I think since he never verified his account, and has a different birth date than the one stated, he'll probably have no problems making a new account when he's 18.
Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
241–250 of 290 posts
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#242Is it uncharitable to say that Google has intentionally stolen millions of dollars from kids? They seem to have engineered a set of rules where they work around having to ever pay a bunch of people for content that was produced and had ads displayed on it. Maybe the kids can't legally sign a contract, but Google still made money from them. Has Google forfeited this money or are they profiting off of child labor?
AFAIK all the incomes from invalid traffic are refunded to the advertisers. That might also be the procedure in case of invalid accounts.
It would be good to get a clear citation of this, if available.
Not that this matters as much, but I'd like to point out that even if this is the case that the money is returned to advertisers, Google may still reap non-trivial benefits from this chain of events in at least these ways.
> Depending on the amount and length of time the money is held, this might add up to a substantial dollar value in interest payments they're making by holding onto the cash. The interest generated by temporarily holding $80 here and $400 there times thousands and thousands of users, held for a while, could be a non-trivial amount of cash in a long timeframe.
> Google simultaneously screws over advertisers (garbage and/or fraud clicks) at the same time as they sometimes give away these freebie clicks (unpaid kids' clicks) back to their advertisers. Now think about advertisers' perceptions of Google for their business. It can be argued that Google is essentially banking on the goodwill from the kids' ad clicks being returned (giving the advertisers a freebie) to makeup for however much they piss off advertisers for the garbage fraud clicks that they receive. If Google can bank on "stealing" some percentage of clicks constantly, that might be enough for them to partially make up just enough for the bad clicks they send their advertisers. That could arguably materially impact their business prospects.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The thing is, most parents wouldn't even think "Oh, you'll need to do that in my name." I certainly wouldn't think that, as it sounds like horrible idea. Your teenage child posts one picture of themselves in a compromising situation, and suddenly you're lost all access to your accounts for the rest of your life. I'll pass, thanks. And, yes, I get the "educate your children" thing.. but children do stupid things. He…
> Heck, an adult lost their gmail account forever because the sent a picture of their child to their doctor; one the doctor asked for. All the bad press didn't sort that out? That kind of thing shouldn't happen in the first place, but we can usually expect that once it hits headlines some PR drone swoops in to fix the issue.
Google's PR team explicitly said they will never reinstate that user and that they stand by their CSAM detection policy.
I'm not sure what mindset drives people to say "even if you didn't commit a crime, you're guilty of the appearance of that crime, which is good enough". Social media outrage mobs perhaps, but my money is more on "this user puts us at risk of criminal prosecution". A lot of companies treat CSAM detection & removal as a subdepartment of risk management, which means lots of "shut the fuck up and go away".
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#244Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
The escape hatch is the parent opening the account in their own name. Companies don't have a choice here: Someone under 18 can not enter into a contract, there's nothing really they can do.
Do you know for sure it is absolutely impossible? I know at least 3 countries where you can get a permission from your parents being 16, 14, or even 12. I know that, because I was 16 when we did the procedure to allow me be adult (have all the rights of being 21, except vote and consume alcohol)
The US is pretty strict about it, legally speaking.
If I recall correctly, the reason I couldn't get a debit card for my bank account as a 14/15 year old without giving a guardian access to my account is that issuing a debit card required signing a contract and I legally couldn't do that.
Minors do sign things, they just have no legal validity for the most part (I think employment docs for kids over 14/16 might be an exception, but a lot of states regulate that and mandate an adult's consent as well).
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps you did not note that the banned person was 16 years old. There should be very few actions with life long consequences for any 16 year old. Their prefrontal cortex is not fully developed. They experiment and engage with the world to learn its boundaries and limits. Click fraud for $80 when 16yo does not warrant a lifetime ban.
Agreed. That + the offense itself is rather stupid minor. The user didn't defraud people out of a lot of money, the user literally just had a few classmates click on an ad, made $80 (that I bet weren't paid out anyway, because the account got banned), and now they are banned for life. At the very worst, I would say a more fair punishment would be a ban for a year or until they reach the age of 18 (whichever comes lat…
Though I agree with your judgment of what would be more fair, for me it doesn’t extend to compelling a private entity to enter into a contract with another private entity.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
I beg do differ. When I was a kid I used to have a YouTube channel with AdSense. Difference being I actually read the ToS and decided that it would be my parents channel, only I would be recording. Never clicked on my channels ads (in fact that's when I started using AdBlockers, for the sole purpose of not generating fraudulent ad revenue). Reading at 16 years old is not that hard. I created that YouTube channel much…
This idea of never forgive, never forget is why the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Punishment is the singular goal, and rehabilitation is considered weakness. This kind of thinking is antisocial and serves no purpose other than some kind of revenge fantasy.
I think that's somewhat true except in business/entrepreneurship, where the US seems way more forgiving to failure than Europe. Bankruptcy is also more common and it seems to me that people in the US respect having tried hard and failed hard more than having no failures on your resume.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#248As someone who operated on the "adult internet" with payment processors and related infrastructure without being 18, I still carry forward the constant fear that I'll be banned for retroactive Terms of Service violations incurred when I was a kid. It really sucks when it's services like AdSense because you're just screwed forever. I really really wish the internet was more supportive of "early hackers" who want to ex…
The escape hatch is the parent opening the account in their own name. Companies don't have a choice here: Someone under 18 can not enter into a contract, there's nothing really they can do.
> Companies don't have a choice here: Someone under 18 can not enter into a contract, there's nothing really they can do.
If this were the case they someone under eighteen would not be able to buy anything in a shop. That is a contract.
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#249Ì
Re: Google Adsense/Admob blocks you for life if you use it before you're 18
#250Yet another step sleepwalking into the dystopian future. Sure, it's some ad account, who cares. But imagine one of the digital ID projects going mainstream, and the government adopting it, and you doing something as a kid banning you from every payroll system supporting this particular digital ID scheme. And there's nobody to talk to. It's just the way it is.