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> From my understanding, this lawsuit is about collecting data on kid videos on Youtube Main, which technically you need to be 13 years old to have an account f

> From my understanding, this lawsuit is about collecting data on kid videos on Youtube Main, which technically you need to be 13 years old to have an account for in the first place. I mean, I would consider a 13 year old to be a kid? And more to the point, you don't need to have an account to have ads targeted at you. YouTube can say "well kids shouldn't be there" but if they were interested in knowing if viewers were kids, I'm sure they could figure it out. > I guess the argument here was that the parents let their kids watch on their account, and since the video is clearly for kids, Youtube should've not collected data on it because obviously adults wouldn't be watching this video. Seems a bit of a stretch. You're missing the point of the comment you replied to. Laws that are enforced by fines are legal for the rich, full stop, because they just pay the fine. In the case of individuals, this is why the wealthy are fine with paying speeding tickets and the like: the money means nothing to them. So, you have a company like YouTube making millions and millions (if not billions) of dollars targeting ads at children, probably the most valuable ad demographic because they haven't been browbeaten with advertising messages enough yet and they still work very well on them. So YouTube does this stuff, and sets aside money for when they're caught. Then they pay the fine, and get a tax write-off in the process. Fines don't do shit. Period. You wanna stop this kind of thing, change the laws so that the management in charge of these kinds of decisions and programs, or failing that, those that failed to see what was being done, are held personally accountable. I guarantee you'll see a hell of a lot less stupid risk-taking by companies when the penalty isn't a pittance of the profits attained.

ehsankia 7y ago
> I would consider a 13 year old to be a kid? It doesn't matter what you consider, the law under which they were sued is explicit about the age below which you are not allowed to collect data. This is the reason why almost every website out there asks you if you're older than 13 when you create an account. > You're missing the point of the comment you replied to. The comment I replied to opened with a whole mock narrative about engineers deciding to advertise on kids. My point is that this is a non-trivial and non-obvious issue. As far as Youtube is concerned, they made a site where 13yo+ can upload and watch videos. What ended up happening is that people uploaded videos for kids, and others let their kids watch said videos. It's disingenuous to make it sound like Youtube intentionally planned this. I agree that fines don't do this. And again, the laws are pretty explicit, but this is a complex case, which is what I was trying to convey. It's not an obvious "someone in a dark room wrote code that collects children data".

ehsankia 7y ago

> I would consider a 13 year old to be a kid? It doesn't matter what you consider, the law under which they were sued is explicit about the age below which you are not allowed to collect data. This is the reason why almost every website out there asks you if you're older than 13 when you create an account. > You're missing the point of the comment you replied to. The comment I replied to opened with a whole mock narrative about engineers deciding to advertise on kids. My point is that this is a non-trivial and non-obvious issue. As far as Youtube is concerned, they made a site where 13yo+ can upload and watch videos. What ended up happening is that people uploaded videos for kids, and others let their kids watch said videos. It's disingenuous to make it sound like Youtube intentionally planned this. I agree that fines don't do this. And again, the laws are pretty explicit, but this is a complex case, which is what I was trying to convey. It's not an obvious "someone in a dark room wrote code that collects children data".