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Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ads
- ModernMech 16d agoWhen I was 9, long ago in the dial-up age, I dialed into a long distance number within our area code and we got a $100 charge for my using Active Worlds. Suddenly, I don't feel so bad about that anymore.
- klibertp 16d agoMy internet provider in the early 90s maintained a Unix system with pine and lynx; it only allowed access to WWW a few months after we subscribed to their dial-up. I didn't know what to do with that remote system, but I knew `cd` and `ls`, so I looked around. Somewhere on the filesystem, I found a Hexen (IIRC) demo, and decided to download it via Kermit (the only tool/protocol I knew how to use). It took almost a day to finish, but in the end it ran - I was overjoyed. I somehow even found a cheat code for all weapons, and spent a few weeks playing the first 2 levels, while occasionally poking around in the remote system. Then the phone bill came - for 7x more than normal, on top of the ISP subscription - and I lost access to both the Internet and the computer for more than a month. Needless to say, I learned to watch that connection timer like a hawk, and it served me well for the next 10 years before broadband connection was available.
- ModernMech 16d agoHexen was worth it tho, good taste!
- theandrewbailey 16d agoThis is one reason why I don't save my payment method for anything. No saved payment method means one less way for surprise charges.
- joshstrange 16d agoThe craziest part of this story, for me, is it was on the dad’s _company_ credit card. Which might not be as surprising except the reason it was already on file is because the dad used his company’s (not _his_ company, the company he works for as an employee) credit card to buy Roblox for his son previously. Is this common? I’ve had access to company credit cards before on a one-off basis (never in my name). Do people legitimately make this mistake? “oops, I put it on the company cards”?
- quietsegfault 16d agoI have always had company cards. I never used them except when forced. It’s not a mistake to use it unless you have no business working in a job where you have access to someone else’s money.
- functionmouse 16d agoSome people are not very smart.
- beanjuiceII 16d agoif you can get away with putting it on the company card why not? (other than that time ayour 9 year old son spent 118k) hehe
- pelagicAustral 16d agoI havent had a company card for a while, but when i had one the end of the month auditing was exhausting, I dreaded having to put together the report... Unfortunately for me, no one else wanted to take on the responsibility so I just had to do that for years...
- kristopolous 16d agoThis can be a fairly pure case study on the convergence rate of youtube ads.
- lo_fye 16d agoDo not let that kid (or his dad) anywhere near an OpenClaw instance.
- hacker_homie 16d agoThey should have to ask for the ccv every double in billing average.
- zwischenzug 16d agoDidn't the card have a limit?
- ChrisRR 16d agoLiterally the first sentence in the article "The button said approved every time as nobody had set a limit."
- ygjb 16d agoThat's not referring to the credit card limit. It's referring to spending limits on the advertising campaign or account.
- viraptor 16d agoCorporate cards often have huge limits. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49725666 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49725666
- petcat 16d agoMany corporate cards (or even personal cards for high-earners and impeccable credit) do not have "limits". At least not limits that will be reached with normal usage. There is undoubtedly still some balance threshold that will trigger an internal account review and probably a phone call, though.
- nkrisc 16d agoThere are so many things wrong with this story before you even get to the headline. From the information in the article, I can’t really blame Google for this one. This was a series of deliberate blunders on the part of the father. The first blunder was letting a 9 year old have a YouTube account. Putting aside whether a 9 year old should be making videos, the father should have been the one with the account and managing the channel.
- wccrawford 16d agoThe article doesn't call it out very loudly, but... "to a company credit card the father had saved to his own Google account, which his son also used" It sounds like the son didn't have an account. It was just the father's account, with billing info attached with no limits.
- nkrisc 16d agoBut how was the 9 year old able to do any of this unless they had access to some account? It says his son also used it, so he gave a 9 year old access to it. Same difference.
- msh 16d agoQuestion is if it’s reasonable for the father to guess letting the kid use the account would let the kid do this kind of charge. I would say no and put the blame on google.
- iteria 16d agoAs a parent, I would say yes. Anyone who has kids know they spend any money you give them access to. I daughter spent $100 on snacks in a week because it on her school swipe account. Kids are just like this. My kid has her own kids google account where all purchases have to be approved explicitly by me, the parent account. The dad could have done that, but he didn't. This is literally why kids accounts exist. There are many horror stories about kids spending their parents money going bad decades. Every parent has a story. There's no way the dad couldn't have considered this as a possibility. This is setting aside that he shouldn't have mixed his work cards with his personal accounts.
- amelius 16d agoWell, at least he has the YouTube ads.
- zug_zug 16d agoI blame youtube. I feel like any online service provider has a duty to verify your identity on transactions over $10k USD by default and that should be enshrined in law. Honestly maybe lower.
- JKCalhoun 16d agoAnd yet I see you are being downvoted. The message being sent is perhaps, "No, it's the dad's fault, not YouTube's." It's strange to me how much allowance we provide corporations and their schemes to make money, and so little for the stupidity of the users that end up forking over their wages.
- iteria 16d agoI think because kids accounts literally exist and don't allow this. The did didn't set up a kid's account for his... kid. Google had safe guards and he used exactly none of them. I'd blame Google if the kid subverted the controls in some way, but doesn't sound like he did. Either the dad let the kid use the account, lied on account creation for the kid or turned the controls off because they were too annoying (this one I have seen a lot). At a certain point we have to be responsible for our own actions.
- zug_zug 16d agoOkay but like... so what? Like does that even really pass the common-sense test that that is enough? Like my bank would give me a phone call before I wired $20k oversees. Google should by default send you a sms confirmation on your first $10k+ purchase. This is the type of common-sense stuff that isn't an issue in-person, but somehow online we get the most barebones protections for consumers because "technically the EULA said so and so." Basically if we make the corporations liable for it, we give them an incentive to prevent fraud, identity mistakes, etc. Whereas if they are not, we give them every incentive to avoid unintended purchases.
- BobaFloutist 16d ago
- Ekaros 16d agoI feel something is horribly wrong with these ad-companies if there is no contact and automatic approval for spending over 100k on ads... From seemingly small and unknown entity. I would expect some verification or contact, but maybe I just don't understand how world operates...
- Good4boothee 16d agoIf I remember correctly I got a call from GMG, 15 years ago, to confirm a purchase of … $15 game key. Maybe Google Ads have such great deal with card acquirers they don't care about fraud/chargeback rate. Or it is the other way around, the amount of fraudulent spending is so high they don't even try fighting it. > maybe I just don't understand how world operates Amazon decided friction during purchase is more costly than asking for CVV/CVC. For better or worse (like in case of Ford Pinto) corporations can count their money.
- tapper 16d ago$118000 and just 37k subs. A shit retern!
- Hikikomori 16d agoOr kids are bad at setting up ad campaigns.
- spicyusername 16d agoShould the father have been more involved to prevent this kind of thing? Sure. Should tech companies make this kind of thing this easy? No. Everyone in here defending our corporate overlords has had the Overton window moved so far on them that they've lost perspective on how companies should be expected to be part of the social contract. We should be building a world that makes it easy for people to do the right thing. Not penalizing them for accidentally doing the wrong thing because nothing matters anymore but the shareholders. Youtube is a fact of life for modern parenting, and it has absolutely atrocious parental controls. As we all know, these companies are filled with people who are perfectly capable of building systems that function to make the world better and easier for everyday people like the father in this story. And yet somehow we're defending the fact that they're doing the exact opposite...
- account42 16d agoEveryone that thinks its reasonable for someone to set up an ad campaign for their 9 year old son's YouTube channel also has a very warped perspective and is well aligned with the companies you want to blame.
- owebmaster 16d ago> Everyone in here defending our corporate overlords Google specifically. The amount of people that "participate" in any thread related to Google posting and upvoting narratives that are good for it is staggering. The ones holding Google accountable are always at the bottom of the threads, flagged.
- eudamoniac 16d agoThe Overton window of companies selling products that the user is manually buying while intentionally bypassing all existing safety measures? I don't understand how you can blame Google here.
- hilbert42 16d agoThis is really terrible, I feel deeply for the father's predicament. This ought to be a salient lesson: never store card details online despite the convenience. Further, as I do, use only a debit card for online purchases with the available credit only marginally more that for one's immediate purchase. It's also an excellent policy in case of being hacked. Companies that allow employees to use cards with essentially unfettered credit have to take a large amount of the blame in circumstances such as this. There's no reason other than bad policy or irregular monitoring of expenses to allow expenses of this magnitude to build up. The company's financial policies need drastic overhaul.
- account42 16d agoThe father also has to take at least some responsibility for adding the card to a device that the kid is using unsupervised. He also did set up the initial ad campaign instead of doing something more reasonable when the kid was unhappy about not having many viewers on his channel. He gave the kid the opportunity, showed the kid how to do it and then the kid did it some more.
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- reacharavindh 16d agoI feel like there is a bizarro world I’m not privy to…. I cannot relate to this story as a Dad of a 7 year old.. 1. Dad setting his son up on YouTube with his own channel at 9! 2. Proceeding to tell him about the creepy world of ads and targeting. 3. Creating an ad campaign for the kid! 4. Putting that charge on a company card! 5. Saving the card in an online account! Probably means the kid was using the Dad’s account? 6. When things go south, even saying the words “matter has been escalated and he does not yet know whether he will get to keep his job or have to repay the costs.” as if it is all the universe’s or someone else’s fault… or such a common mishap that it is worthy of just waived away. As judgemental as it sounds… I feel sad for the outcome, but even more sad if this is the normal in our society of today :-(
- chasd00 16d agoi don't think it's that normal which is why it's newsworthy. I'm a father of a 16 and 14 year old. The 14 year old had a youtube channel when he was 9 or 10. I helped him set it up, he was making Minecraft tutorials which I thought was pretty cool.
- em-bee 16d agoi agree. if my kid would actually make the effort to make videos i'd fully support him. even with ads if that was something that makes sense. the mistake was letting the kid manage the account with the credit card on file. that's where i would have drawn the line.
- 4ndrewl 16d ago"after the (9-year old) boy complained about views"...what a time to be alive.
- ofrzeta 16d agoIs there not something like fraud detection for an unusual amount of spending, like 40k per week?
- daft_pink 16d agoPretty crazy. We use Ramp at work and it allows you to specifically set budgets for every single credit card and get approvals, etc. This should be an advertisement for them. Hope they setup a go fund me as I would be happy to contribute $20 towards paying the $'s back.
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- burnt-resistor 16d agoWould've been much cheaper to buy subscribers and views from a Russian-style vending machine.
- mid-kid 16d agoIt looks like it paid off, since the screenshot in the article, the channel has more than doubled in subscribers (now 70k), and it seems to still be climbing.