YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#121

Post by etse » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #88

dgzl wrote: post #46

To be honest, I see quite a lot of inappropriate content on YouTube's tending section pretty often. This can't have a net zero effect on youth.

Define inappropriate. The worst thing I've seen is somebody who swears or makes a fair amount of edgy jokes. I'm guessing you're outside the US since YouTube controls the trending tab pretty closely there.

Not saying these types of videos (or the ones they lead to) are trending, but you're asking for inappropriate.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/youtube-for-kids-videos-prob...

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#122

Post by jlarocco » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #120

notyourday wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. Get a ticket, pay it on the web. Now if the car is towed that becomes a problem because just pulling out a credit card does not fix it.

> Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it.

> I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it.

That amounts to the same thing. You obey the regulations (pay for parking) except when you think it's cheaper not to. Companies do the same thing. Most of the time it works out, but sometimes there's a fine.

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#123

Post by etse » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

midev wrote: post #31

14 wrote: post #2

I for one am glad at this though I am sure the fine could have been exponentially larger. The fact that YouTube can go here and say their platform is only intended for 13 year olds and up is a joke. Their are thousands of shows targeted directly at my kids. I can even clearly hear one video my kid likes to watch starts out with saying “look kids” so tell me how that is not directed at kids. I use an adblocker but whe…

You need to be a parent and not expect regulatory fines to watch your children. You've identified a problem, you've identified the cause, and now you need to do something about it within your household. You're literally talking about a video you let your child watch, while bemoaning the FCC needing to step in. > The fact that YouTube can go here and say their platform is only intended for 13 year olds and up is a jok…

How is demanding fines not being a parent? They are not mutually exclusive.

The comment about moms blocking YouTube is a bit ridiculous. Seems hard to believe likelihood of finding one could be higher than the likelihood of finding a kid who can work around it.

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#124

Post by leetcrew » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

jlarocco wrote: post #122

leetcrew wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those who have cars and can afford the fine consider parking fines to be a cost of doing business. I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it.

> I don't. if the fine is $50 and it costs $5 to park, I will pay unless I suspect enforcement is so lax that I have a >90% chance of getting away with it. That amounts to the same thing. You obey the regulations (pay for parking) except when you think it's cheaper not to. Companies do the same thing. Most of the time it works out, but sometimes there's a fine.

the above poster is saying that parking fines don't work so you gotta escalate and tow the person's car. I'm saying you don't have to do that, just hire a few more meter enforcement people and stick with fines that are proportional to the offense. personally, I think $40-50 is a reasonable fine for attempting to subvert parking regulations. if you park in a way that blocks a whole lane of traffic, you have caused a big bigger and time sensitive problem that justifies a tow truck.

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#125

Post by root_axis » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

thathndude wrote: post #96

This whole thing feels like Monopoly money. First, it’s $200m to a company valued at more than $800B. Imagine you had 100k in the bank. That would be like a $25 late payment fee. But on top of that, it’s $200m into the black hole that is our dysfunctional and bloated federal government. How do The Impacted children whose privacy was violated actually benefit. It’s all ridiculous.

FTA:

> The settlement would be the largest civil penalty ever obtained by the F.T.C. in a children’s privacy case. It dwarfs the previous record fine of $5.7 million for children’s privacy violations the agency levied this year against the owners of TikTok, a social video-sharing app.

This was a warning to YouTube, but from their perspective, there's clearly a subtext of "we're not afraid to raise the fines, next time could be a lot worse".

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#126

Post by nexuist » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 5:25 PM UTC

JCharante wrote: post #101

mc32 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do their own folks who have children think? There must be some internal pressure on that issue but probably one of those things that get ignored. Why don’t we hear about their internal protests to management and sit outs, etc? If they’re getting fined, it’s more than just public opinion and advocacy it’s preventing illegal activity.

Do googlers let their [young] children use YouTube? I thought parents in tech were usually more restrictive on what they allowed their kids to spend time on

Maybe not YouTube proper, but I would hope Googlers let their kids watch YouTube Kids. It would be a damning review on the product if its own engineers refuse to let their children use it.

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#127

Post by nocturnial » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #30

dmix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A competitor who finds a way to deal with copyright better, has a sane advertising policy that doesn't randomly demonetizes people, with a patreon system built in, and has a modern UI (YouTube has a lot of room for improvement) it could possibly compete with YouTube. A whole lot of major YouTube channels who are constantly attacked by false copyright claims or have to push product placements due to no ads would love…

Sure, just build a video streaming website with good UI, a good recommendation/discovery algorithm, it's own avertising network (that is able to compete with YTs excellent personalized ads while having a more creator-friendly policy), spend more on human review of copyright claims than YT, establish a revenue share system for creators, as well as a system to pay monthly pledges similar to YT channel memberships or pa…

> Sure, just build a video streaming website with good UI, a good recommendation/discovery algorithm, it's own avertising network

I'm sorry to pick on you because I also disagree with the post you replied to.

In that list, didn't you forget to mention something very important that's at the heart of this discussion?

A competitor or even google should have all those things _plus_ it should be legal.

Currently, it isn't. Either change the law or change the business model, but don't implement a business model that breaks the law and hope it will turn out fine in the end.

You can't have every business breaking laws it disagrees with, not even if some or most people disagree with that law.

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#128

Post by cameronbrown » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

etse wrote: post #121

cameronbrown wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define inappropriate. The worst thing I've seen is somebody who swears or makes a fair amount of edgy jokes. I'm guessing you're outside the US since YouTube controls the trending tab pretty closely there.

Not saying these types of videos (or the ones they lead to) are trending, but you're asking for inappropriate. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/youtube-for-kids-videos-prob...

Oh yeah, there's definitely disturbing stuff on YouTube, not denying that. I just thing if most edgy think on Trending is PewDiePie, it's not too bad. I know it's hard, but kids should be with their parents anyway, when online at a young age.

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#129

Post by reaperducer » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #126

JCharante wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do googlers let their [young] children use YouTube? I thought parents in tech were usually more restrictive on what they allowed their kids to spend time on

Maybe not YouTube proper, but I would hope Googlers let their kids watch YouTube Kids. It would be a damning review on the product if its own engineers refuse to let their children use it.

There have been several high-profile articles in respectable magazines and newspapers lately which detail how the "tech elite" very often send their children to special schools with little or no technology, and severely limit their own children's access to technology at home.

Meanwhile, they make billions off of feeding lowest common denominator content to everyone else's children.

Re: YouTube Said to Be Fined Up to $200M for Children’s Privacy Violations

#130

Post by swiley » Sat, Aug 31, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #114

swiley wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people I watch have complained about copyright strikes and having their channels completely deleted without explanation (extractions and ire is an example of that.) More than their fear of demonization (I’ve only seen one complain about that.) Most professional youtubers don’t seem to trust YouTube’s revenue sharing so why bother with it?

Any YouTube competitor will immediately be filled with stolen content, porn, and original content that violates some copyright or other. Unless that competitor adopts an extremely pro-content-owner stance (which would put them diametrically opposed to their content creators, and render this entire experiment moot), they are going to get sued out of existence. Why do you think YouTube's copyright systems work the way…

At least in the US you're only required to investigate DMCA takedown requests which (I think) have legal ramifications for frivilous use. That's reasonable.

What youtube does is significantly more aggressive and automated. I think one of the most ridiculuous examples was a performance of 4'33 that had it's audio removed because their bot decided it violated copyright law.