Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 39 posts

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#11

Post by sitharus »

ronilan wrote: post #10

I'm not a native speaker, but this sounds strange: > "YouTube has a huge problem,” said Dylan Collins, chief executive of SuperAwesome. “They clearly have huge amounts of children using the platform, but they can’t acknowledge their presence.” Children is a countable noun. I think saying "huge number of children" is better. For contrast money is a mass noun. "generating huge amount of money" would be appropriate use…

I'd agree with you, though in modern english the countable/uncountable distinction is getting blurred (see less/fewer for example). Just part of the evolution of language I guess.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#12

Post by warent »

mr_toad wrote: post #9

The hypocrisy in these articles criticising social media for tracking people when the news sites are stuffed to the gills with trackers is starting to get annoying.

The journalists aren't the ones making that decision though, so I don't think that speaks to the quality of the article itself.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#13

Post by save_ferris »

mr_toad wrote: post #9

The hypocrisy in these articles criticising social media for tracking people when the news sites are stuffed to the gills with trackers is starting to get annoying.

I'm not sure that's an entirely fair comparison to make for a couple reasons: A) nobody pays to read the news anymore, and B) Facebook controls its ad network.

If WaPo or any other news publication decided to turn off ads out of moral obligation to prove a point, they'd be digging their own graves. You're essentially arguing that they should commit economic suicide if they truly care about ad tracking. Our culture isn't willing to spend as much on news content as we do Netflix, and that's just a sad reality.

Facebook, Youtube, etc. OTOH have built very profitable advertising systems that form the foundation of their entire business. They fully control these ad networks and all their data. And in this case, it sounds like YouTube may have violated COPPA, which is a totally different level of moral failure than choosing to put up ads.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#14

Post by CriticalCathed »

fyoving wrote: post #3

The author keeps conflating the "hate speech" talking points with what this investigation is actually about, it's like they can't help but pad the article with all their google grievances. It sounds like this is due to COPPA complaints because a lot of kids watch youtube videos and apparently they are not supposed to, but if youtube was found culpable then everyone would because COPPA is a mess.

Unenforceable laws are always a mess.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#15

Post by mr_toad »

warent wrote: post #12
mr_toad wrote: post #9

The hypocrisy in these articles criticising social media for tracking people when the news sites are stuffed to the gills with trackers is starting to get annoying.

The journalists aren't the ones making that decision though, so I don't think that speaks to the quality of the article itself.

I’m not sure which is worse, that journalists are unaware of what their own papers are doing, or that they’re keeping quiet about it.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#16

Post by camjohnson26 »

save_ferris wrote: post #13
mr_toad wrote: post #9

The hypocrisy in these articles criticising social media for tracking people when the news sites are stuffed to the gills with trackers is starting to get annoying.

I'm not sure that's an entirely fair comparison to make for a couple reasons: A) nobody pays to read the news anymore, and B) Facebook controls its ad network. If WaPo or any other news publication decided to turn off ads out of moral obligation to prove a point, they'd be digging their own graves. You're essentially arguing that they should commit economic suicide if they truly care about ad tracking. Our culture is…

A lot of people pay for the Wall Street Journal. If the news sites would stop giving it away for free maybe people would be forced to start paying. You may think this would just drive people to fake news sources but people actually want something accurate. Fake news only works if it mixes with trustworthy content.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#17

Post by Gibbon1 »

mr_toad wrote: post #9

The hypocrisy in these articles criticising social media for tracking people when the news sites are stuffed to the gills with trackers is starting to get annoying.

Commonality is both are driven by the highly sociopathic and craven advertising/sales industry. You can order corporations by their dependence on ad and dark marketing revenue.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#18

Post by briandear »

warent wrote: post #12
mr_toad wrote: post #9

The hypocrisy in these articles criticising social media for tracking people when the news sites are stuffed to the gills with trackers is starting to get annoying.

The journalists aren't the ones making that decision though, so I don't think that speaks to the quality of the article itself.

The “just following orders” argument? Journalists know good and well what their websites are doing if they themselves are supposedly experts on reporting on this sort of thing. They expect employees at Google et al to go against their masters yet they are hypocrites because they don’t go against theirs.

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#19

Post by jolmg »

CriticalCathed wrote: post #14
fyoving wrote: post #3

The author keeps conflating the "hate speech" talking points with what this investigation is actually about, it's like they can't help but pad the article with all their google grievances. It sounds like this is due to COPPA complaints because a lot of kids watch youtube videos and apparently they are not supposed to, but if youtube was found culpable then everyone would because COPPA is a mess.

Unenforceable laws are always a mess.

Unenforceable or unobeyable?

Re: YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

#20

Post by verroq »

fyoving wrote: post #3

The author keeps conflating the "hate speech" talking points with what this investigation is actually about, it's like they can't help but pad the article with all their google grievances. It sounds like this is due to COPPA complaints because a lot of kids watch youtube videos and apparently they are not supposed to, but if youtube was found culpable then everyone would because COPPA is a mess.

I don't see how this is youtube's fault at all.

It's not their problem that kids are violating TOS. Maybe parents shouldn't let youtube babysit their children.

Post reply on HN