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Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

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Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#181

Post by tristanperry »

Matt_Cutts wrote: post #134
tristanperry wrote: post #56

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+ e…

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.

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

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#183

Post by okoni »

nl wrote: post #166
CamperBob wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction is very important: a customer is someone who pays you money. To Google and Facebook, users are just parameters to be optimized.

"you're not the customer you're the product" It's such an attractive meme, isn't it? Short, straight to the point, and it seems to make sense. What could possibly be wrong? Like most things, the explanation why it is wrong is subtle, and much longer than the seven words it takes to express. But think about this: credit card machines are usually provided free to merchants. Merchants aren't the product, and the credit…

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." is the correct sentence [1], also you are welcome to explain why it's wrong according to you, but imho you are mistaken.

[1] http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent#325604...

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#184

Post by okoni »

csmt wrote: post #58
danilocampos wrote: post #18

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 providin…

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.

It's not absurd when you know that collecting data and google are two sides of the same coin.

Want your email free, just do it the internet way: host your own.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#185

Post by keypusher »

cookiecaper wrote: post #132
ck2 wrote: post #32

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.

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 b…

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.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#186

Post by okoni »

ck2 wrote: post #32

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.

You'd do better by moving out of gmail (if you have one) and host your own mail as it was originally intended to be.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#187

Post by okoni »

adgar wrote: post #164
ajays wrote: post #62

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 ca…

> 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…

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.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#188

Post by okoni »

sp332 wrote: post #113
dillona wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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.

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#189

Post by okoni »

tonfa wrote: post #89
[deleted] wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

"Focus on the user and all else will follow" is still number one at http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/tenthings.html

This is PR, you know devised by Freud's nephew Edward Bernays in the early 20th century, popularized by its infamous book "Propaganda".

Re: Hey Google, thanks for making my daughter cry.

#190

Post by okoni »

holograham wrote: post #99

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 broke…

Sorry you have to learn it this way, but most people lie about birthdate as a number entered in an online form is no proof of age.
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