
Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry. - zdw
https://plus.google.com/114311896476820866022/posts/QkKTxAbKGdq
======
danilocampos
B-b-but Google made this fancy video advertisement about how I can give my
infant daughter a Gmail account and write to her as she grows up! Does it only
work if she never uses it? You've gotta wait until you can hold a bat mitzvah
to hand it off to her?

This kind of chicanery is why I can only chuckle when Google announces new
initiatives that require significant customer service, like selling telephones
or providing a fulfillment system to compete with Amazon Prime. They treat
their users like ants. And given the way their business is structured, that
scale is about correct.

Google doesn't need for any given user of their service to be pleased. They're
a whale, straining krill from the ocean, playing a vast advertising numbers
game on a scale individuals can barely grasp, and can barely factor into.

Which is not an illegitimate position. But it poses a problem for individuals
who are swept into its gaping maw - there is zero incentive machinery to
compel Google to ever get things corrected. Depending on where a product is on
its growth curve, it might even cost Google more to fix the problem than to
replace the users. Your only recourse is to hope for enough public
embarrassment to short-circuit the system.

It also calls into question the viability of their entry into any business
where service is a differentiating characteristic.

~~~
csmt
This is absurd. Instead of not collecting data for children Google is blocking
access to children. I am seriously looking for alternatives to Gmail. Any
suggestions? I don't want my email account hooked up to a social network and
advertising machinery.

~~~
danilocampos
It seems like a very straightforward solution to me.

If an account is created for a person under-age, suspend ad service to that
account (end data collection) and require a nominal fee to activate it (which
provides abundant evidence of parental consent). Cutting off the next
generation from _email_ does not seem like the answer. Would a Montessori-
educated, eight-year-old Sergey Brin have appreciated such treatment?

Since that won't happen, I mean, when we have kids I guess we just have to pay
for hosting and administer their email ourselves?

~~~
rmrm
knowing the childs email address in and of itself appears to be data
collection in regards to COPPA.

[http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus45-how-comply-
childrens...](http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus45-how-comply-childrens-
online-privacy-protection-rule)

~~~
bmj
Which means it would be impossible to provide an email service to a child,
right, short of self-hosting?

~~~
rmrm
I don't think so, its just that you'd have to obtain parental consent 100% of
the time. Data gathering is baked into providing an email service, that part
of COPPA seems logical enough to me. The issue of targeted ads vs untargeted
ads vs no ads doesn't appear to have anything to do with anything, other than
what you'd notify the parents you are doing, and what you are asking their
consent of.

------
quanticle
To be honest, I think a large part of the blame goes to COPPA. I remember
listening on those hearings, and those opposed to COPPA warned against this
_exact_ thing happening. They said that taking the decision away from parents
would lead to disaster, and guess what, it _has_.

Rather than blaming Google here, shouldn't we be writing our legislators to
repeal COPPA? We should be telling them that this misguided law is starting to
intrude onto the choices that parents make when raising their children, and
that it should be repealed immediately. As long as COPPA exists, we'll see
more and more stories like this.

~~~
DuncanIdaho
It really feels like stone age.

There are 13 year old kids out there who can write a web and mail server, yet
could get into trouble for using them.

~~~
pjscott
In a way, this is a useful life lesson: sometimes the most reasonable thing to
do is to lie to unreasonable institutions.

~~~
einhverfr
And thereby commit a misdemeanor under some interpretations of the CFAA.

~~~
pjscott
What are the odds of suffering any negative repercussions? Especially for a
minor?

~~~
einhverfr
None, as long as you don't piss off a prosecutor somewhere who wants to punish
you for being a bad person. The problem here is it makes it possible for
someone to say "show me the man and I'll find you the crime."

Not a good position to be in, honestly....

------
tiles
A similar article from this past July titled (aptly) "Google made my son cry":
[http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-
my-...](http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-son-
cry.html)

~~~
Cl4rity
I was just about to reference this article. Same shit, different day.

------
sigmaxipi
There is an interesting rule in COPPA that is the cause of this bad
experience: <http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.shtm#teen>

_For sites that choose to age-screen, age information should be asked in a way
that does not invite falsification. See Question 39, below. In addition, we
recommend that sites that choose to age-screen employ temporary or permanent
cookies to prevent children from back-buttoning to change their age in order
to circumvent the parental consent requirement or obtain access to the site

...

However, as described in Question 38, above, should you choose to block
children under 13, it is important that you design your age collection input
screens in a manner that does not encourage children to provide a false age in
order to gain access to your site. If you take reasonable measures to screen
for age, then you are not responsible if a child misstates his or her age. For
example:

...

Not encouraging children to falsify their age information, for example, by
stating that visitors under 13 cannot participate on your website or should
ask their parents before participating. In addition, a site that does not ask
for neutral date of birth information but rather simply includes a check box
stating “I am over 12 years old” would not be considered a neutral age-
screening mechanism._

~~~
modeless
This is the important bit that people miss. Google isn't allowed to warn you
that changing your age will apply restrictions to your account, and they
aren't allowed to let you easily undo it after it's done. This is what happens
when Congress dictates user interfaces.

~~~
cynwoody
So, in effect, this means a kid is 13 as soon as he figures out he needs to be
13. OK.

Not all kids are created equal, and some kids will be 13 sooner than others.
Some might argue that's not fair. But, back in the day, I would not have been
among them.

------
cschmidt
I'd suggest a Fastmail.fm account instead. Their TOS says:

    
    
        This Service is provided to individuals who are at least 18 
        years old or minors who have parental permission to open 
        and maintain an account.
    

I think I read somewhere that they consider a charge on a parent's credit card
to be explicit parental consent. Makes sense to me.

Also, since you are paying them a little money, they offer actual technical
support, unlike Google.

They also have family accounts, where you can have one person take care of
billing and administration of several accounts. That's what I use for my whole
family, including my parents.

------
ck2
So - when was the last time everyone reading this backed up their gmail?

Take the next 5 minutes to install thunderbird (you'll be impressed if you
have not seen it in years) and enter the IMAP settings for google and download
everything in the background while you work.

When your account gets hacked and you lose everything, you'll appreciate the
backup.

~~~
cookiecaper
For the record Thunderbird's IMAP sync is not a reliable backup mechanism by
itself. If many emails are deleted from your account, Thunderbird will sync
(and delete your files locally) before you have the opportunity to copy them
off somewhere safe. I know this from deleting all my mails off my gmail
account (to make an encrypted archive) and trying to use TB as a reliable
storage method -- since I had just taken a backup of my TB directory I didn't
lose any mail, but it should be emphasized that TB with IMAP sync is _not_ a
backup mechanism.

However, there are some great TB extensions that will allow you to export your
mail into a reasonable, portable format every so often. I use
ImportExportTools to export my mailbox to an mbox file and store that file
securely. I can use this file to reimport to Thunderbird or any other mail
client, or even to read some mail directly. :)

~~~
keypusher
I believe you can configure TB to handle this situation differently. That is,
if a mail is deleted from the web mailbox, retain the copy on disk.

~~~
cookiecaper
The only useful advice I got out of IRC was to stay in offline mode until I
had copied over to a "local folder". They didn't say anything about a
configuration option that would allow me to avoid the sync/deletion.

Of course, this was in Feb 2011. Maybe things have changed now.

------
ctdonath
Good life lesson for the kid about government, and why freedom & liberty are
so important.

And set her up with her own website already. Show her the power she has to not
put up with such stupid limitations.

~~~
sp332
1\. This has nothing to do with the government.

2\. Google are completely within their rights to do this. It's their servers
after all.

~~~
dillona
The reason this happened is a rather obnoxious law called Children's Online
Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA)

~~~
sp332
On the contrary, plenty of companies handle this just fine. COPPA does not
require Google to disable or delete the account. Legally, they only need to
get the guardian's permission. This is much more trouble than is required by
COPPA.

~~~
okoni
Google's services and google data collection are two sides of the same coin.
Make it possible to have google services without the data collection part
would expose the actual data collection taking place and worse users could
start asking to be disconnected from the data collection since it's now
possible.

------
tristanperry
A pretty bad story - not that I'm surprised though. Google have never been
good at customer service (obviously with the web so large and most of Google
being free, you can't expect much, but what is 'offered' is usually sub-par,
even for paid products).

On the plus side, this is #1 on Hacker News meaning Matt Cutts should reply
any second and internally flag this up inside Google.

One of the comments on the Google+ entry also stuck out:

"The same happened to me. It also means my daughter can't log into her
Chromebook!"

If that's true that's pretty awful. It does bring up a good point though - if
Google close your account (rightly or wrongly), it does make owning a
Chromebook somewhat useless.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
COPPA is pretty far afield from my area of expertise. I'm more than happy to
encourage people back at the plex to talk about the situation with COPPA and
our services though.

~~~
tristanperry
Thanks Matt. It's something I hadn't really thought about although this story
has raised an interesting point/concern.

------
ajays
I'm a bit disheartened to see that everyone is buying the COPPA bullshit. Yes,
COPPA is the law that applies, and has some restrictions. But that doesn't
force Google to act like a total dick about it!

Lets assume there's an automated process for detecting underage accounts. Why
can't they just prevent the account from being used to send email? Or why
can't they say "Sorry, we have to disable your account; but you can download
all of your emails at (insert some secure link to a ZIP file)"?? Or, as the
post says, migrate these accounts to their COPPA-compliant set of accounts?

You know what the real problem is? The real problem is that Google collects a
shit-load of data about its users. And they don't want to put in filters which
will not log the data of underage children, because that opens them up to
scrutiny. So they would rather keep this blackbox closed, and in the process
if a few kids get screwed, then, well, screw 'em!

~~~
adgar
> Lets assume there's an automated process for detecting underage accounts.
> Why can't they just prevent the account from being used to send email?

Any data collection is forbidden by COPPA without parental verification. You
seem to think that's just logging ad targeting data or something. No, it
includes any information entered by the child into the service. So not only
can they not send any email, they can't _receive_ e-mail. They can't even have
an email address! They can't thumbs up a video on youtube, let alone save one
as a favorite video for later. You could only view google docs that are
globally-viewable, since you can't share a private document with a child
without storing some data about them. They _certainly_ can't edit a document!

It goes on and on.

~~~
okoni
everything you mentioned seems to me to be ad targeting data, email, email
address, thumbs up, save as fav even viewing a global google docs all this is
part of data collected as part of the profiling process in order to do ad
targeting.

Actually I don't think there is a single you do once logged on (or registered)
that is not collected to profile you. facebook even collects what you do when
logged off.

------
DuncanIdaho
What about the Google commercial, where parents open a childs google account
upon birth, fill it with images and commentary...

Only to have it all deleted when Google get around to it?

~~~
Kylekramer
Pretty well covered here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3010687>

TL;DR: The account in the commercial is the parent's, not the kid's.

~~~
danilocampos
Hard to believe the ad wasn't titled "Dear Sophie's Account Held by Myself,
Her Father, Not to be Handed Over to Sophie until such time as she meets
Google's User Age Threshold for Regulatory Compliance."

"Dear Sophie" does have a much nicer ring to it, I guess.

~~~
Kylekramer
"Dear Sophie" pretty clearly implies it isn't Sophie's account to me. When you
write an letter (especially one that hasn't been sent yet as the commercial
implies), you are the owner of the letter, right? To cite the Bible, it is
Paul's letters to the Corinthians, not the Corinthians' letters from Paul.

~~~
danilocampos
Leaving aside my glee that we must reach into mythology (edited, thanks
rubidium) to help Google's case, any letter that begins "Dear Sophie" sounds
like it's a letter... to Sophie. And while she might not be able to read it
right now, my initial guess as to why would be that infants don't have great
reading comprehension, not that Google can't find an algorithm to get around
COPPA.

~~~
rubidium
Entirely OT, but you did bring it up.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age>. It would be iron age. And no
historian disputes that an actual letter was written to Corinthians (and most
are certain on Paul), so that takes out the mythology. At best, you can call
it "Iron Age history of uncertain veracity". Sorry that it doesn't have quite
the same demeaning effect.

~~~
danilocampos
Touché! Though the contents of said communiques do, indeed, form mythology.

------
RexRollman
It is really sad that Google can't figure out a way for those under 13 to have
accounts, provided there is a parent signing off on it. And the first comment
by someone about how their child can't log onto their Chromebook anymore is
particularly disturbing.

~~~
dexen
Losing access to Chromebook is an interesting case. Where did we go so wrong
that breaching particular point of AuP causes our own _hardware_ to become
inaccessible?

People rally against zealous lockdown of PC (recently restricted boot in EFI,
earlier TrustedComputing in general). Not being able to install any software
of choice (with reasonably little effort) sure is bad, but having an already
functioning computer swept right from under your fingertips could easily be
way more damaging. Government couldn't do that without serious due process.
Why a company can, and why aren't there voices of stern protest?

~~~
sigmaxipi
FYI, you can still log into a Chromebook with a Anonymous/Incognito/Guest
account and use it as long as you don't care about persistence. Chromebooks
are designed to be orthogonal to a Google account so changing the accounts
that are attached to a given Chromebook is trivial.

------
joebadmo
Google is less flexible and less responsive on this and similar issues than
they could or should be.

But. This discussion should be about COPPA. See danah boyd's illuminating
research and analysis on the subject here:

[http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/11/01/parents...](http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/11/01/parents-
survey-coppa.html)

------
okoni
This is a common case of "If you are not paying for it, you are the product
being sold.", this is what happens when you engage in careless computing and
put your data on a third party remote server under their control.

Don't be careless and it won't come back and bite you.

------
tokenadult
An example of a United States-based website that has a user-friendly COPPA
procedure for opening parent-approved accounts for users under age thirteen is
the Art of Problem Solving,

<https://www.artofproblemsolving.com/>

a site that many HN users may like, especially if they have children, because
of its many resources for learning mathematics. It's regrettable that Google
doesn't follow this example.

How is Google's behavior in this reported instance consistent with Google's
claimed support for data liberation?

<http://www.dataliberation.org/>

And how is the lack of notice and lack of help for parents who approve of
their children having email accounts (not to mention Google's apparently
contrary advertising campaigns) consistent with a policy of "Don't be evil"?

<http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html>

------
anxrn
This post hit me with a serious case of deja vu.

And then I dug this up: [http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-
made-my-...](http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-son-
cry.html)

~~~
atarian
I'm glad I'm not the only one.

------
thenextcorner
This is why you should take control of your own data, and not let your data in
the hands of a company. Buy your own email address, set up your own blog self
hosted.

~~~
pyre
What would you suggest for comparable calendar and contact management
software?

~~~
icebraining
I think Zimbra is a common suggestion, but I'm not sure how comparable it is.

------
jodrellblank
_they've chosen to act apparently without ever considering how their actions
might affect the people who use and rely on their services._

Hyperbolic nonsense. Their consideration for multicultural, international,
legal, technical, practical, and end user issues under time and effort
constraints doesn't come out exactly the way you wanted it to under one edge
case that you happen to hit therefore they "haven't ever considered"?

Never assign to malice what can be adequately be explained by stupidity needs
a corollorary - never assign to malice or stupidity what can adequately be
explained by being outside the normal patterns of a huge system.

~~~
danilocampos
> outside the normal patterns of a huge system

Can you expand a bit on how a sentient human being, wishing to communicate
with other sentient human beings, is outside the normal patterns of a
communications system?

~~~
yew
Google isn't just a communication system, though. They're a very large
corporation involved in numerous enterprises that often interfere with one
another, and their actions are further modified by an even larger legal system
that only imperfectly represents the collective will of its constituents.

Decisions are often (indeed, perhaps mostly) made without any consideration of
individual people (even the people _making the decisions_ aren't always
entirely conscious of what they're doing). I don't believe that's a necessity,
but a lot of people are pretty comfortable with it and it mostly approximates
working. This sort of thing shouldn't come as a terrible surprise.

~~~
danilocampos
> Google isn't just a communication system, though.

Gmail is. It's not positioned with anything like the complexity you describe.
So it's not unreasonable, as OP suggested it was, for a user to want to use
it, without giving much thought to age.

~~~
yew
> It's not positioned with anything like the complexity you describe.

I'm afraid that this is, at least to the best of my ability to judge, simply
wrong. Gmail is affected by the rules of operation at Google, and by the law.
They certainly could address the issue with more compassion, but only at the
cost of further increasing the complexity of their system. Everything is a
trade-off.

> So it's not unreasonable, as OP suggested it was, for a user to want to use
> it, without giving much thought to age.

I didn't say it was "unreasonable." Just that the system isn't set up to allow
it. It _could be_ , but it currently isn't.

~~~
danilocampos
Oh, I meant marketing positioning. That is, Google doesn't tell users _holy
crap this is a byzantine system of laws and mousetraps and shit_!

They just say Gmail is neat, and it's free, so use it.

But, of course you're right, the creation of the sausage that is Gmail is a
very complicated sequence, beset by both internal and external bureaucracy, to
say nothing of the technical challenges in maintaining it.

~~~
yew
Certainly. I would never accuse Google of consistency in presentation.
Consistency is usually very far down the list of things-that-matter when it
comes to business; I suspect they're much more motivated by convincing people
to use their products.

If they weren't, we would all be complaining about some other company running
one of the world's most popular email services instead.

------
ronaldj
Good thing Yahoo didn't do this in the 90's otherwise no one in my middle
school class wouldn't have had an email account.

------
miles_matthias
Isn't this an old story? I feel like I read this exact story a few months ago.

~~~
joelmichael
I felt the same way. Turns out there was a story in July with an almost
identical title, but they seem to be different occurrences.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2725983>

~~~
miles_matthias
Ah good catch. Thanks.

------
PPGualtieri
That's why no one should ever trust $GenericCompany$ blindly with their data
without having a backup.

~~~
jimktrains2
Everyone asks why I still run a mail client when I could just use webmail.

This is why. They just don't get it.

------
whiletruefork
To my knowledge complying with COPPA is a difficult and tedious process.
Common sense does not apply, and in fact, in my understanding, can often put
you in violation of the law (for example: stating that you are going to remove
someones access for being underage , because then they can reasonably
understand that lying is in their best interest).

Blame your own government, not Google.

------
svdr
When my son (10) filled out his g+ profile, in which they ask for date of
birth, his gmail was blocked. I could reopen it by confirming (lying) he was
older, and paying a small fee by credit card.

------
vasco
I remember being on the internet since I was about 10 and I always said I was
over 18 for whatever I did on the internet because I knew otherwise there
would be restrictions. Is this a hard concept to grasp?

~~~
cynwoody
Nope.

And it should set your attitude towards the government for the rest of your
life.

------
cma
chromebook: 13 and up

~~~
RexRollman
I have to wonder if anyone at Google even thought about the repercussions of
that.

------
flexd
A bit late to the party but wasn't this exact text posted somewhere else at
least 6 months back? If not more. I am 100% sure I read something like this
with the exact same title before. On topic: What on earth does a child really
need Gmail or anything for anyway? I would like my future children to learn
about technology and be interested in how things work but on the other hand
giving a 8 year old a cellphone or something seems ridiculous.

------
joelhaasnoot
Whatever happend to "If you are under 18 (or 13?), ask your parents or
gaurdian for permission"?

Believe that's the current Dutch regulations, not an expert though. It's quite
unfair to assume that companies will keep track of this. Kids under 13 should
probably have parental/monitored internet usage anyway.

(Though I have to admit to having had a Fb account back when it was 18+ when I
was 17. School wasn't on Fb and everyone did it...)

~~~
dangrossman
It's a US company so they have to obey COPPA, which requires _verifiable_
consent from a parent before collecting any private information from the child
and restricts marketing to that child. So, in practical terms, for Google to
offer mail accounts to children under 13, they need to be able to collect
faxed or mailed proof of consent from parents, have some system to process
that information and tie it to the accounts, then they need special rules for
the ads shown on the gmail site to that user.

~~~
CamperBob
Why do no other COPPA-compliant account providers require anyone to fax or
mail anything?

~~~
adgar
I assume you mean "COPPA-compliant account providers that allow children under
13". If so, scroll up in the thread - they all require either faxing, mailing,
or credit card payments.

------
cmoscoso
You're the Product.

------
holograham
not sure I get how people can assume Google (or any company, person, or
government) owes them something. Google provides a free service (which they
figured out how to support via ads). They can refuse service to anyone. In
this case, google is enforcing a rule that is not even their own. Obviously
there is a huge pre-teen advertising market that they cannot capitalize on
because of this rule. You have knowingly broken this rule, used the account
and got caught. They make is clear when you sign up that you must be over 13.
Tough luck.

~~~
tobtoh
This old chestnut of an argument gets rolled out every time a situation like
this occurs - "Well they are the rules, you should have read them, it's your
fault. Suck it up".

In most situations I've read, the people don't so much object the rules, they
object to the unfairness of them. Two factors often come into play - were the
rules clearly stated and is the penalty in proportion to the 'crime'.

'Rules clearly stated' doesn't mean 'here is a 10 page 8pt font terms and
conditions document we assume you read' because you clicked through a EULA
apge. If your rule is going to have an impact where they will likely lose
their service, that had better be upfront and unmistakable. The dad claims he
didn't see such a warning and in all the Google accounts I've signed up for, I
don't recall reading such a condition either (I'm sure it's there, I just
don't recall ever having seen it).

Punishment fitting the crime - it's a bit like those banks which charge you a
$5 fee for falling below the $4 minimum amount you have to keep in your
account, and then charging you an overdraft fee, then charging you for
accessing an overdraft you hadn't previously arranged, then charging you for
... etc. Or perhaps laws where 'if you aren't doing anything criminal, you
should have nothing to fear about constant unwarranted surveillance, searches
or whatever'. Just because a rule is broken doesn't mean it's fair game for
any penalty to be applied.

In the case of this kid, losing access to all that data seems to be unfair. I
get the sense that if the dad could at least retrieve the data, most of his
unhappiness would be gone and he would move on.

Arguing with a 'the rules have been broken, lynch them' position, really
doesn't take into account basic human behaviours - people make mistakes, you
have to help them not make them (clear rules) and guiding them to the correct
behaviour when they deviate (appropriate in proportion punishments).

Of course, a business doesn't have to take into account basic human behaviour
- that's their right - but they rightly deserve the scorn at their lack of
respect for their customers when they get called out.

------
sliverstorm
I never can quite buy in to fuss like this. They are just a company, and I am
not surprised nor do I get upset when I get caught in a cog. Knowing that it
can happen, I prepare.

As they say, "Luck favors the prepared".

------
garbowza
This was the reason I co-founded Moment Garden <http://momentgarden.com>, to
help parents securely save the memories of their child.

I know it's a leap to trust a small startup with such important data, but with
stories of Google arbitrarily shutting down accounts, it helps make our case.

Sure, we've had some growing pains, but when a parent emails us with problems,
they get in touch with a founder who will make the situation right. Good luck
getting that with Google.

------
MichaelApproved
I bet the biggest thing holding Google back is that many will say they're
under 13 just to take advantage of the ad restrictions and privacy protections
placed on those accounts.

------
47
Where were you when the COPPA law was introduce? Did you write a single letter
to your legislators? Did you write a single blog post against COPPA?

------
mapster
My kids use my account. Unless Google can somehow tell that it is a child
writing and sending the email they would assume it is me. Making an email
account specifically for my child (with his/her name, age, etc.) seems
dangerous to me anyhow, and for good reason, since Google will lock the
account.

------
moondowner
I think that I've already read this somewhere? (Google made my son cry)
[http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-
my-...](http://sunpig.com/martin/archives/2011/07/03/google-made-my-son-
cry.html)

------
Egregore
It's why I haven't switched to any online service and still have e-mail
addresses at my own domain also I'm still using an e-mail client, so I'll
e-mail backup both at client side and at server side.

------
theseanstewart
Will someone please explain to me how Google knows the age of the person using
the account? Just lie about the age of your kid when you create them an email
account. It's really that simple.

------
zachinglis
I believe I've seen similar a post with this exact name here about a year ago.
Nice to know Google have fixed it -_-

------
cscheid
(Yes, this is a little cynical, but) The distinction between Google making
money from you vs. Google having you as a client seems to explain some of what
happened. But did they simply not see this sort of problem arising after their
family ads? That's astonishingly short-sighted.

Is this kind of problem widespread with google products? That is, could it be
explained by a small number of bad calls from somewhere inside Google's
innards?

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buff-a
In case you missed it, bean counters, not geeks, have been running google for
a while now.

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jamesgagan
i'd be interested to see if this got enough +1's if it would show up in the
"What's hot on Google+" section.

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lifeformed
How did Google find out her age?

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portentint
Not sure I'd blame Google as much as COPPA, and the politicians who think
parents can't make this choice on their own.

Of course, our kids can still find p0rn, violence and who-knows-what-else
online with no filtering whatsoever. But at least they can't blog about it.

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pjscott
The primary purpose of online child-protection laws is to make their
supporters look and feel like concerned citizens who protect children. Their
efficacy at _actually_ protecting children from anything is laughable.

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Tangaroa
If Google did not collect and sell its users' personal information, they would
not have to worry about a law saying they can't do that to kids.

~~~
learc83
That's how they make money. Their entire business model is based on it.

TANSTAAFL, you're paying for their services by acting as their product.

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funkah
What? Kids cry all the time, come on.

