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YouTube under federal investigation over allegations it violates kids' privacy

washingtonpost.com

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

#31

Post by muro »

verroq wrote: post #20
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.

I'll guess you are not a parent.

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

#32

Post by Macross8299 »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #16
save_ferris wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Wall Street Journal/FT are different though, people pay for those because it's a valuable curation of financial/economic news and presents political news through a financial/economics lens and not entirely through the traditional left/right political spectrum lens.

Call me cynical, but what makes you think people subscribing to more politically-oriented publications are doing it because they want truly something accurate and not because that publication confirms their biases?

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

#33

Post by seventhtiger »

colechristensen wrote: post #28
verroq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am experiencing quite a bit of the opposite from "let youtube babysit their children" in many different parents that treat video like some sort of poison which is a curiosity to me (I am not a parent). I have been thinking more about dopamine or motivation and satisfaction in myself. I get it, satisfying that craving with any one thing too much is bad. Having satisfaction for that craving always on demand is bad. T…

YouTube harms children in just the same way as it harms adults. The difference is that children are more susceptible. What is considered a normal religious or political argument between adults can be considered brain washing if directed at children.

They do not possess the mental capacities or world experience to be able to handle arbitrary videos. And the fact that it's arbitrary is exactly the issue. My young siblings watch YouTube, and I will say the best children's content on YouTube is better than the best children's content that was available on TV in my team. There are amazing channels out there with ethical, educational, entertaining, wholesome content I wish I had access to when I was their age.

Children's cultural consumption must be curated by the parents or a trusted party. YouTube will take kids down arbitrary rabbit holes that can take them to violent, political, radical, targeted, or even genuinely disturbing videos. Adults can contextualize what they see, or disengage, and even then we see the negative effects. Subjecting children to that is not just bad parenting, it's bad in the sense that dystopia is bad in science fiction. It is poison.

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

#34

Post by Nasrudith »

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…

Umm you do realize Youtube is free to the end user? That makes the two exactly comparable in business model.

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

#35

Post by save_ferris »

Nasrudith wrote: post #34
save_ferris wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Umm you do realize Youtube is free to the end user? That makes the two exactly comparable in business model.

Again, YouTube controls its own ad network. It has full control over what advertising JS is being served to users. It’s also a technology-first company, where advanced web application development is a core competency.

News publications aren’t like this at all. They’re embedding Adsense or some other third party ad widgets, probably at the direction of management. They’re serving whatever that black box ad API returns, which could be a lot of things. I haven’t really looked that hard, but are you aware of an ad network that pays comparably to Google that pledges not to track people? It’s kinda hard to imagine that such a thing exists, given the ad industry’s pervasive encroachment on privacy.

Also, most publications I’ve interacted with don’t have technical stakeholders at the executive level, and web developers are a back-of-the-house role. They’re not nearly as technically capable as a YouTube

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

#36

Post by yeahitslikethat »

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…

The difference is that YouTube makes money on ads on pirated content. Newspapers can't do that. They'd get in trouble.

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

#37

Post by yeahitslikethat »

Nasrudith wrote: post #34
save_ferris wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Umm you do realize Youtube is free to the end user? That makes the two exactly comparable in business model.

Except that YouTube doesn't have to pay to produce content so profit is easy at other's expense.

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

#38

Post by camjohnson26 »

Macross8299 wrote: post #32
camjohnson26 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think Wall Street Journal/FT are different though, people pay for those because it's a valuable curation of financial/economic news and presents political news through a financial/economics lens and not entirely through the traditional left/right political spectrum lens. Call me cynical, but what makes you think people subscribing to more politically-oriented publications are doing it because they want truly someth…

Probably because there’s low cost alternatives if all you care about is confirming your biases.

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

#39

Post by inpooling »

verroq wrote: post #20
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.

It's not recommended for parents to let youtube to babysit their children. But most parents in the States let their kids watch animations or kid videos on Youtude Kids, so they can prepare a quick meal, take a shower, or just eat dinner quietly...If you have a kid and work full-time, then you will understand why a lot parents still do it even they know that it's not good. The downside of Youtube - Youtube will automatically push similar contents even on Youtude Kids. For example, a kid watched a "Baby Shark" video, then Youtube will push a lot videos tagged with similar contents, including weird parodies with inappropriate content for kids.
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