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Devastated father says his 9-year-old son spent $118,000 on YouTube ads

58 points · 77 comments · vanburen

  1. spicyusername · · focus · HN ↗
    Should the father have been more involved to prevent this kind of thing? Sure.

    Should tech companies make this kind of thing this easy? No.

    Everyone in here defending our corporate overlords has had the Overton window moved so far on them that they've lost perspective on how companies should be expected to be part of the social contract.

    We should be building a world that makes it easy for people to do the right thing. Not penalizing them for accidentally doing the wrong thing because nothing matters anymore but the shareholders.

    Youtube is a fact of life for modern parenting, and it has absolutely atrocious parental controls. As we all know, these companies are filled with people who are perfectly capable of building systems that function to make the world better and easier for everyday people like the father in this story.

    And yet somehow we're defending the fact that they're doing the exact opposite...

    1. eudamoniac · · focus · HN ↗
      The Overton window of companies selling products that the user is manually buying while intentionally bypassing all existing safety measures? I don't understand how you can blame Google here.
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