As 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 experiment. I get that there are tons of implications around contract law and child labor here, but there really needs to be an escape hatch if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done. Ostensibly, this is a young creator getting discouraged from their hobby, even though they've shown that they're good enough at it to deserve some form of compensation. This'll leave a bad taste in the kid's mouth for a long time.
> As 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.
The thing is, most parents wouldn't even think "Oh, you'll need to do that in my name." when their kid says they want to build some website and put ads on it. They just think "Oh that's cute, we'll figure out the money stuff later."
> 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. Heck, an adult lost their gmail account forever because the sent a picture of their child to their doctor; one the doctor asked for.
I'm pretty sure half of the folk in tech at some point did illegal tech things in their teens. Rebelling and breaking the law in your teens is kind of normal and should be expected in my opinion.
Right. I physically broke into my high school to make a copy of the Commodore diskette station manual. We students had only access to PET casette tape readers. Cybercrime was not a thing yet.
> 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".
That's a definition of the word "fix" with which I am unfamiliar.
He still doesn't have access to his accounts.
If a sympathetic police department had not offered to navigate the (likely complex) process of restoring their copy of his data to him, he would have little hope of recovering the data, either. (My hat's off to whomever made that decision, because my guess is other considerations would almost always prevail.)
If federal investigators had not been quite so favorable in recognizing the nature of the situation, that component alone could have easily ruined him.
I'm also unaware of what his legal and other professional fees have been in all this, but I would imagine Google has done nothing to reimburse him for his expenses, much less compensate him for the time wasted and incredible stress that had to place on him and his family.
Beyond all that, getting SEO bombed as being potentially involved in the production and distribution CSAM is not a positive outcome for anyone who values their privacy or wants to ever have a normal interaction with a new employer or any other entity that may search his name. Beyond that, those who regularly fill out official forms relating to background and behavior will forever have to answer some questions differently and jump through the additional hoops an experience like that would trigger.
His outcome has been one of the least-terrible possibilities, but I hope he sues Google in a very public and embarrassing way, because whatever damages are awarded will be a rounding error to them.
Finally, the process itself is by no indications anything but still completely broken.
Google doesn't really care about bad PR from account deletions. Most people don't hear about them, they rarely hit the news.
What annoys me is, just this week Meta tried to claim that they were basically a social infrastructure that is essential everyone uses and relies on and that they shouldn't be held to blame for what people see on there when it's legal to post. While at the same time, these companies don't want to act like any of the other infrastructure. Ban people for no reason, no recourse, and no come back. While at the same time claiming they're there for the people and are providing a public service.
Certainly not everyone that this type of thing happens to gets front page attention. I don't know that it ever got resolved but, even if it did, the "I was able to convince tends of thousands of people to talk about my issue until someone paid attention" is not a reasonable process to go through. Even in the best case, he lost access to his accounts for an unreasonable amount of time. If he used the same account for business, that could be financially disastrous.
Maybe don't have the account that is linked to their adsense linked to anything but their adsense? Seems completely insane to link an adsense account you created for your child to anything but what it needs to be used for adsense.
Honestly, if you're making money from something you should have it away from your personal things. Just like how you shouldn't have AWS activated for your main amazon account.
The idea that they don't have a timeout feature rather than a "banned for life" antifeature explains all you need to know about these megacorps that are mostly the only game in town for what they do. This is why Congress (and other equivalents) need to kick them in the balls every so often to let them know who is actually in charge.
I'm in the opposite boat: I told paypal I was under 18 when I was under 18, called them, they kept my account locked, but as soon as I turned 18 I was unblocked and could used my original account. And I made the account when I was 11.
I made a PayPal account when I was 17 and used it happily for 12 years. In 2021 (being almost 30 years old) I got a payment from US (I'm in the EU) and had to provide ID to PayPal.
They figured out that I made my account a few months before my 18th birthday and permanently locked my account.
It seems all of this is arbitrary more or less random bullshit.
What if you filed a legal request for all the information Paypal has on you, then for deletion of that information? This is permitted by EU law, is possible in most EU countries and should fix the permaban issues for most cases.
Companies are not required to delete infomation they have a legitimate reason to keep. For a financial service this is almost certainly going to include enough information to identify you.
It's possible that when they signed up/created the account, it wasn't required.
Paypal was founded before there were any laws about age for signing up for things online, and minors are legally allowed bank accounts that their guardians don't have access to. (Or at least they used to be allowed: I had one at 14 in 2002).
Tried to verify my age at 16, which locked the account. Called them and they said they can't do anything until i'm 18. After 6 months I was able to withdraw the funds into a bank account I owned. Only at 18 was I able to log in and redo KYC/driver's license upload.
The old apocryphal tale comes to mind of the CD clubs.
-Everyone knew a person back in the day who signed up for the CD clubs promising dollar CD's, or 10 for a dollar. Whatever the various deals were.
-With those deals came a commitment to buy 10 - 20 more albums at full price.
-You sign a contract agreeing to this.
-So the friend-of-a-friend signed it while under 18 and a minor.
-They then tell the CD club that the agreement is null and void on account of them not being legally able to sign a contract, and after getting their 10 CD's for a dollar or whatever, to cancel their account.
In my era they didn't even have much of a requirement to buy that many, it was like signup and get 10 or 20 CDs if you buy two, and then they'd keep sending you CDs that you had to say "return" on for a year or so.
I get that there are tons of implications around contract law and child labor here, but there really needs to be an escape hatch if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done.
While it's happening, it can be done using the parent's identity. After that, the same logic that prevents a minor to commit, because limited responsability, should be applied to avoid perpetual consequences.
But as usual, companies apply draconian measures that governments can't. Some day we'll finally get that regulation that draws a line between utilities and publishers...
>” But as usual, companies apply draconian measures that governments can't. Some day we'll finally get that regulation that draws a line between utilities and publishers..”
Technically true, but the government often uses regulations and investigatory powers to compel private corporations to enact draconian regulations that the government cannot enact on its own.
> if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done
My mom definitely wouldn’t be able to provide informed consent to half the stuff I was doing on the internet in high school and middle school even if I told her about it.
She worried, I’m sure, but between speaking next to zero english and the novelty of www in the early 00’s, best she could do was threaten to take the computer if things got too weird.
When I was a kid, i hosted WC3 beta cracks, patches, and servers on our ISP Webspace. Blizzard had some call our ISP, who called my dad, who told me to stop doing whatever it was that got people mad
It feel like nowadays, it'd have resulted in a lawsuit, but at least threatening lawyer letters.
For anyone interested, this was strictly beta, by a group of crackers who said they’d stop releasing anything as soon as the game was done. I was one of 4 or 5 people who’d get advanced notification in IRC to upload the newest patches etc. so there’d be multiple mirrors available for the announcement.
Nowadays they would have tried to get you taken from your parents and sent to an Activision owned private prison facility to stamp out Blizzard game stickers.
Hmm, in Germany children and teens can still enter contracts, as long as they are able to pay it with their monthly pocket money. Every single thing you buy here in a supermarket is also an implicit contract (Kaufvertrag).
So, you could theoretically rent servers and buy ad space on Adsense as long your pocket money covers it. On the other hand: this is a liability for Google and $provider -- as most of them are post-pay. If a teen ever decides to spawn an A1000 instance with 36 cores and cannot pay, the contract is void and Google has no entitlement for compensation.
Pre-paid stuff like a small instance on vultr.com should work fine, though.
I believe to remember that the contract is valid if a minor of that age typically has that amount of money available and can understand the consequences of the contract. So the business owner does not need to know how much money the particulur kid gets. If the particular kid gets exceptionally small pocket money the contract is valid and the parents are responsible for its legal implications.
Of course what is typical for a certain age might end up for interpretation by the courts in the worst case (and occasionally it does).
I have not heard that it would be outdated as a concept. What would be the replacement? To my understanding it is generally recommended the give minors some money. And parents should not interfere much even if they disagree how it's spent.
What the term would be in English speaking countries I have no idea if pocket money sounds archaic. The translation sounds good to me not being a native speaker.
The sum might depend a lot on the country. I have no contacts to 16 year olds so I can't tell.
https://www.wiado.de/taschengeldparagraph-was-ist-das/ has a table. It doesn't look completely unreasonable for Germany. Please note that this is not a law, so if a case goes the court the judge might come to slightly different figures.
They have a choice. They could ban him until he's 18 or 5 years lapse whichever is longer. It's not black and white and doesn't need to be for life. I know the google guy who informed him he was banned for life has no power over that though. This is a straight up decision from much higher up than his pay grade. So he informed the person and locked it. It's all he could really do. I hope the internet rage-brigade doesn't do anything bad to him.
Is it really? At the very least he can refuse to lock/resolve the question and quit. Perhaps not something to reasonably expect for a single customer. Perhaps he really needs that job to survive. But the notion that you are not responsible for your companies bad behavior that you are part of just because you don't make the decisions is absurd.
There is plenty they can do and that they're already doing. The inability to enter contracts with someone doesn't mean they need to get banned for life from the service.
But things can be done without contracts. You can't hold a child accountable to pay a bill--but children certainly can buy things. You simply make things with children entirely prepay or time-of-transaction pay (you hand the clerk the $, you get the item.)
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).
> Specially, if you the intend is to "protect" children, this is not helpful.
No, rather, current US law means that technically minors can't enter into contracts until age 16, and many provisions aren't enforceable until 18 or local age-of-majority. Broadly, because of child labor laws, it's not possible for actual children to enter into work/employee relationships or sign contracts legally, just period. This is supposed to stop exploitation of children (sign this stupid contract and now you're encumbered without being fully cognizant of what that means or entails).
There is a difference between a parent's account and a child's account that was agreed to by a parent. One says "I am doing this", the other "my child is doing this and I'm allowing it".
I remember registering with an non-adult affiliate marketing company as a kid. I'm pretty sure they knew I was young and they just didn't care. Either they used that as an excuse to rip me off or none of my leads ever converted lol
Companies cannot legally provide a lot of services to minors.
For other services there is enough bureaucracy that it's easier to avoid by not providing the service to minors.
It's also easier to ban accounts for life when they lie about who they are. You don't run the risk of aiding fraud and being fined if you make a mistake, because you banned them.
There was nothing preventing the kid from creatibg content. It was in using Ad Sense to make money off it.
Sure but that doesn’t mean they should be banned for life. If you commit a crime as a minor does that follow you around for the rest of your life? At least where I live, it doesn’t.
It doesn't mean that it shouldn't though, either. I can't imagine any other way around this that doesn't amount to forcing a company to provide a service to someone they have rational reasons to not trust, which seems like globally at least it could cause more problems than it solves.
To be clear I'm not saying we shouldn't encourage a company to re-consider when the person is older, but it's hard to see how they should be forced to.
Nothing wrong with that. Just do it. Force them to provide service to the kids they banned for life due to frivolous violations of contracts nobody really reads anyway.
> it's hard to see how they should be forced to
It's really easy actually. Someone getting permabanned from a service for the unforgivable offense of being a child is completely out of proportion.
We already force them to provide service to the disabled and impaired without discrimination. It's okay to do it. Corporations don't have feelings. Nobody really cares how hard life is for the hundred billion dollar corporation either.
You can just use a friend's account ? There is no way of banning someone really.
Growing up with the internet it always felt these companies were playing with fire. I can't explain it. The 90s were a wild time I guess. That generation knows about using fake names and addresses.
I guess I have never seen these businesses as proper businesses like the local mom and pop shop whose owner you know and respect and who respects you.
But google and other such companies always feel like they are trying to use you and you are trying to use them.
Forgive me if I am incorrect, its been years since I have used it, but don't you need to link a bank account and social security number to receive money from Adsense?
You could just get a check mailed. I lived in Europe then and got a check that I cashed at my bank. I didn’t have a SSN, so but maybe US citizens had to provide it.
Granted this was 15 or so years ago so things might have changed since then.
Nowadays BSA requires KYC. Any type of money transmission requires collection of enough PII to do an OFAC check to ensure you aren't facilitating activity to a sanctioned individual. Banks/clearinghouses are usually on the line for doing this for their clients.
For a while they just mailed paper checks on any month when the 100 USD minimum threshold was passed. If they didn't get cashed they'd send threatening letters about 'escheatment'. I think that stopped at some point about 10yrs ago. Not sure about what happened after.
I received a lifelong ban on using Google Ad products when I was 16 after experimenting with clicking my own ads (and asking my high school friends to click on them). I remember the account accumulated almost $80 before Google detected the suspicious activity and banned me.
Given that this was 16 years ago, it would be nice to get second chance..
This is also a case for online play on xbox and playstation. You have kids trying to shittalk.. and trying to be edgy. (They have very little life experience to understand why their words are wrong or hurtful). However, some of these bans completely wipe out their entire console.
It's pretty shitty to do a life time ban on their accounts for minor things like that.
Yes. I have not tried using a different gmail address. I am not sure if they have my SSN on record or not, it was a long time ago, I don't remember what information I gave them but I did use my real name.
Same. I wasn't clicking my own ads but I was 16ish and had some sort of text along the lines "Please click an ad to support this website."
20 years later, I'm still banned (well, last I checked was probably 5 years ago). Funnily enough, my day job has me interacting with AdWords pretty regularly.
Also, FWIW you can probably sign up with an EIN, just not a personal account with your SSN.
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.
Another example along your lines: many were quick to declare that the chess player Hans Niemann ought to be banned from the sport because he admitted to cheating at online no-stakes chess games when he was 16. He is accused (without evidence) of cheating again, and people are latching on to the "once a cheater, always a cheater" mentality.
He's 19. He cheated and then lied about it, and continued lying about it until very very recently, and credibly allegedly is still lying about it. His coach is also an unapologetic cheater in a Titled tournament.
He deserves to still be on probation, not playing with world champions.
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 later out of those), especially given it was the first offence.
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.
We already require private entities providing services/products to the public to not discrimiate who they enter into contracts with based on certain protected attributes.
However in this case you don't even need to do that - just make it illegal for such services to keep information on minors for longer than $period. If they can't identify you they can't deny you service while still indiscriminately providing service to everyone else.
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 earlier than that. I also don't believe that as I aged I have magically understood better the worlds boundaries and limits.
Mind you, 16 years old is enough to drive in some places. Enough to work in others. And also enough to drink in some others. It's just not that young and people should take responsibilities for their actions.
Principles and values are something that's established early on in someone's life. If someone doesn't care for defrauding a company of $80 when they are 16 years old, I don't honestly believe they deserve a second chance.
Are you making the claim that since you didn't make a mistake at 16 that no other 16 yo can make mistakes? As well as the claim that any mistakes made at 16 means that the person will forever repeat those same mistakes for life?
> He spent his teenage years reading terms and conditions
I spent 15 minutes or so reading a document which I'm obligated to read to sign a contract and discovered I myself couldn't do it and so passed that to someone else.
> lets not pretend he didn't make mistakes
That's true. I do have multiple regrets too. Reading terms of services isn't one though.
> Are you making the claim that since you didn't make a mistake at 16 that no other 16 yo can make mistakes?
No.
> As well as the claim that any mistakes made at 16 means that the person will forever repeat those same mistakes for life?
No.
I said that since I didn't make that mistake much before 16 years old (13 or so) then it's possible for a 16 years old to not make the same mistake. That's about reading ToS, defrauding Google is a whole other can of worms.
I also didn't say they will make the same mistakes for life, only that they shouldn't get another chance. Google has no reason from their point of view to give access to their platform to someone who once tried to defraud them and put them in several liabilities related to child labor and exploitation.
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.
What fraud did I commit? There's nothing in Google's terms of service stating I can't appear in my parents channel. The money went to them, not me, I never saw a dime. No wrong information was sent to Google.
In fact when we were considering AdWords we got in touch with a local AdWords representative (yes, Google has support, but only for the business they care about) and we talked about a lot of this stuff.
Please tell me if I'm missing something and I'll be happy to retract what I've said.
I had Google shutdown my Adsense account and they didn't ever reveal why, I think they just didn't like the site it was on (A twitter picture search engine) but they never told me. I certainly didn't think I was doing anything nefarious, but maybe my site wasn't supposed to be displaying ads. They kept my money (like $3k) and I am pretty sure I can't ever use the service again, but I honestly haven't tried.
I also get a letter every so often (this was 10+ years ago) from one of the big auditing firms that I have money in my google account and I just need to go claim it by logging into the account I can't login to anymore.
I've been banned-for-life from a handful of services after I lied about my age as a kid.
I can see both (all?) sides of this:
- As a society we ought to be forgiving of harmless youthful indiscretions
- As a business you shouldn't have to give second chances to people who blatantly defraud you
- There is a big can of worms when it comes to doing business with minors on the internet. I don't think there's a solution as easy as "well when they're 18, let them log into their account and update their age to acknowledge that they were using the service as a minor" or "just let people open multiple accounts (with wildly different ages) under their name."
> As a business you shouldn't have to give second chances to people who blatantly defraud you
Says who? Society can easily make it so they have to. Besides, "fraud" is a bit too strong a word for a kid that simply didn't care about some company's idiotic "you have to be 13 to post here" message on the sign up screen.
At least the GPDR should allow you to correct the age. I don't think it has any provisions that say that if you entered incorrect data yourself, you waive your right to have data corrected.
They'd be required to correct the age, but they wouldn't be required to delete the "this person defrauded us by giving a false age" flag/note on your internal profile.
It’s an easy argument, but that doesn’t make it correct. Within law “crimes” have a statue of limitations and almost never infinite long punishment. A strong argument is needed to override someones rights for an unlimited time like that.
If you work in the EU, have a chat with your DPO/Privacy team cause I bet they would actually find this an interesting conversation too.
The problem is the company is in a privileged position. And there have to be limits. If not, they could stretch the definition of "defrauded me" to whatever they want, for example including discrimination of any kind.
This is a hard edge case in my opinion, because unless you unregister that email everywhere you used it, someone else will gain access to all your old accounts which would leak potentially much worse things than a record saying this email is not available anymore.
How would deleting the account in question help anyone, though? Or are you saying that after deleting, they would then be allowed to re-register after a ban? Isn't that just isomorphic to demanding Free Ban Evasion for All?
>How would deleting the account in question help anyone, though? Or are you saying that after deleting, they would then be allowed to re-register after a ban?
The problem described in the post is that the user has a shadow, inaccessible disabled account that they can't do anything about, forever, and that's a problem.
>Isn't that just isomorphic to demanding Free Ban Evasion for All?
I think it would be isomorphic to Google implementing verification on account creation, thereby preventing this scenario from happening in the first place.
> I think it would be isomorphic to Google implementing verification on account creation, thereby preventing this scenario from happening in the first place.
They did, though. They straight up asked the kid if he was 18, and he lied and said "yes". I don't know what you want here, you want Google to... protect it's customers from their own fraud? Does any other industry do that?
(full disclosure: I work there, but on open source firmware and know nothing about Adsense)
> The processing of personal data strictly necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud also constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned.
I wonder if you could argue that it isn't "strictly necessary" after a certain point though. Does ToS abuse by minors in this way really predict fraud 15 years later? If the SNR of a signal decays over time, at a certain point do the interests of liberty exceed the interests of preventing fraud?
I have absolutely no idea and am not a lawyer, it just seems to me that the word "strictly" is meant to indicate that it isn't pixie dust companies can sprinkle on any piece of information as they choose. The rest of the language here seems to stress that there has to be some sort of test which demonstrates that the interests of the controller overrides the interest of the data subject.
A lot of dystopian scifi involves corporations; Robocop, Weyland-Yutani Corp from Aliens, etc. Google's got more power than substantial numbers of governments.
And yet Google can't come knock on your door and take you away. Calling it dystopian can only come from an incredibly sheltered individual who has never faced any real danger.
Plenty of dystopian fiction involves corporations legally not allowed to do something and still doing it, because they're functionally immune to consequences. There are also degrees of dystopian between "murder corp" and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood.
You might have an overly narrow definition of "dystopian".
It's not just the action; it's the ability to do it without significant consequences. I could sue you for slander if you called me a pedophile; my ability to do so (successfully) against Google is quite limited. Law enforcement is also likely to treat an accusation from Google differently than from some random person.
dystopia does not require the government - in fact some popular fictional dystopias are when corporations can control/etc without the government intervening. So maybe just don't word police other people because you don't like their words.
The definition is "imagined state or society great suffering or injustice" -- Google cannot cause you great suffering or injustice because it has little to no power over you. Only a government or similar can truly cause great suffering en masse.
its not an argument, its about the definition of the word, and how you were word policing based on your opinion that doesn't actually reflect the way the word is used.
It wouldn't be an issue if you just had given your opinion instead of demanding he stop using words, which was the primary reason for my reply, because you demanding other people stop using words is insufferably arrogant.
> Is it insufferably arrogant to ask people to stop using insensitive, hateful, or discriminatory words?
When that word is 'dystopia', yeah. Getting this offended about a megacorp being called dystopian is insufferable. Whatever your relationship is to Google, it doesn't warrant this level of personal attachment. You're acting like he insulted your own mother or something.
I’m not offended in the least, I’m just tired of reading melodramatic takes from people who haven’t experienced any hardship. It’s a common theme here and I want it to be better. Let’s attribute the correct level of concern to things instead of calling keeping track of people who defrauded you “dystopian”. There’s literally a war happening and an actual real government cutting off communications to its people so that they can’t protest, let’s focus on that very real dystopia.
> I’m just tired of reading melodramatic takes from people who haven’t experienced any hardship ... There’s literally a war happening
On that note - I'm from Ukraine. Helped my mother-in-law get out of Kyiv in March, and went back to Ukraine in July with supplies for soldiers that weren't available locally (military radios and a bulletproof vest).
I also worked at Google on their Location team.
I am choosing my words with care, and I stand by them. In particular, the choice of the word dystopian. And lack of humanity is one of the reasons this war is happening. Dystopia starts in the minds.
Also, please don't exploit the war in Ukraine to needlessly police other people's speech. If you want to show support, that's not the best way.
I tried advertising a startup website I had, setup the payments wrong on adsense. Something with an old invalid card being linked or something, and google banned me for life through an automated system. The system thinks I tried to commit some sort of payments fraud.
If the 13-year old had killed someone, they could be prosecuted as a minor and they would go to juvie and their record would be sealed after they turn 21 and they could get on with their life.
But stealing a trivial amount of money from a corporation, well that's certainly deserving of an Internet Death Penalty.
> But stealing a trivial amount of money from a corporation
It was only $300 and it was never paid out (since it needed more verification to pay out). If anything Google /made/ and extra $300 (they made more than that since the $300 is after their take). Also it wasn't "stolen" it was earned on a YT channel.
If the teen entered into a lied about his age in a labor contract, performed the labor, and the employer hold the money after discovering the correct age, he would probably end in jail. Yet it's almost the same situation.
Not really, since they can cash it out when they're 18, and unclaimed but earned funds on an active but unverified AdSense account don't just disappear into the ether - so on Google's balance sheet, they don't have an extra $300.
I'm pretty sure that's the whole point of this issue though right? The account is burned forever because it's stuck in limbo. I think there would be less consternation/anger if the kid just had to wait till they were 18 but the way the support forum reads this account is forever "in limbo" and even turning 18 won't fix that.
Surely Google writes off old "debts" after a period of time. Maybe not? I guess they will make interest off it at a minimum.
> but the way the support forum reads this account is forever "in limbo" and even turning 18 won't fix that.
I think this is poor writing from the 'Product Expect' person - the 13 year old already has an adsense account that is 'active' but 'unverified', but verification is still possible.
> If he tries to apply again when he is 18 he will be refused on the grounds of already having an account, even though he will have abandoned it, it's still there.
but he's not re-applying, just verifying the existing account. The parent here did not indicate that 'verification' is now unavailable, just that the parent can't input their own name into the verification form.
Was he told this? The submission appears to be a user comment from some anonymous guy named "busterjet", describing what would happen in a hypothetical scenario. There's no indication that such a scenario has actually happened or that busterjet represents Google.
Got banned from Amazon on my first purchase. For some reason the payment bounced even though everything should have been fine (correct payment details, enough money in the account etc).
Complained and got unbanned.
AWS has even a notary(!) based process to recover accounts.
It is pretty normal to recover bad things on non-Google sites by getting a human into the loop, especially if money is involved.
AWS support has left me really impressed. They were answering inquiries even when started and was playing around a free-tier account. (Even got a refund for a charge due to forgetting some stuff running beyond the free-tier limit.) Not surprised they dominate the cloud segment and GCP barely reaches two-digits usage.
Banned sounds strange. Going beyond the free-tier limits simply means they start charging you. Though to say the truth, as you, was expecting them to stop the service. Did you tried a chargeback or blocked them access to your card?
Human in the loop could redirect payments to their parent without a lifetime ban. Children do unwise things all the time.
Google's growth rates are starting to plateau, and they might want to revisit the legion of people they've robobanned from spending on their platforms.
It may not be possible for Google to do that redirect without incurring legal liability.
Fraud occurred here. Google just shuffling the shells might be aiding and abetting fraud.
(The law here isn't set up just to protect Google; nor is it set up to just protect the kid. It ties into broader societal protections against child exploitation and child labor. So Google runs the risk of tripping over criminal liability, in which case the end result is no longer in the hands of any of the immediate parties. Their policies are maximally paranoid to avoid that outcome).
Is 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?
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.
My friend ran into this recently, he signed up to Paypal in like 2003, probably to sell games or something on eBay for a bit of cash.
He's in his mid thirties now, and Paypal banned his account without warning, when he phoned them up they said it was because he was under 18 when he signed up.....19 years ago.
I know this is going to be hard to prove, but I was banned forever because they detected "click fraud" which did not come from me. It was likely initiated by a competitor.
Now I still use adsense, but now it is through a 3rd party which takes a hefty cut of the profits.
If adsense is your sole income, you should probably diversify. Anyone can get you permanently banned unless you are a well known youtuber.
Around 2003 I purchased a CPU from eBay with PayPal. It never shipped because it was a scam. My credit card company refunded my money, but PayPal demanded I pay them. I refused and they banned my account.
It took almost a decade before a class-action lawsuit forced amnesty at PayPal. I use it now because it is convenient to have everything go through one service that I can control. But if they did this again I wouldn't use them again.
Hopefully a class-action lawsuit can still work against a giant like Google. If the US would get its head out of its arse and pass legislation like GDRP, we might actually have a chance at the right to be forgotten.
Worth noting that this is the statement of a "product expert" which is just some random person not an employee of the company our the actual policy. This might be true but this isn't a reliable source.
Right, how about this is 100% Google's fault for not figuring out how to avoid offering contracts to children. Seems more reasonable than anyone else getting any amount of blame or punishment whatsoever, including and especially the minor involved.
On every terms of service document there is a clause that says "we can terminate our service to you unilaterally with no warning for any reason including no reason". It's basically the catch all exception handler of the legal world these corporations live in.
> Your son's account is now in limbo - it can't be verified, closed or paid out. It can only be abandoned but it will still technically be active as AdSense think he is over 18 - he declared that to be the case.
Of course it can't be verified now, but what would prevent the son from completing the verification in a few years when he is actually 18?
If you're under 18, then you cannot legally consent to the TOS, therefore you can't be in violation of them. They can kick you off of then of course, but banning you later on as an adult I wouldn't think would be justified because, as above, you can't violate TOS that you can't consent to when under 18.
A very strong rule of thumb is that whenever a conversation gets locked, whichever side did the locking is in the wrong. The other big place this applies is GitHub issues and PR's.
PayPal locked my account after receiving 800 €, asked for my ID, got it, unlocked my account (gave me about 3 hours to withdraw) and then banned me permanently for having created the account before 18.
At this point, I consider most American companies as an active threat to me, especially if I used them before 18.
I tried starting a blog as a kid, I tried monetizing it using Adsense, my application never got accepted, but somehow my account ended up active for 5 minutes before my application got rejected again. I abandoned the blog, and on visiting it after two years, I found out it's showing ads with an adsense account that shouldn't be showing ads, and then I was banned. I would never know if it was because I was still a minor or because Google bots didn't do a very good job.
Google does allow you to change the birthdate for your Google account. They could try letting the account sit in limbo unverified until the kid is 18, change the birthdate and then verify the account.
I remember at 21 getting an email from Paypal that the account I'd used my entire online life was banned because I started it when I was 12. They noticed this after I reached out to support...
Switched email addresses and used that instead. Although I've not used PayPal in a good while because it just randomly rejected transactions for no clear reason.
Ah, Google. It baffles me that some companies even consider using GCP - it is still the same company that kills products and has abysmal customer support. AWS and Azure feel like a safer bet to me. I wonder if Google will ever get their act together, or will they go the IBM way?
- Is the '18' adjusted when the local age of legal majority is not 18?
I believe it will be increased if the age of majority is above 18, but has a lower limit of 18 even if the local age of majority is below that.
- Are there jurisdictions where this policy is in clear conflict with local law or case law?
I'm not sure how it could be, generally companies are allowed to ban a customer for almost any reason (with certain rare exceptions). I'm not aware of any jurisdiction where "I lied about my age when I was a kid" is a protected class.
> Are there jurisdictions where this policy is in clear conflict with local law or case law?
Brazilian here. I just found one case where a judge legitimized a contract after a 16 year old misrepresented her age in order to contract a service and then tried to nullify the contract by claiming she was a minor at the time. Essentially the Google situation but reversed.
Google is subject to the laws of every jurisdiction in which Google operates. Furthermore US law doesn't actually require Google to refuse to do business with minors. So if a jurisdiction had some rule that was contradictory to Google's policy (which I doubt), then Google would have to comply.
Why must we continually revisit the pragma for why to treat people as innocent until proven guilty?? Yes, it takes more effort and, yes, there is more apparent/immediate risk, but the rationale is sound, given dynamics of any system needing generalized governance.
It doesn't matter that it's lawful for these corporations to circumvent and entirely go against the patriotic creed of the country where they're founded and operate - the matter is still relevant - the principle exists for very good reason, and is applicable to more than just government. What happened to "doing the right thing" regardless of shortsighted, incomplete rationale being applied and (unfathomably) acceptable to people whose very livelihood hinges on this ongoing presumption of innocence?
I don't think the title follows. Nobody in that exchange seems to have considered the possibility that the 13yo could just keep the account going for 5 years until they're able to verify it at age 18, or alternatively just create a new Google ID on their 18th birthday and use that.
Of course I read it, that's why I wrote 'nobody seems to have considered the possibility.' How is Google gonna ban a person for life whose identity they never verified in the first place?
Apparently this is not possible. Because it's not possible to verify the account, as the person doing the verification has a different birthdate than what's associated with the account.
I had a similar thing happen to my Yahoo account in ~1998-1999. After I'd been using it for a couple months they decided to ask everyone "Are you over 13?" and being a foolish honest child I selected "No".
Permanently locked out. Tried to get back in after I turned 13, no luck. Well crap.
That's literally how I ended up `donatj` instead of `jdonat` basically everywhere - got permanently locked out of jdonat@yahoo.com
I have a fair number of active accounts to this day that I've had since before I was 13 cough ebay cough in the late 90s. I'm scared one day they're going to cross reference the creation date with my current age and be jerks about it.
I’ve never used AdSense, so might be a stupid question, but how do they identify you? Are you supposed to give them some lifetime identifying information like SSN? Everything else like email, name, address can be changed.
I’ve been banned on google ads for circumventing systems for about 2 years now. This is apparently their highest offense and to be perfectly honest I still have no idea what I did. I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than a couple hundred bucks on google ads and one day I was just banned and my ads were stopped.
So as far as I can tell there’s plenty of not so clear things that will get you banned from google ads, don’t build your life and business around that advertising stream is what I learned.
That and that there are better advertising avenues for the niches I tend to care about.
It would be understandable if it were for scams or using ads for illicit goods, but I can't imagine it being a tenable business practice for a corporation to keep a negative permanent record over a minor transgression where no-one is hurt. Are they being pushed by some regulations? Were those rules "written in blood" somehow?
Not to mention all the sketchy or pointless webpages and apps which are there exclusively for the ad revenue and are really abusing the platform.
Yet 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.
Should be no problem, except for the problem of setting up an LLC "just for that". I've no idea how it works in the states, but setting up a firm, in many countries I know, is no easy task, and comes with associated costs, both one-time and recurrent ones.
There's an easy fix, say you moved to the eu and request that they delete all data about you (you could also try to do a data correction request to change your age).
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.
Even if Google were to change their policies to allow this youngster back on in five years, he'd be helpless to actually get Google to respond to a support request.
As far as I can tell the 13 year old isn't even locked out, they just can't verify the AdSense account (and the verification name must match the name on the account), so they will indeed be able to cash out in 5 years.
This just makes me want to create AdSense accounts for every kid possible to ensure they are protected from being exploited by Google adtech products for life.
Note that the responses are responses by a community member and not by a Google employee. As such, those responses should be taken with a grain of salt.
I worked in financial services for a while and I think Adsense qualifies as a similar financial service, though it might be different since we were working in a sector directly related to trading stocks and brokerage.
To comply with US legal regulations my company had to: verify the legitimate identity of account holders via SSN or other means, confirm they are over 18, confirm they aren't on a specific list of financial fraudsters or entities blacklisted by the US government, etc. If we didn't do this properly for every single user we could have been liable for all kinds of nasty legal ramifications, including losing various legal operating licenses we worked very hard to obtain.
A kid claiming they are older than they are is relatively low on the scale of identity fraud, but it is still a form of direct identity fraud and would have direct legal consequences if we allowed it through. To open the account, they had to have put in a false statement about their age. Verification isn't instant, it takes time to process, so you can easily open an unverifiable account on many services including Adsense, but it will forever remain unverified if you cannot provide legitimate verification info. I am sympathetic that someone of that age might not understand the consequences of their actions, but they claimed to be someone they are not (specifically an older person). Once you do that, you can't go back and claim to be another individual. They can find an adult and have an adult open an account, which would have various legal ramifications for that adult individual who owns the account, but it would be a new account for a new individual just as with Google Adsense.
Also some of the comments about data and GDPR are a bit absurd. You cannot commit fraud, spam, or otherwise violate terms of service, then demand all your data be erased under "GDPR" so you can open a new account and do it over again without recourse. We had constant repeat violators trying to game our onboarding and sign back up after being banned or denied an account. Showing any form of "grace" around previously closed or banned accounts was taking a big risk. We were able to do so on occasion, but only because we operated at a small scale, so an admin could look deeply into individual circumstances and make exceptions. Google Adsense likely faces orders of magnitude higher levels of abuse, and it makes sense for them to not reopen accounts for any reason to minimize their risk exposure. Yes it is unfortunate for those who were banned for a "minor" reason but there isn't much else they can sensibly do.
What right does Google have to store the data about this kid necessary to enforce a lifetime ban against him? The click-through contract that he was legally unable to enter into?
"he has already earned over £300" implies he's in the UK, so UK GDPR applies.
> The processing of personal data strictly necessary for the purposes of preventing fraud also constitutes a legitimate interest of the data controller concerned.
I think for this to work, Google actually has to delete any information about you completely from its systems. I'm curious if anyone tried this with success as well.
GDPR does not fix this situation. There are cut-outs in GDPR that allows companies to store data for longer. Financial/billing/taxes fall under that category.
It's very unwise to lie to a service provider when they explicitly ask, especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud.
Google's not gating out under-18-year-olds for fun: they're a business, they'd love to make more money. Contract law in the US forbids people under 18 from entering into broad categories of contract, and Adsense use operates under electronic contract between user and Google where money changes hands in both directions. Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
That would depend on whose laws you were applying. In a lot of places, fraud requires a misrepresentation that's actually material to the transaction, and a court could come down on either side of the question of whether the user's age was material in the necessary way.
> Google opens themselves up to huge liability if they inadvertently do business with a minor, which is why they're so paranoid about the lock-out.
No, they really don't. They might open themselves up to limited liability if they let a minor do something that lost said minor money. They also might not be able to enforce some of the "take it or leave it" provisions of their terms against minors (of course, in a sane legal system they wouldn't be able to enforce those terms against anybody, but you don't see many if any sane legal systems).
But they do not open themselves up to "huge liability".
Nonetheless, they don't choose to take even those small risks. Mostly, I suspect, because the response wouldn't be automatable. Google hates anything that's not automatable, and vehemently resists manually fixing anything. That applies to interacting with adults, too, and to cases where you haven't even actually violated their policies, but the automation happens to be wrong, which happens all the time.
Which is why nobody of any age should be depending on Google.
> especially when setting up an account where money will change hands. That is technically actual fraud
no, that's not fraud. It might be an element of fraud if it was a loophole you were exploiting to use the account for some fraudulent purpose, but fraud requires theft or similar, not just technical violations of terms.
If Google was so worried about this, their AI and behavior analytics can %99.9 know you are underage. They could show a BIG RED alert multiple times about this. Plus, I don't see heavy upload traffic from these young people becoming a liability on their end which is basically free work.
The "under-18-year-olds can't enter into contracts" laws are, broadly speaking, derived historically from child labor protection concerns, and tend to be state-level law.
There's very real risk that legitimizing a contract with a child opens Google up to expensive-to-litigate criminal liability.
Children technically can enter into contracts. But they're voidable contracts, so it's essentially no upside and only downside for those that would contract with them.
"By submitting an application to use the Services, if you are an individual, you represent that you are at least 18 years of age... Google may at any time terminate your Account because of ... your failure to otherwise fully comply with the AdSense Policies... If ... Google suspends or terminates your Account, you (i) are prohibited from creating a new Account, and (ii) may not be permitted to monetize content on other Google products."
a) Imagine you are 13 years old and actually reading Terms of Services. Just imagine you are under 18.
b) It's legal speak mentioning "you cannot create a new account" but it doesn't say you can't try to fix the problems about your existing account. The problem is there is nobody to reach for mistakes or downright violations from Google's side. It doesn't work to help people with good intentions realizing their errors.
c) It's not mentioning that you will forever be blocked because you misrepresented your age for whatever the reason (just an unaware click is enough).
If Google was actually serious in enforcing the policy, they would just check any detail that could trigger this user could be below 18 years of age. As you read here, they don't spend much of an effort to avoid this scenario. AI works just to block you, not to avoid your downfall.
d) I wonder Google informs kids this much before making money on free content they upload on Youtube. It's not hard to see this is one-sided exploitation in business sense.
> a) Imagine you are 13 years old and actually reading Terms of Services. Just imagine you are under 18.
No need to imagine because I did exactly that (read my other comment). Let's get into this:
> c) It's not mentioning that you will forever be blocked because you misrepresented your age for whatever the reason (just an unaware click is enough).
It is mentioning SPECIFICALLY that. And an unaware click is not enough, you have to go through the trouble of reading the contract (or scrolling past it), checking a lot of boxes, saying you agree to the contract, and that's only after you in your own will and power decided to search for this. You also get to change your birthday once in your Google account if you made any mistakes during singup.
> If Google was actually serious in enforcing the policy, they would just check any detail that could trigger this user could be below 18 years of age. As you read here, they don't spend much of an effort to avoid this scenario. AI works just to block you, not to avoid your downfall.
Then people will complain that they require documentation, privacy this, privacy that. Mind you that I would never submit an ID to Google to verify my identity, but honestly that's the only way they can actually verify your age.
I'm not a fan of Google and it's autobanning processes with no recourse, but this is a special case where I think it's completely justified looking from their side and all the liabilities they have if they decide to backtrack on something like this.
For them someone is going to criticize them either way they take, so they choose the easier and simpler path of permabanning.
I really really wish the internet was more supportive of "early hackers" who want to experiment. I get that there are tons of implications around contract law and child labor here, but there really needs to be an escape hatch if a parent agrees to whatever activity is being done. Ostensibly, this is a young creator getting discouraged from their hobby, even though they've shown that they're good enough at it to deserve some form of compensation. This'll leave a bad taste in the kid's mouth for a long time.