to click on them). I remember the account accumulated almost $80 before Google detected the suspicious activity and banned me.
Given that this was 16 years ago, it would be nice to get second chance..
Perhaps you did not note that the banned person was 16 years old. There should be very few actions with life long consequences for any 16 year old. Their prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. They experiment and engage with the world to learn its boundaries and limits.
Click fraud for $80 when 16yo does not warrant a lifetime ban.
I beg do differ. When I was a kid I used to have a YouTube channel with AdSense. Difference being I actually read the ToS and decided that it would be my parents channel, only I would be recording. Never clicked on my channels ads (in fact that's when I started using AdBlockers, for the sole purpose of not generating fraudulent ad revenue).
Reading at 16 years old is not that hard. I created that YouTube channel much earlier than that. I also don't believe that as I aged I have magically understood better the worlds boundaries and limits.
Mind you, 16 years old is enough to drive in some places. Enough to work in others. And also enough to drink in some others. It's just not that young and people should take responsibilities for their actions.
Principles and values are something that's established early on in someone's life. If someone doesn't care for defrauding a company of $80 when they are 16 years old, I don't honestly believe they deserve a second chance.
Are you making the claim that since you didn't make a mistake at 16 that no other 16 yo can make mistakes? As well as the claim that any mistakes made at 16 means that the person will forever repeat those same mistakes for life?
> He spent his teenage years reading terms and conditions
I spent 15 minutes or so reading a document which I'm obligated to read to sign a contract and discovered I myself couldn't do it and so passed that to someone else.
> lets not pretend he didn't make mistakes
That's true. I do have multiple regrets too. Reading terms of services isn't one though.
> Are you making the claim that since you didn't make a mistake at 16 that no other 16 yo can make mistakes?
No.
> As well as the claim that any mistakes made at 16 means that the person will forever repeat those same mistakes for life?
No.
I said that since I didn't make that mistake much before 16 years old (13 or so) then it's possible for a 16 years old to not make the same mistake. That's about reading ToS, defrauding Google is a whole other can of worms.
I also didn't say they will make the same mistakes for life, only that they shouldn't get another chance. Google has no reason from their point of view to give access to their platform to someone who once tried to defraud them and put them in several liabilities related to child labor and exploitation.
What fraud did I commit? There's nothing in Google's terms of service stating I can't appear in my parents channel. The money went to them, not me, I never saw a dime. No wrong information was sent to Google.
In fact when we were considering AdWords we got in touch with a local AdWords representative (yes, Google has support, but only for the business they care about) and we talked about a lot of this stuff.
Please tell me if I'm missing something and I'll be happy to retract what I've said.
This idea of never forgive, never forget is why the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Punishment is the singular goal, and rehabilitation is considered weakness. This kind of thinking is antisocial and serves no purpose other than some kind of revenge fantasy.
I think that's somewhat true except in business/entrepreneurship, where the US seems way more forgiving to failure than Europe. Bankruptcy is also more common and it seems to me that people in the US respect having tried hard and failed hard more than having no failures on your resume.
Agreed. That + the offense itself is rather stupid minor. The user didn't defraud people out of a lot of money, the user literally just had a few classmates click on an ad, made $80 (that I bet weren't paid out anyway, because the account got banned), and now they are banned for life.
At the very worst, I would say a more fair punishment would be a ban for a year or until they reach the age of 18 (whichever comes later out of those), especially given it was the first offence.
Though I agree with your judgment of what would be more fair, for me it doesn’t extend to compelling a private entity to enter into a contract with another private entity.
We already require private entities providing services/products to the public to not discrimiate who they enter into contracts with based on certain protected attributes.
However in this case you don't even need to do that - just make it illegal for such services to keep information on minors for longer than $period. If they can't identify you they can't deny you service while still indiscriminately providing service to everyone else.
Another example along your lines: many were quick to declare that the chess player Hans Niemann ought to be banned from the sport because he admitted to cheating at online no-stakes chess games when he was 16. He is accused (without evidence) of cheating again, and people are latching on to the "once a cheater, always a cheater" mentality.
He's 19. He cheated and then lied about it, and continued lying about it until very very recently, and credibly allegedly is still lying about it. His coach is also an unapologetic cheater in a Titled tournament.
He deserves to still be on probation, not playing with world champions.
I had Google shutdown my Adsense account and they didn't ever reveal why, I think they just didn't like the site it was on (A twitter picture search engine) but they never told me. I certainly didn't think I was doing anything nefarious, but maybe my site wasn't supposed to be displaying ads. They kept my money (like $3k) and I am pretty sure I can't ever use the service again, but I honestly haven't tried.
I also get a letter every so often (this was 10+ years ago) from one of the big auditing firms that I have money in my google account and I just need to go claim it by logging into the account I can't login to anymore.
This is also a case for online play on xbox and playstation. You have kids trying to shittalk.. and trying to be edgy. (They have very little life experience to understand why their words are wrong or hurtful). However, some of these bans completely wipe out their entire console.
It's pretty shitty to do a life time ban on their accounts for minor things like that.
Yes. I have not tried using a different gmail address. I am not sure if they have my SSN on record or not, it was a long time ago, I don't remember what information I gave them but I did use my real name.
Same. I wasn't clicking my own ads but I was 16ish and had some sort of text along the lines "Please click an ad to support this website."
20 years later, I'm still banned (well, last I checked was probably 5 years ago). Funnily enough, my day job has me interacting with AdWords pretty regularly.
Also, FWIW you can probably sign up with an EIN, just not a personal account with your SSN.
Google is subject to the laws of every jurisdiction in which Google operates. Furthermore US law doesn't actually require Google to refuse to do business with minors. So if a jurisdiction had some rule that was contradictory to Google's policy (which I doubt), then Google would have to comply.
- Is the '18' adjusted when the local age of legal majority is not 18?
I believe it will be increased if the age of majority is above 18, but has a lower limit of 18 even if the local age of majority is below that.
- Are there jurisdictions where this policy is in clear conflict with local law or case law?
I'm not sure how it could be, generally companies are allowed to ban a customer for almost any reason (with certain rare exceptions). I'm not aware of any jurisdiction where "I lied about my age when I was a kid" is a protected class.
> Are there jurisdictions where this policy is in clear conflict with local law or case law?
Brazilian here. I just found one case where a judge legitimized a contract after a 16 year old misrepresented her age in order to contract a service and then tried to nullify the contract by claiming she was a minor at the time. Essentially the Google situation but reversed.
"By submitting an application to use the Services, if you are an individual, you represent that you are at least 18 years of age... Google may at any time terminate your Account because of ... your failure to otherwise fully comply with the AdSense Policies... If ... Google suspends or terminates your Account, you (i) are prohibited from creating a new Account, and (ii) may not be permitted to monetize content on other Google products."
a) Imagine you are 13 years old and actually reading Terms of Services. Just imagine you are under 18.
b) It's legal speak mentioning "you cannot create a new account" but it doesn't say you can't try to fix the problems about your existing account. The problem is there is nobody to reach for mistakes or downright violations from Google's side. It doesn't work to help people with good intentions realizing their errors.
c) It's not mentioning that you will forever be blocked because you misrepresented your age for whatever the reason (just an unaware click is enough).
If Google was actually serious in enforcing the policy, they would just check any detail that could trigger this user could be below 18 years of age. As you read here, they don't spend much of an effort to avoid this scenario. AI works just to block you, not to avoid your downfall.
d) I wonder Google informs kids this much before making money on free content they upload on Youtube. It's not hard to see this is one-sided exploitation in business sense.
> a) Imagine you are 13 years old and actually reading Terms of Services. Just imagine you are under 18.
No need to imagine because I did exactly that (read my other comment). Let's get into this:
> c) It's not mentioning that you will forever be blocked because you misrepresented your age for whatever the reason (just an unaware click is enough).
It is mentioning SPECIFICALLY that. And an unaware click is not enough, you have to go through the trouble of reading the contract (or scrolling past it), checking a lot of boxes, saying you agree to the contract, and that's only after you in your own will and power decided to search for this. You also get to change your birthday once in your Google account if you made any mistakes during singup.
> If Google was actually serious in enforcing the policy, they would just check any detail that could trigger this user could be below 18 years of age. As you read here, they don't spend much of an effort to avoid this scenario. AI works just to block you, not to avoid your downfall.
Then people will complain that they require documentation, privacy this, privacy that. Mind you that I would never submit an ID to Google to verify my identity, but honestly that's the only way they can actually verify your age.
I'm not a fan of Google and it's autobanning processes with no recourse, but this is a special case where I think it's completely justified looking from their side and all the liabilities they have if they decide to backtrack on something like this.
For them someone is going to criticize them either way they take, so they choose the easier and simpler path of permabanning.
As someone who operated on the "adult internet" with payment processors and related infrastructure without being 18, I still carry forward the constant fear that I'll be banned for retroactive Terms of Service violations incurred when I was a kid. It really sucks when it's services like AdSense because you're just screwed forever.
I really really wish the internet was more supportive of "early hackers" who want to experiment. I get that there are tons of implications around contract law and child labor here, but there really needs to be an escape hatch if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done. Ostensibly, this is a young creator getting discouraged from their hobby, even though they've shown that they're good enough at it to deserve some form of compensation. This'll leave a bad taste in the kid's mouth for a long time.
> if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done
My mom definitely wouldn’t be able to provide informed consent to half the stuff I was doing on the internet in high school and middle school even if I told her about it.
She worried, I’m sure, but between speaking next to zero english and the novelty of www in the early 00’s, best she could do was threaten to take the computer if things got too weird.
When I was a kid, i hosted WC3 beta cracks, patches, and servers on our ISP Webspace. Blizzard had some call our ISP, who called my dad, who told me to stop doing whatever it was that got people mad
It feel like nowadays, it'd have resulted in a lawsuit, but at least threatening lawyer letters.
For anyone interested, this was strictly beta, by a group of crackers who said they’d stop releasing anything as soon as the game was done. I was one of 4 or 5 people who’d get advanced notification in IRC to upload the newest patches etc. so there’d be multiple mirrors available for the announcement.
Nowadays they would have tried to get you taken from your parents and sent to an Activision owned private prison facility to stamp out Blizzard game stickers.
Hmm, in Germany children and teens can still enter contracts, as long as they are able to pay it with their monthly pocket money. Every single thing you buy here in a supermarket is also an implicit contract (Kaufvertrag).
So, you could theoretically rent servers and buy ad space on Adsense as long your pocket money covers it. On the other hand: this is a liability for Google and $provider -- as most of them are post-pay. If a teen ever decides to spawn an A1000 instance with 36 cores and cannot pay, the contract is void and Google has no entitlement for compensation.
Pre-paid stuff like a small instance on vultr.com should work fine, though.
I believe to remember that the contract is valid if a minor of that age typically has that amount of money available and can understand the consequences of the contract. So the business owner does not need to know how much money the particulur kid gets. If the particular kid gets exceptionally small pocket money the contract is valid and the parents are responsible for its legal implications.
Of course what is typical for a certain age might end up for interpretation by the courts in the worst case (and occasionally it does).
I have not heard that it would be outdated as a concept. What would be the replacement? To my understanding it is generally recommended the give minors some money. And parents should not interfere much even if they disagree how it's spent.
What the term would be in English speaking countries I have no idea if pocket money sounds archaic. The translation sounds good to me not being a native speaker.
The sum might depend a lot on the country. I have no contacts to 16 year olds so I can't tell.
https://www.wiado.de/taschengeldparagraph-was-ist-das/ has a table. It doesn't look completely unreasonable for Germany. Please note that this is not a law, so if a case goes the court the judge might come to slightly different figures.
There is plenty they can do and that they're already doing. The inability to enter contracts with someone doesn't mean they need to get banned for life from the service.
They have a choice. They could ban him until he's 18 or 5 years lapse whichever is longer. It's not black and white and doesn't need to be for life. I know the google guy who informed him he was banned for life has no power over that though. This is a straight up decision from much higher up than his pay grade. So he informed the person and locked it. It's all he could really do. I hope the internet rage-brigade doesn't do anything bad to him.
Is it really? At the very least he can refuse to lock/resolve the question and quit. Perhaps not something to reasonably expect for a single customer. Perhaps he really needs that job to survive. But the notion that you are not responsible for your companies bad behavior that you are part of just because you don't make the decisions is absurd.
Do you know for sure it is absolutely impossible? I know at least 3 countries where you can get a permission from your parents being 16, 14, or even 12.
I know that, because I was 16 when we did the procedure to allow me be adult (have all the rights of being 21, except vote and consume alcohol)
The US is pretty strict about it, legally speaking.
If I recall correctly, the reason I couldn't get a debit card for my bank account as a 14/15 year old without giving a guardian access to my account is that issuing a debit card required signing a contract and I legally couldn't do that.
Minors do sign things, they just have no legal validity for the most part (I think employment docs for kids over 14/16 might be an exception, but a lot of states regulate that and mandate an adult's consent as well).
But things can be done without contracts. You can't hold a child accountable to pay a bill--but children certainly can buy things. You simply make things with children entirely prepay or time-of-transaction pay (you hand the clerk the $, you get the item.)
There is a difference between a parent's account and a child's account that was agreed to by a parent. One says "I am doing this", the other "my child is doing this and I'm allowing it".
> As someone who operated on the "adult internet" with payment processors and related infrastructure without being 18, I still carry forward the constant fear that I'll be banned for retroactive Terms of Service violations incurred when I was a kid. It really sucks when it's services like AdSense because you're just screwed forever.
The thing is, most parents wouldn't even think "Oh, you'll need to do that in my name." when their kid says they want to build some website and put ads on it. They just think "Oh that's cute, we'll figure out the money stuff later."
> The thing is, most parents wouldn't even think "Oh, you'll need to do that in my name."
I certainly wouldn't think that, as it sounds like horrible idea. Your teenage child posts one picture of themselves in a compromising situation, and suddenly you're lost all access to your accounts for the rest of your life. I'll pass, thanks.
And, yes, I get the "educate your children" thing.. but children do stupid things. Heck, an adult lost their gmail account forever because the sent a picture of their child to their doctor; one the doctor asked for.
I'm pretty sure half of the folk in tech at some point did illegal tech things in their teens. Rebelling and breaking the law in your teens is kind of normal and should be expected in my opinion.
Right. I physically broke into my high school to make a copy of the Commodore diskette station manual. We students had only access to PET casette tape readers. Cybercrime was not a thing yet.
> Heck, an adult lost their gmail account forever because the sent a picture of their child to their doctor; one the doctor asked for.
All the bad press didn't sort that out? That kind of thing shouldn't happen in the first place, but we can usually expect that once it hits headlines some PR drone swoops in to fix the issue.
Certainly not everyone that this type of thing happens to gets front page attention. I don't know that it ever got resolved but, even if it did, the "I was able to convince tends of thousands of people to talk about my issue until someone paid attention" is not a reasonable process to go through. Even in the best case, he lost access to his accounts for an unreasonable amount of time. If he used the same account for business, that could be financially disastrous.
That's a definition of the word "fix" with which I am unfamiliar.
He still doesn't have access to his accounts.
If a sympathetic police department had not offered to navigate the (likely complex) process of restoring their copy of his data to him, he would have little hope of recovering the data, either. (My hat's off to whomever made that decision, because my guess is other considerations would almost always prevail.)
If federal investigators had not been quite so favorable in recognizing the nature of the situation, that component alone could have easily ruined him.
I'm also unaware of what his legal and other professional fees have been in all this, but I would imagine Google has done nothing to reimburse him for his expenses, much less compensate him for the time wasted and incredible stress that had to place on him and his family.
Beyond all that, getting SEO bombed as being potentially involved in the production and distribution CSAM is not a positive outcome for anyone who values their privacy or wants to ever have a normal interaction with a new employer or any other entity that may search his name. Beyond that, those who regularly fill out official forms relating to background and behavior will forever have to answer some questions differently and jump through the additional hoops an experience like that would trigger.
His outcome has been one of the least-terrible possibilities, but I hope he sues Google in a very public and embarrassing way, because whatever damages are awarded will be a rounding error to them.
Finally, the process itself is by no indications anything but still completely broken.
Google doesn't really care about bad PR from account deletions. Most people don't hear about them, they rarely hit the news.
What annoys me is, just this week Meta tried to claim that they were basically a social infrastructure that is essential everyone uses and relies on and that they shouldn't be held to blame for what people see on there when it's legal to post. While at the same time, these companies don't want to act like any of the other infrastructure. Ban people for no reason, no recourse, and no come back. While at the same time claiming they're there for the people and are providing a public service.
Google's PR team explicitly said they will never reinstate that user and that they stand by their CSAM detection policy.
I'm not sure what mindset drives people to say "even if you didn't commit a crime, you're guilty of the appearance of that crime, which is good enough". Social media outrage mobs perhaps, but my money is more on "this user puts us at risk of criminal prosecution". A lot of companies treat CSAM detection & removal as a subdepartment of risk management, which means lots of "shut the fuck up and go away".
Maybe don't have the account that is linked to their adsense linked to anything but their adsense? Seems completely insane to link an adsense account you created for your child to anything but what it needs to be used for adsense.
Honestly, if you're making money from something you should have it away from your personal things. Just like how you shouldn't have AWS activated for your main amazon account.
I get that there are tons of implications around contract law and child labor here, but there really needs to be an escape hatch if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done.
While it's happening, it can be done using the parent's identity. After that, the same logic that prevents a minor to commit, because limited responsability, should be applied to avoid perpetual consequences.
But as usual, companies apply draconian measures that governments can't. Some day we'll finally get that regulation that draws a line between utilities and publishers...
>” But as usual, companies apply draconian measures that governments can't. Some day we'll finally get that regulation that draws a line between utilities and publishers..”
Technically true, but the government often uses regulations and investigatory powers to compel private corporations to enact draconian regulations that the government cannot enact on its own.
Companies cannot legally provide a lot of services to minors.
For other services there is enough bureaucracy that it's easier to avoid by not providing the service to minors.
It's also easier to ban accounts for life when they lie about who they are. You don't run the risk of aiding fraud and being fined if you make a mistake, because you banned them.
There was nothing preventing the kid from creatibg content. It was in using Ad Sense to make money off it.
Sure but that doesn’t mean they should be banned for life. If you commit a crime as a minor does that follow you around for the rest of your life? At least where I live, it doesn’t.
It doesn't mean that it shouldn't though, either. I can't imagine any other way around this that doesn't amount to forcing a company to provide a service to someone they have rational reasons to not trust, which seems like globally at least it could cause more problems than it solves.
To be clear I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage a company to re-consider when the person is older, but it's hard to see how they should be forced to.
Nothing wrong with that. Just do it. Force them to provide service to the kids they banned for life due to frivolous violations of contracts nobody really reads anyway.
> it's hard to see how they should be forced to
It's really easy actually. Someone getting permabanned from a service for the unforgivable offense of being a child is completely out of proportion.
We already force them to provide service to the disabled and impaired without discrimination. It's okay to do it. Corporations don't have feelings. Nobody really cares how hard life is for the hundred billion dollar corporation either.
You can just use a friend's account ? There is no way of banning someone really.
Growing up with the internet it always felt these companies were playing with fire. I can't explain it. The 90s were a wild time I guess. That generation knows about using fake names and addresses.
I guess I have never seen these businesses as proper businesses like the local mom and pop shop whose owner you know and respect and who respects you.
But google and other such companies always feel like they are trying to use you and you are trying to use them.
Forgive me if I am incorrect, its been years since I have used it, but don't you need to link a bank account and social security number to receive money from Adsense?
You could just get a check mailed. I lived in Europe then and got a check that I cashed at my bank. I didn’t have a SSN, so but maybe US citizens had to provide it.
Granted this was 15 or so years ago so things might have changed since then.
Nowadays BSA requires KYC. Any type of money transmission requires collection of enough PII to do an OFAC check to ensure you aren't facilitating activity to a sanctioned individual. Banks/clearinghouses are usually on the line for doing this for their clients.
For a while they just mailed paper checks on any month when the 100 USD minimum threshold was passed. If they didn't get cashed they'd send threatening letters about 'escheatment'. I think that stopped at some point about 10yrs ago. Not sure about what happened after.
I remember registering with an non-adult affiliate marketing company as a kid. I'm pretty sure they knew I was young and they just didn't care. Either they used that as an excuse to rip me off or none of my leads ever converted lol
The idea that they don't have a timeout feature rather than a "banned for life" antifeature explains all you need to know about these megacorps that are mostly the only game in town for what they do. This is why Congress (and other equivalents) need to kick them in the balls every so often to let them know who is actually in charge.
> Specially, if you the intend is to "protect" children, this is not helpful.
No, rather, current US law means that technically minors can't enter into contracts until age 16, and many provisions aren't enforceable until 18 or local age-of-majority. Broadly, because of child labor laws, it's not possible for actual children to enter into work/employee relationships or sign contracts legally, just period. This is supposed to stop exploitation of children (sign this stupid contract and now you're encumbered without being fully cognizant of what that means or entails).
I'm in the opposite boat: I told paypal I was under 18 when I was under 18, called them, they kept my account locked, but as soon as I turned 18 I was unblocked and could used my original account. And I made the account when I was 11.
Tried to verify my age at 16, which locked the account. Called them and they said they can't do anything until i'm 18. After 6 months I was able to withdraw the funds into a bank account I owned. Only at 18 was I able to log in and redo KYC/driver's license upload.
It's possible that when they signed up/created the account, it wasn't required.
Paypal was founded before there were any laws about age for signing up for things online, and minors are legally allowed bank accounts that their guardians don't have access to. (Or at least they used to be allowed: I had one at 14 in 2002).
I made a PayPal account when I was 17 and used it happily for 12 years. In 2021 (being almost 30 years old) I got a payment from US (I'm in the EU) and had to provide ID to PayPal.
They figured out that I made my account a few months before my 18th birthday and permanently locked my account.
It seems all of this is arbitrary more or less random bullshit.
What if you filed a legal request for all the information Paypal has on you, then for deletion of that information? This is permitted by EU law, is possible in most EU countries and should fix the permaban issues for most cases.
Companies are not required to delete infomation they have a legitimate reason to keep. For a financial service this is almost certainly going to include enough information to identify you.
The old apocryphal tale comes to mind of the CD clubs.
-Everyone knew a person back in the day who signed up for the CD clubs promising dollar CD's, or 10 for a dollar. Whatever the various deals were.
-With those deals came a commitment to buy 10 - 20 more albums at full price.
-You sign a contract agreeing to this.
-So the friend-of-a-friend signed it while under 18 and a minor.
-They then tell the CD club that the agreement is null and void on account of them not being legally able to sign a contract, and after getting their 10 CD's for a dollar or whatever, to cancel their account.
In my era they didn't even have much of a requirement to buy that many, it was like signup and get 10 or 20 CDs if you buy two, and then they'd keep sending you CDs that you had to say "return" on for a year or so.
Note that the responses are responses by a community member and not by a Google employee. As such, those responses should be taken with a grain of salt.
Worth noting that this is the statement of a "product expert" which is just some random person not an employee of the company our the actual policy. This might be true but this isn't a reliable source.
I've been banned-for-life from a handful of services after I lied about my age as a kid.
I can see both (all?) sides of this:
- As a society we ought to be forgiving of harmless youthful indiscretions
- As a business you shouldn't have to give second chances to people who blatantly defraud you
- There is a big can of worms when it comes to doing business with minors on the internet. I don't think there's a solution as easy as "well when they're 18, let them log into their account and update their age to acknowledge that they were using the service as a minor" or "just let people open multiple accounts (with wildly different ages) under their name."
dystopia does not require the government - in fact some popular fictional dystopias are when corporations can control/etc without the government intervening. So maybe just don't word police other people because you don't like their words.
The definition is "imagined state or society great suffering or injustice" -- Google cannot cause you great suffering or injustice because it has little to no power over you. Only a government or similar can truly cause great suffering en masse.
its not an argument, its about the definition of the word, and how you were word policing based on your opinion that doesn't actually reflect the way the word is used.
It wouldn't be an issue if you just had given your opinion instead of demanding he stop using words, which was the primary reason for my reply, because you demanding other people stop using words is insufferably arrogant.
> Is it insufferably arrogant to ask people to stop using insensitive, hateful, or discriminatory words?
When that word is 'dystopia', yeah. Getting this offended about a megacorp being called dystopian is insufferable. Whatever your relationship is to Google, it doesn't warrant this level of personal attachment. You're acting like he insulted your own mother or something.
I’m not offended in the least, I’m just tired of reading melodramatic takes from people who haven’t experienced any hardship. It’s a common theme here and I want it to be better. Let’s attribute the correct level of concern to things instead of calling keeping track of people who defrauded you “dystopian”. There’s literally a war happening and an actual real government cutting off communications to its people so that they can’t protest, let’s focus on that very real dystopia.
> I’m just tired of reading melodramatic takes from people who haven’t experienced any hardship ... There’s literally a war happening
On that note - I'm from Ukraine. Helped my mother-in-law get out of Kyiv in March, and went back to Ukraine in July with supplies for soldiers that weren't available locally (military radios and a bulletproof vest).
I also worked at Google on their Location team.
I am choosing my words with care, and I stand by them. In particular, the choice of the word dystopian. And lack of humanity is one of the reasons this war is happening. Dystopia starts in the minds.
Also, please don't exploit the war in Ukraine to needlessly police other people's speech. If you want to show support, that's not the best way.
A lot of dystopian scifi involves corporations; Robocop, Weyland-Yutani Corp from Aliens, etc. Google's got more power than substantial numbers of governments.
And yet Google can't come knock on your door and take you away. Calling it dystopian can only come from an incredibly sheltered individual who has never faced any real danger.
Plenty of dystopian fiction involves corporations legally not allowed to do something and still doing it, because they're functionally immune to consequences. There are also degrees of dystopian between "murder corp" and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
You might have an overly narrow definition of "dystopian".
It's not just the action; it's the ability to do it without significant consequences. I could sue you for slander if you called me a pedophile; my ability to do so (successfully) against Google is quite limited. Law enforcement is also likely to treat an accusation from Google differently than from some random person.
This is a hard edge case in my opinion, because unless you unregister that email everywhere you used it, someone else will gain access to all your old accounts which would leak potentially much worse things than a record saying this email is not available anymore.
> The processing of personal data strictly necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud also constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned.
I wonder if you could argue that it isn't "strictly necessary" after a certain point though. Does ToS abuse by minors in this way really predict fraud 15 years later? If the SNR of a signal decays over time, at a certain point do the interests of liberty exceed the interests of preventing fraud?
I have absolutely no idea and am not a lawyer, it just seems to me that the word "strictly" is meant to indicate that it isn't pixie dust companies can sprinkle on any piece of information as they choose. The rest of the language here seems to stress that there has to be some sort of test which demonstrates that the interests of the controller overrides the interest of the data subject.
At least the GPDR should allow you to correct the age. I don't think it has any provisions that say that if you entered incorrect data yourself, you waive your right to have data corrected.
They'd be required to correct the age, but they wouldn't be required to delete the "this person defrauded us by giving a false age" flag/note on your internal profile.
It’s an easy argument, but that doesn’t make it correct. Within law “crimes” have a statue of limitations and almost never infinite long punishment. A strong argument is needed to override someones rights for an unlimited time like that.
If you work in the EU, have a chat with your DPO/Privacy team cause I bet they would actually find this an interesting conversation too.
The problem is the company is in a privileged position. And there have to be limits. If not, they could stretch the definition of "defrauded me" to whatever they want, for example including discrimination of any kind.
How would deleting the account in question help anyone, though? Or are you saying that after deleting, they would then be allowed to re-register after a ban? Isn't that just isomorphic to demanding Free Ban Evasion for All?
>How would deleting the account in question help anyone, though? Or are you saying that after deleting, they would then be allowed to re-register after a ban?
The problem described in the post is that the user has a shadow, inaccessible disabled account that they can't do anything about, forever, and that's a problem.
>Isn't that just isomorphic to demanding Free Ban Evasion for All?
I think it would be isomorphic to Google implementing verification on account creation, thereby preventing this scenario from happening in the first place.
> I think it would be isomorphic to Google implementing verification on account creation, thereby preventing this scenario from happening in the first place.
They did, though. They straight up asked the kid if he was 18, and he lied and said "yes". I don't know what you want here, you want Google to... protect it's customers from their own fraud? Does any other industry do that?
(full disclosure: I work there, but on open source firmware and know nothing about Adsense)
> As a business you shouldn't have to give second chances to people who blatantly defraud you
Says who? Society can easily make it so they have to. Besides, "fraud" is a bit too strong a word for a kid that simply didn't care about some company's idiotic "you have to be 13 to post here" message on the sign up screen.
I’ve never used AdSense, so might be a stupid question, but how do they identify you? Are you supposed to give them some lifetime identifying information like SSN? Everything else like email, name, address can be changed.
Apparently this is not possible. Because it's not possible to verify the account, as the person doing the verification has a different birthdate than what's associated with the account.
I’ve been banned on google ads for circumventing systems for about 2 years now. This is apparently their highest offense and to be perfectly honest I still have no idea what I did. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than a couple hundred bucks on google ads and one day I was just banned and my ads were stopped.
So as far as I can tell there’s plenty of not so clear things that will get you banned from google ads, don’t build your life and business around that advertising stream is what I learned.
That and that there are better advertising avenues for the niches I tend to care about.
I know this is going to be hard to prove, but I was banned forever because they detected "click fraud" which did not come from me. It was likely initiated by a competitor.
Now I still use adsense, but now it is through a 3rd party which takes a hefty cut of the profits.
If adsense is your sole income, you should probably diversify. Anyone can get you permanently banned unless you are a well known youtuber.
I think for this to work, Google actually has to delete any information about you completely from its systems. I'm curious if anyone tried this with success as well.
> The processing of personal data strictly necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud also constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned.
GDPR does not fix this situation. There are cut-outs in GDPR that allows companies to store data for longer. Financial/billing/taxes fall under that category.
Right, how about this is 100% Google's fault for not figuring out how to avoid offering contracts to children. Seems more reasonable than anyone else getting any amount of blame or punishment whatsoever, including and especially the minor involved.
On every terms of service document there is a clause that says "we can terminate our service to you unilaterally with no warning for any reason including no reason". It's basically the catch all exception handler of the legal world these corporations live in.
I tried starting a blog as a kid, I tried monetizing it using Adsense, my application never got accepted, but somehow my account ended up active for 5 minutes before my application got rejected again. I abandoned the blog, and on visiting it after two years, I found out it's showing ads with an adsense account that shouldn't be showing ads, and then I was banned. I would never know if it was because I was still a minor or because Google bots didn't do a very good job.
A very strong rule of thumb is that whenever a conversation gets locked, whichever side did the locking is in the wrong. The other big place this applies is GitHub issues and PR's.
If you're under 18, then you cannot legally consent to the TOS, therefore you can't be in violation of them. They can kick you off of then of course, but banning you later on as an adult I wouldn't think would be justified because, as above, you can't violate TOS that you can't consent to when under 18.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 268 ms ] threadThis is what you get when you have no humans in the loop.
Google's growth rates are starting to plateau, and they might want to revisit the legion of people they've robobanned from spending on their platforms.
Fraud occurred here. Google just shuffling the shells might be aiding and abetting fraud.
(The law here isn't set up just to protect Google; nor is it set up to just protect the kid. It ties into broader societal protections against child exploitation and child labor. So Google runs the risk of tripping over criminal liability, in which case the end result is no longer in the hands of any of the immediate parties. Their policies are maximally paranoid to avoid that outcome).
Utter nonsense.
"Hold on, you are 13? Get your parents to call us, they'll have to set up that account for you"
b) Worries about child labor: already happened. Google profited from his activity already. It's just the kid not receiving anything.
Complained and got unbanned.
AWS has even a notary(!) based process to recover accounts.
It is pretty normal to recover bad things on non-Google sites by getting a human into the loop, especially if money is involved.
Weird, they banned my account for that. Tried AWS when it was brand new and assumed they'd just drop the instance when the free tier expired.
Google does not offer Adsense/Admob support for ordinary people. No way to reach them.
But stealing a trivial amount of money from a corporation, well that's certainly deserving of an Internet Death Penalty.
It was only $300 and it was never paid out (since it needed more verification to pay out). If anything Google /made/ and extra $300 (they made more than that since the $300 is after their take). Also it wasn't "stolen" it was earned on a YT channel.
Not really, since they can cash it out when they're 18, and unclaimed but earned funds on an active but unverified AdSense account don't just disappear into the ether - so on Google's balance sheet, they don't have an extra $300.
Surely Google writes off old "debts" after a period of time. Maybe not? I guess they will make interest off it at a minimum.
I think this is poor writing from the 'Product Expect' person - the 13 year old already has an adsense account that is 'active' but 'unverified', but verification is still possible.
> If he tries to apply again when he is 18 he will be refused on the grounds of already having an account, even though he will have abandoned it, it's still there.
but he's not re-applying, just verifying the existing account. The parent here did not indicate that 'verification' is now unavailable, just that the parent can't input their own name into the verification form.
If the teen entered into a lied about his age in a labor contract, performed the labor, and the employer hold the money after discovering the correct age, he would probably end in jail. Yet it's almost the same situation.
Google's not gating out under-18-year-olds for fun: they're a business, they'd love to make more money. Contract law in the US forbids people under 18 from entering into broad categories of contract, and Adsense use operates under electronic contract between user and Google where money changes hands in both directions. Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
The latter might be true, but every time Google becomes aware of it they will cancel that account as quickly as they can.
What liability is that? Genuinely asking because I've never heard that concern.
There's very real risk that legitimizing a contract with a child opens Google up to expensive-to-litigate criminal liability.
That would depend on whose laws you were applying. In a lot of places, fraud requires a misrepresentation that's actually material to the transaction, and a court could come down on either side of the question of whether the user's age was material in the necessary way.
> Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
No, they really don't. They might open themselves up to limited liability if they let a minor do something that lost said minor money. They also might not be able to enforce some of the "take it or leave it" provisions of their terms against minors (of course, in a sane legal system they wouldn't be able to enforce those terms against anybody, but you don't see many if any sane legal systems).
But they do not open themselves up to "huge liability".
Nonetheless, they don't choose to take even those small risks. Mostly, I suspect, because the response wouldn't be automatable. Google hates anything that's not automatable, and vehemently resists manually fixing anything. That applies to interacting with adults, too, and to cases where you haven't even actually violated their policies, but the automation happens to be wrong, which happens all the time.
Which is why nobody of any age should be depending on Google.
How expensive would it be to defend these cases in court N times per day in different of jurisdictions? It to have them aggregated into class action?
no, that's not fraud. It might be an element of fraud if it was a loophole you were exploiting to use the account for some fraudulent purpose, but fraud requires theft or similar, not just technical violations of terms.
Given that this was 16 years ago, it would be nice to get second chance..
Click fraud for $80 when 16yo does not warrant a lifetime ban.
Reading at 16 years old is not that hard. I created that YouTube channel much earlier than that. I also don't believe that as I aged I have magically understood better the worlds boundaries and limits.
Mind you, 16 years old is enough to drive in some places. Enough to work in others. And also enough to drink in some others. It's just not that young and people should take responsibilities for their actions.
Principles and values are something that's established early on in someone's life. If someone doesn't care for defrauding a company of $80 when they are 16 years old, I don't honestly believe they deserve a second chance.
I spent 15 minutes or so reading a document which I'm obligated to read to sign a contract and discovered I myself couldn't do it and so passed that to someone else.
> lets not pretend he didn't make mistakes
That's true. I do have multiple regrets too. Reading terms of services isn't one though.
No.
> As well as the claim that any mistakes made at 16 means that the person will forever repeat those same mistakes for life?
No.
I said that since I didn't make that mistake much before 16 years old (13 or so) then it's possible for a 16 years old to not make the same mistake. That's about reading ToS, defrauding Google is a whole other can of worms.
I also didn't say they will make the same mistakes for life, only that they shouldn't get another chance. Google has no reason from their point of view to give access to their platform to someone who once tried to defraud them and put them in several liabilities related to child labor and exploitation.
In fact when we were considering AdWords we got in touch with a local AdWords representative (yes, Google has support, but only for the business they care about) and we talked about a lot of this stuff.
Please tell me if I'm missing something and I'll be happy to retract what I've said.
> This kind of thinking is antisocial and serves no purpose other than some kind of revenge fantasy.
When it comes to putting someone in prison I agree 100%. When it comes to the right of a bussiness to reject a customer I disagree.
At the very worst, I would say a more fair punishment would be a ban for a year or until they reach the age of 18 (whichever comes later out of those), especially given it was the first offence.
However in this case you don't even need to do that - just make it illegal for such services to keep information on minors for longer than $period. If they can't identify you they can't deny you service while still indiscriminately providing service to everyone else.
Another example along your lines: many were quick to declare that the chess player Hans Niemann ought to be banned from the sport because he admitted to cheating at online no-stakes chess games when he was 16. He is accused (without evidence) of cheating again, and people are latching on to the "once a cheater, always a cheater" mentality.
I also get a letter every so often (this was 10+ years ago) from one of the big auditing firms that I have money in my google account and I just need to go claim it by logging into the account I can't login to anymore.
If only corporations were held to such a rule..
It's pretty shitty to do a life time ban on their accounts for minor things like that.
If you weren't 18, how did they know who you were?
20 years later, I'm still banned (well, last I checked was probably 5 years ago). Funnily enough, my day job has me interacting with AdWords pretty regularly.
Also, FWIW you can probably sign up with an EIN, just not a personal account with your SSN.
- Is the '18' adjusted when the local age of legal majority is not 18?
- Are there jurisdictions where this policy is in clear conflict with local law or case law?
I believe it will be increased if the age of majority is above 18, but has a lower limit of 18 even if the local age of majority is below that.
- Are there jurisdictions where this policy is in clear conflict with local law or case law?
I'm not sure how it could be, generally companies are allowed to ban a customer for almost any reason (with certain rare exceptions). I'm not aware of any jurisdiction where "I lied about my age when I was a kid" is a protected class.
Brazilian here. I just found one case where a judge legitimized a contract after a 16 year old misrepresented her age in order to contract a service and then tried to nullify the contract by claiming she was a minor at the time. Essentially the Google situation but reversed.
Seems pretty clear.
b) It's legal speak mentioning "you cannot create a new account" but it doesn't say you can't try to fix the problems about your existing account. The problem is there is nobody to reach for mistakes or downright violations from Google's side. It doesn't work to help people with good intentions realizing their errors.
c) It's not mentioning that you will forever be blocked because you misrepresented your age for whatever the reason (just an unaware click is enough).
If Google was actually serious in enforcing the policy, they would just check any detail that could trigger this user could be below 18 years of age. As you read here, they don't spend much of an effort to avoid this scenario. AI works just to block you, not to avoid your downfall.
d) I wonder Google informs kids this much before making money on free content they upload on Youtube. It's not hard to see this is one-sided exploitation in business sense.
So... pretty clear, yeah.
No need to imagine because I did exactly that (read my other comment). Let's get into this:
> c) It's not mentioning that you will forever be blocked because you misrepresented your age for whatever the reason (just an unaware click is enough).
It is mentioning SPECIFICALLY that. And an unaware click is not enough, you have to go through the trouble of reading the contract (or scrolling past it), checking a lot of boxes, saying you agree to the contract, and that's only after you in your own will and power decided to search for this. You also get to change your birthday once in your Google account if you made any mistakes during singup.
> If Google was actually serious in enforcing the policy, they would just check any detail that could trigger this user could be below 18 years of age. As you read here, they don't spend much of an effort to avoid this scenario. AI works just to block you, not to avoid your downfall.
Then people will complain that they require documentation, privacy this, privacy that. Mind you that I would never submit an ID to Google to verify my identity, but honestly that's the only way they can actually verify your age.
I'm not a fan of Google and it's autobanning processes with no recourse, but this is a special case where I think it's completely justified looking from their side and all the liabilities they have if they decide to backtrack on something like this.
For them someone is going to criticize them either way they take, so they choose the easier and simpler path of permabanning.
I really really wish the internet was more supportive of "early hackers" who want to experiment. I get that there are tons of implications around contract law and child labor here, but there really needs to be an escape hatch if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done. Ostensibly, this is a young creator getting discouraged from their hobby, even though they've shown that they're good enough at it to deserve some form of compensation. This'll leave a bad taste in the kid's mouth for a long time.
My mom definitely wouldn’t be able to provide informed consent to half the stuff I was doing on the internet in high school and middle school even if I told her about it.
She worried, I’m sure, but between speaking next to zero english and the novelty of www in the early 00’s, best she could do was threaten to take the computer if things got too weird.
It feel like nowadays, it'd have resulted in a lawsuit, but at least threatening lawyer letters.
edit: Archive.org link to the site. With a visitor counter and cringy teeny-sounding English ;) https://web.archive.org/web/20020522193227/http://home.foni....
For anyone interested, this was strictly beta, by a group of crackers who said they’d stop releasing anything as soon as the game was done. I was one of 4 or 5 people who’d get advanced notification in IRC to upload the newest patches etc. so there’d be multiple mirrors available for the announcement.
On that note, my sister can't wrap her head around the fact that people can have multiple bank accounts and many of them are completely free.
She looks at my collection of cards and says "omg the Finanzamt will get you!".
Just wait until they get you for making money off TikTok videos lol
Companies don't have a choice here: Someone under 18 can not enter into a contract, there's nothing really they can do.
Not sure if you can do that after you turn 18 though.
So, you could theoretically rent servers and buy ad space on Adsense as long your pocket money covers it. On the other hand: this is a liability for Google and $provider -- as most of them are post-pay. If a teen ever decides to spawn an A1000 instance with 36 cores and cannot pay, the contract is void and Google has no entitlement for compensation.
Pre-paid stuff like a small instance on vultr.com should work fine, though.
I couldn't believe you can rent 12 core servers for 3 months and not pay for it!
Yes, I know it was illegal lol
Of course what is typical for a certain age might end up for interpretation by the courts in the worst case (and occasionally it does).
Is pocket money universal? I thought it was somewhat outdated as a concept, but it could just be the archaic term.
What the term would be in English speaking countries I have no idea if pocket money sounds archaic. The translation sounds good to me not being a native speaker.
The sum might depend a lot on the country. I have no contacts to 16 year olds so I can't tell.
Is it really? At the very least he can refuse to lock/resolve the question and quit. Perhaps not something to reasonably expect for a single customer. Perhaps he really needs that job to survive. But the notion that you are not responsible for your companies bad behavior that you are part of just because you don't make the decisions is absurd.
I know that, because I was 16 when we did the procedure to allow me be adult (have all the rights of being 21, except vote and consume alcohol)
If I recall correctly, the reason I couldn't get a debit card for my bank account as a 14/15 year old without giving a guardian access to my account is that issuing a debit card required signing a contract and I legally couldn't do that.
Minors do sign things, they just have no legal validity for the most part (I think employment docs for kids over 14/16 might be an exception, but a lot of states regulate that and mandate an adult's consent as well).
If this were the case they someone under eighteen would not be able to buy anything in a shop. That is a contract.
Wouldn’t this be the parents signing up for the account?
The thing is, most parents wouldn't even think "Oh, you'll need to do that in my name." when their kid says they want to build some website and put ads on it. They just think "Oh that's cute, we'll figure out the money stuff later."
I certainly wouldn't think that, as it sounds like horrible idea. Your teenage child posts one picture of themselves in a compromising situation, and suddenly you're lost all access to your accounts for the rest of your life. I'll pass, thanks.
And, yes, I get the "educate your children" thing.. but children do stupid things. Heck, an adult lost their gmail account forever because the sent a picture of their child to their doctor; one the doctor asked for.
All the bad press didn't sort that out? That kind of thing shouldn't happen in the first place, but we can usually expect that once it hits headlines some PR drone swoops in to fix the issue.
He still doesn't have access to his accounts.
If a sympathetic police department had not offered to navigate the (likely complex) process of restoring their copy of his data to him, he would have little hope of recovering the data, either. (My hat's off to whomever made that decision, because my guess is other considerations would almost always prevail.)
If federal investigators had not been quite so favorable in recognizing the nature of the situation, that component alone could have easily ruined him.
I'm also unaware of what his legal and other professional fees have been in all this, but I would imagine Google has done nothing to reimburse him for his expenses, much less compensate him for the time wasted and incredible stress that had to place on him and his family.
Beyond all that, getting SEO bombed as being potentially involved in the production and distribution CSAM is not a positive outcome for anyone who values their privacy or wants to ever have a normal interaction with a new employer or any other entity that may search his name. Beyond that, those who regularly fill out official forms relating to background and behavior will forever have to answer some questions differently and jump through the additional hoops an experience like that would trigger.
His outcome has been one of the least-terrible possibilities, but I hope he sues Google in a very public and embarrassing way, because whatever damages are awarded will be a rounding error to them.
Finally, the process itself is by no indications anything but still completely broken.
Your suggested "fix" is anything but.
What annoys me is, just this week Meta tried to claim that they were basically a social infrastructure that is essential everyone uses and relies on and that they shouldn't be held to blame for what people see on there when it's legal to post. While at the same time, these companies don't want to act like any of the other infrastructure. Ban people for no reason, no recourse, and no come back. While at the same time claiming they're there for the people and are providing a public service.
I'm not sure what mindset drives people to say "even if you didn't commit a crime, you're guilty of the appearance of that crime, which is good enough". Social media outrage mobs perhaps, but my money is more on "this user puts us at risk of criminal prosecution". A lot of companies treat CSAM detection & removal as a subdepartment of risk management, which means lots of "shut the fuck up and go away".
Honestly, if you're making money from something you should have it away from your personal things. Just like how you shouldn't have AWS activated for your main amazon account.
While it's happening, it can be done using the parent's identity. After that, the same logic that prevents a minor to commit, because limited responsability, should be applied to avoid perpetual consequences.
But as usual, companies apply draconian measures that governments can't. Some day we'll finally get that regulation that draws a line between utilities and publishers...
Technically true, but the government often uses regulations and investigatory powers to compel private corporations to enact draconian regulations that the government cannot enact on its own.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
I don't see how that's relevant here. Can a minor have an electricity contract?
Fun times!
For other services there is enough bureaucracy that it's easier to avoid by not providing the service to minors.
It's also easier to ban accounts for life when they lie about who they are. You don't run the risk of aiding fraud and being fined if you make a mistake, because you banned them.
There was nothing preventing the kid from creatibg content. It was in using Ad Sense to make money off it.
It doesn't mean that it shouldn't though, either. I can't imagine any other way around this that doesn't amount to forcing a company to provide a service to someone they have rational reasons to not trust, which seems like globally at least it could cause more problems than it solves.
To be clear I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage a company to re-consider when the person is older, but it's hard to see how they should be forced to.
Nothing wrong with that. Just do it. Force them to provide service to the kids they banned for life due to frivolous violations of contracts nobody really reads anyway.
> it's hard to see how they should be forced to
It's really easy actually. Someone getting permabanned from a service for the unforgivable offense of being a child is completely out of proportion.
We already force them to provide service to the disabled and impaired without discrimination. It's okay to do it. Corporations don't have feelings. Nobody really cares how hard life is for the hundred billion dollar corporation either.
Growing up with the internet it always felt these companies were playing with fire. I can't explain it. The 90s were a wild time I guess. That generation knows about using fake names and addresses.
I guess I have never seen these businesses as proper businesses like the local mom and pop shop whose owner you know and respect and who respects you.
But google and other such companies always feel like they are trying to use you and you are trying to use them.
Granted this was 15 or so years ago so things might have changed since then.
Suddenly: "Hey, Google! I'm three years old, better ban me!"
Specially, if you the intend is to "protect" children, this is not helpful.
No, rather, current US law means that technically minors can't enter into contracts until age 16, and many provisions aren't enforceable until 18 or local age-of-majority. Broadly, because of child labor laws, it's not possible for actual children to enter into work/employee relationships or sign contracts legally, just period. This is supposed to stop exploitation of children (sign this stupid contract and now you're encumbered without being fully cognizant of what that means or entails).
PayPal really kept a dormant account with an underaged persons PII for 7 years? Interesting.
Paypal was founded before there were any laws about age for signing up for things online, and minors are legally allowed bank accounts that their guardians don't have access to. (Or at least they used to be allowed: I had one at 14 in 2002).
They figured out that I made my account a few months before my 18th birthday and permanently locked my account.
It seems all of this is arbitrary more or less random bullshit.
-Everyone knew a person back in the day who signed up for the CD clubs promising dollar CD's, or 10 for a dollar. Whatever the various deals were. -With those deals came a commitment to buy 10 - 20 more albums at full price. -You sign a contract agreeing to this. -So the friend-of-a-friend signed it while under 18 and a minor. -They then tell the CD club that the agreement is null and void on account of them not being legally able to sign a contract, and after getting their 10 CD's for a dollar or whatever, to cancel their account.
I don't have time to deal with their accounts getting locked and so on, even if there are other issues.
Granted they also don't get free reign on the internet / outside parental view anyhow.
Google not having real human support is unbelievable.
Only users that generate large revenue can access Chat option.
For the rest, the only option is to write to support community. It's deliberate: feels like there is support but there is none.
That's as reliable as it gets.
I can see both (all?) sides of this:
- As a society we ought to be forgiving of harmless youthful indiscretions
- As a business you shouldn't have to give second chances to people who blatantly defraud you
- There is a big can of worms when it comes to doing business with minors on the internet. I don't think there's a solution as easy as "well when they're 18, let them log into their account and update their age to acknowledge that they were using the service as a minor" or "just let people open multiple accounts (with wildly different ages) under their name."
Google keeping "limbo" accounts is dystopian, and seems like a GDPR violation to me.
It wouldn't be an issue if you just had given your opinion instead of demanding he stop using words, which was the primary reason for my reply, because you demanding other people stop using words is insufferably arrogant.
When that word is 'dystopia', yeah. Getting this offended about a megacorp being called dystopian is insufferable. Whatever your relationship is to Google, it doesn't warrant this level of personal attachment. You're acting like he insulted your own mother or something.
That's how you characterized it. You're clearly offended, that's why you're throwing around DEI buzzwords.
On that note - I'm from Ukraine. Helped my mother-in-law get out of Kyiv in March, and went back to Ukraine in July with supplies for soldiers that weren't available locally (military radios and a bulletproof vest).
I also worked at Google on their Location team.
I am choosing my words with care, and I stand by them. In particular, the choice of the word dystopian. And lack of humanity is one of the reasons this war is happening. Dystopia starts in the minds.
Also, please don't exploit the war in Ukraine to needlessly police other people's speech. If you want to show support, that's not the best way.
Direct your efforts here: https://u24.gov.ua/
Thanks, and slava Ukraini.
Not directly... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/08/googles-scans-private-...
Plenty of dystopian fiction involves corporations legally not allowed to do something and still doing it, because they're functionally immune to consequences. There are also degrees of dystopian between "murder corp" and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
You might have an overly narrow definition of "dystopian".
IMO, that's at least a bit dystopian. (The blurring of lines between goverment and corporation is another dystopian scifi trope, even.)
It's not just the action; it's the ability to do it without significant consequences. I could sue you for slander if you called me a pedophile; my ability to do so (successfully) against Google is quite limited. Law enforcement is also likely to treat an accusation from Google differently than from some random person.
If a liquor store had caught me with a fake ID, I wouldn't consider it dystopian if they put my name on a list and kept it in the back.
It wouldn’t make sense to refuse to sell you liquor when you’re in your 80s though.
https://gdpr.eu/recital-47-overriding-legitimate-interest/
> The processing of personal data strictly necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud also constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned.
I have absolutely no idea and am not a lawyer, it just seems to me that the word "strictly" is meant to indicate that it isn't pixie dust companies can sprinkle on any piece of information as they choose. The rest of the language here seems to stress that there has to be some sort of test which demonstrates that the interests of the controller overrides the interest of the data subject.
I agree with your statement though, but the GDPR issue is the retention time, not a DSAR issue.
If you work in the EU, have a chat with your DPO/Privacy team cause I bet they would actually find this an interesting conversation too.
The problem described in the post is that the user has a shadow, inaccessible disabled account that they can't do anything about, forever, and that's a problem.
>Isn't that just isomorphic to demanding Free Ban Evasion for All?
I think it would be isomorphic to Google implementing verification on account creation, thereby preventing this scenario from happening in the first place.
They did, though. They straight up asked the kid if he was 18, and he lied and said "yes". I don't know what you want here, you want Google to... protect it's customers from their own fraud? Does any other industry do that?
(full disclosure: I work there, but on open source firmware and know nothing about Adsense)
Just to point the obvious, but corporations do not have any inherent right, and this specific one is already denied on some circumstances.
Regulated utilities, companies representing the government, companies handling infrastructure, etc.
If we were talking about gmail that would be one thing, but internet advertising as a utility is too far by far.
Says who? Society can easily make it so they have to. Besides, "fraud" is a bit too strong a word for a kid that simply didn't care about some company's idiotic "you have to be 13 to post here" message on the sign up screen.
“Cannot the boy withhold payment until he turns 18 years? He will lose it to inflation and all but at least he will get some due, right?”
It’s a little weird not being able to suggest a solution when my whole life runs on Adsense money.
So as far as I can tell there’s plenty of not so clear things that will get you banned from google ads, don’t build your life and business around that advertising stream is what I learned.
That and that there are better advertising avenues for the niches I tend to care about.
Now I still use adsense, but now it is through a 3rd party which takes a hefty cut of the profits.
If adsense is your sole income, you should probably diversify. Anyone can get you permanently banned unless you are a well known youtuber.
> The processing of personal data strictly necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud also constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned.
If you need to be at least 18 to use a particular service, and they're going to verify at some point, that point should be at the very start.
Cowards.