This is probably the backstory. Rhonda Ryan’s world…poor guy will be held at gunpoint streaming until he dies or kills his parents
ITT: person deserves life changing debt and losing his job because he made a mistake
Cmon yall, you can be critical of someone’s actions while also recognizing 6 figures of debt is absurd and not a reasonable outcome of this.
What really should be the case is that the dad learns his lesson, loses company card access, kid learns his lesson, google writes it off, and the kid’s account is permanently banned.
We don’t need to ruin someone’s life for this
Legally, the kid wasn’t old enough to contract the ads.
It would not stand in court.
I question using his work card to pay for some robucks for his kid.
I question that his credit card was saved for Robucks, but was able to be used on Google Ads.
I would not be surprised if he lost his job. I think that’s not unreasonable though the economy sucks.
Losing his job is a 50/50 IMO. We don’t know how his dad performed at work, if this is his first offense, etc. If all goes well, the dad gets google to write off the cost. Then the company sees that as a learning lesson and just revokes his card access. On the other hand, it could mean he is fired if he has already racked up other violations.
They’re probably running unlimited Amex. Google should legally have to write off the ad spend and cease the account.
100k offense from negligence. I’ve not worked anywhere that would shrug that off. Of course, he could be family or otherwise protected.
100k offense from negligence. I’ve not worked anywhere that would shrug that off. Of course, he could be family or otherwise protected.
I’ve seen negligence cause costs approaching 100k at my current job (and thankfully leadership has changed so that isn’t happening anywhere near as much) but the way I see it, if he’s a really good employee and Google writes off the charges he could possibly narrowly keep his job. But I don’t see him keeping his job if Google doesn’t write off the ad fees. (Barring of course being owner/family to owners)
Right?
I swear people hearing stories like this want the absolute worst outcomes for everyone possible with 0 empathy.
He likely used the company credit card once, got some pop-up and instinctively clicked “yes” as most people do causing the card to be saved to the browser.
I’m sure the dad will find a way to reverse the damage (or at least greatly minimize it) and both will have learned their lesson.
I’m sorry, why is a 9 year old even allowed to post to YouTube? There’s a lot of mistakes the Dad made to lead up to this, hard life lesson for him mainly.
I watched Charlie’s video on this and the dad takes a lot of the ownership of what happened and how having all your accounts connected via Google can backfire spectacularly when the only thing the kid really understands from this is, more money = more views, and “dad set a limit” so as long as the card clears, it must be good to go. Crazy story.
The first failure was allowing his kid to have a YT channel at all, or at least not one that is heavily monitored and restricted by him or the other parent. The financial fuck up is the consequences of poor parenting.
Parents are going up against multi-billion dollar companies, no one has sufficent parenting skills for this except the Amish.
Well sure but I mean, just don’t set up the YouTube channel for your 9 year old? Seems pretty simple to me.
Everything about kids is simple when you take a magnifying glass to any parent’s mistake. Anyone who thinks it’s easy is probably fucking up their kid royally.
That would assume dad has the time and energy for that. In a world where both parents need to be working in order to survive. Most people have no clue how any of the digital world works, but we somehow expect everyone to master it all when they have children?
Wild take, tbh.
He knew enough to know that his 9 year old was posting videos on YouTube and gave him a credit card to buy ads. It’s poor parenting and ignorance is a bullshit argument. You don’t have to master the digital world to know that letting your prepubescent child post content online without strict oversight is bad. Again, he clearly knew this was happening because again, he funded it. Shit parenting.
I know single working parents with multiple kids that are surely worse off than this guy that aren’t this stupid and are better parents just by being attentive to their children’s actions and hobbies.
IMO that’s not the issue
The issue is the lack of safeguards. In our rush to call out the dad based on the headline, we shouldn’t let Google and the banks off the hook.
The dad should have set limits on the card/accountand paid closer attention to the kid’s view/ad activities, but both google and the banks benefitted from the poor design/usability issues that led to this.EDIT: Since it was the company card, maybe the dad couldn’t have set limits on there. He used the company card on an older purchase, and since it was tied to his account, google offered the card as a payment option when the kid went to boost his ad. While I’m at it, screw the advertising industry that made YouTube into the mess it is now.
As for this bit
why is a 9 year old even allowed to post to YouTube
I remember about 15 years ago, a lot of kids wanted to post gameplay videos and music/art they made to YouTube. Some parents handled that poorly yes, but others took the time to watch the videos and approve them before anything was uploaded.
Kids want to explore their interests and it can be healthy to explore it with them, and teach them things along the way. Telling them no outright might push them to do it anyway, but this time without supervision.
Google make it obnoxiously hard to use a card just once. You have to explicitly delete it, and cancel or individually move every subscription an account may have to other payment methods before it can be deleted
It’s ultimately a parenting failure. But there should be way more education for young adults about online safety and parental controls.
If the parent is in full control, then they can upload their content, thats more responsible. I dont personally agree with it anyway, I think 9 is far too young to expose to the internet like that.
I think YouTube should require a password everytime you make a purchase, but still this wouldnt have happened if the parents were better educated. They learnt a hard lesson.
Yes, parents have to let kids do anything they want because kids will do it anyway. Parenting 101.
I read it more as, if your kid is intent on something, rather than slap them down, try and work with them to turn it into a positive experience.
Most kids adore doing stuff with their parents. It lets them practice adult skills, with the safety net of a trusted adult behind them.
With something like streaming, it would be down to the parent to keep them safe and let them explore their creativity. It sounds like this dad screwed that up, but is trying to at least own his part of that.
There are nuances between feral parenting and helicopter parenting.
And if kids want to do something stupid it’s ok to explain to them why it’s stupid and propose something else.
What if they want to film Jackass type content? Or “pranks”? Or play american football? Or read Harry Potter? Part of parenting is guiding your children to more fulfilling hobbies, not just letting them chase everything that’s trending at the moment.
Fully agreed on that. There is also a balance of allowing them to explore an idea space, while keeping them clear of risks and negative problems.
E.g. my minion is currently obsessed with Minecraft. They are actually getting quite good at the design part too. They want to play online though. I’m not happy with that, so I am setting up a private server. It will be whitelist access only. They will be able to play online and talk with their friends through Minecraft, but not random players online. When they are older, I’ll allow it, but only when I am in the (physical) room, keeping an eye on things.
If you try and shoehorn your kids into only what you think is acceptable, then you will have problems. If you have shown you will help them explore their own interests, they will come to you with them. If you regularly shut them down, they will go behind your back, where you have no control.
And this is a great way to do it. Kudos.
As you say, it’s all about balance. You don’t want to isolate your kid from all of their friends but you also don’t want them to do every stupid TikTok trend because all the other kids do it.
I’m not sure how you got that from that comment.
Kids want to explore their interests and it can be healthy to explore it with them, and teach them things along the way. Telling them no outright might push them to do it anyway, but this time without supervision.
Basically, teach your kid how things work rather than just telling them “no.”
Hard agree 🤑🫰😈
It really depends how smart the kid is. I don’t see the problem with a smart 9 year old uploading gameplay videos if it’s done right. As long as it’s supervised by the parent, the parent approves what the kid can upload and limit how many videos the kid can upload in a month. Comments can be turned off and they just use an internet nickname instead of their real name. Kid can even wear a mask to hide his face. Like it can be used as a learning tool to teach a kid how to use a pc and software, how to stay safe on the internet and what privacy means. Also how to plan and develop patience and discipline.
Of course I doubt these parents did any of that.
I think it has to be the parents account and the parent shares videos themselves. Do we really want 9 year olds obsessed with metrics like views and stuff? This is how you get “brain rot” children, why arent they playing outside or with toys? They are 9, not 15. Kids are extremely impressionable at that age.
yeah the dad could have turned it into a teaching moment when the kid complained about views instead of throwing money at it. But making YouTube videos doesn’t automatically mean they will obsess about views it really depends on how the parents guides their kid, they can even hide the metrics from the kid. There are extensions that will hide the numbers from the page.
Also screen time should be limited anyway, if you limit how much time a kid can spend on the pc there is plenty of time left in a week to play outside and play with toys. It’s all about balance.
Why is a nine year old on you tube, worse with their own channel?
Parents don’t parent anymore.
It’s kind of the lemonade stand of our time. Get some feel for how markets work, and exercise some generally applicable skills (video editing).
Hell no it isn’t. I would never let my nine year old have a youtube channel.
I kind of get what you are driving at, but the huge difference is the kid actually runs the stand, and the customers are (likely) friends and neighbors.
Not some major profit corporation trying to use you as a product to sell ads.
Google sitting over there just like “sux to be you, dude”.
Holy shit the astroturfing in this comment section is crazy. If a 9 year old went into any other store and used a company card the store would reasonably refuse to sell 100k worth of goods. If the payment system Google implemented doesn’t even verify who is paying then that’s negligence on their part.
It was the dad who entered the card number. It was his fault. He created a Google advertising profile, but his business card on it, and then handed the reins to a child.
The biggest issue here is that dad thought he could embezzle $20 at a time, but accidentally did $120k all at once. lol. lmao even.
Lack of constant online surveillance is a good thing, btw. Expecting Google to have caught this doesn’t make any sense.
The guy you’re responding to has a valid point.
No way the son would get away with these actions at a physical store. “My dad was in here earlier, you saw him, i like to keep using his credit card tho, thanks”
Gee, I wonder why scamming is so huge after turning the digital market in to full “end-user responsibility” and tech companies removing carefully curated practices over the centuties for profit maximization.
Google earns billions of these scummy tactics to get users to spend as much as possible by removing any barriers of control and security. Why dont they get any of the responsibility?
It’s only a valid point if you’re talking about mobile app purchases where Google actually abuses parent/child financial decisions.
Google’s advertising business is a different story altogether. You’re expected to spend quite a lot on campaigns, and not expected to hand control over to a child.
In your comparison, the store would not see that it was a 9 year old
It was the Google account of the dad, and he stored the company’s card in his account payment details
And spending 100k on something is not unusual for a company card, or a big company running an ad campaign
You should also look up what astroturfing actually is
Meh, it’s Google. They suck and can afford it.
sure, I agree with that.
doesn’t change the fact that the credit card and ad service was used as intended
If I stab myself with a knife, I don’t blame the knife manifacturer about how shit they are because I stabbed myself by user error
It’s just a really shitty situation overall
I need to confirm my online purchases through my banking app. But I willingly dont connect my banking details anywhere.
I find it weird that payment details can be stored for one-click purchases later on. It is just so highly and easily abused.
We dont accept this kind of payment behavior at a store for obvious reasons, but online it is considered normal? I guess it maximises profits, which are important.
And when these carefully designed systems for low barrier purchases are abused by a child, all responsibility goes to the parent?
Wild how normalised this behavior is.
Didn’t really need this analogy, as it’s not as clear in this case, more like a child was able to start a run of papers on their own and cost the printer $100k running the printers for 15 minutes.
Should they have been in the printers with access to the buttons? No
But again it’s Google
Should they have been in the printers with access to the buttons? No
agreed, the kid absolutely should not have had access to it. And Google explicitly forbids it. But the dad put the kid in front of it anyway and said “you can use it, but only up to 20 bucks” and walked away
Fuck Google, but if you’re advocating for them to do identity and age verification before buying services imma have to disagree
“Astroturfing” as if Lemmy is popular enough to have any of that yet
So the goal was $20 on an ad campaign? Might as well light a $20 bill on fire. That won’t move the needle at all. Also why does a Minecraft channel of a nine year old need a advertising campaign. A nine year old has all the time in the world to learn how to make compelling content and grow organically. The goal for a nine year old shouldn’t be high subscriber/viewer count. The dad could have turned it into a teaching moment when the kid complained about low viewership instead of throwing money at it no matter how small it was supposed to be
Might as well have been a teaching moment.
“Here’s 20 bucks, let’s run some ads and see how it impacts your channel”
“Didn’t change much? Well, wouldn’t you rather spend that money on something else instead?”
Part of teaching kids about the Internet is showing what ads are, the way companies use them and that there’s always a reason you’re getting shown them
As a kid I wanted some shitty toy and my mom went “well, if that’s what you want to spend your allowance on, sure. But I think it’s probably not as good as you think”, only for me to realize that she was right after I got it
Sometimes the parent needs the teaching moment. This was one.
Well, you can’t grow on YouTube without being a capitalist shill (except if you make content against that, since it isn’t a popular capitalist shill activity).
I’m glad you added that caveat. I realized recently that my favorite content creators are people who will never do ad reads and take no corporate money. And yes, they also make content critiquing capitalism.
I don’t think the parent prioritizes time with son, rather, $20 could pacify them for a while
The perils of shitty parenting.
Edit: Goes way beyond shitty parenting. How did someone this stupid get a company card let alone one with a limit that high? It’s disturbing.
I remember my father complaining about his company card. Apparently the bank backing the card had some restriction that the maximum amount for an individual transaction could only be some percentage of the cards limit. For example purposes let’s say that’s 20%. He had to purchase stuff for $30-40K on occasion. Which means the cards limit had to be $150-200K.
Dave said he entered the company card himself to buy Robux for his son, and it then sat saved on the Google account that also carries his work email, calendar, and files. Dave did not say why he used the company card for that purchase.
Well I don’t have much sympathy here. He used the company card to buy his son Robux. There was no reason to do this, he should have used his personal card. So maybe he thought he could skim a little money off the top for personal use and it ended up biting him in the ass.
Roblox keeps the kid occupied and thus makes dad more efficient at his job. It’s a legit expense.
Rofl
I was thinking the same thing… At my job if you have a company card, you have to explain ever cent spent on it every month at a minimum. How did he not have a difficult conversation with someone when he bought fucking Robux on the company card??
At my company the direct manager approves the detail - although if the total looks reasonable for the assignment they don’t scrutinize individual expenses - then above that there are automated flagging checks only. If mixed in with legit expenses, and the description or vendor type or whatever didn’t trigger the automated flagging, $20 for something inappropriate would never be caught.
don’t you typically have to confirm if you want to save a card to your account as well? like I get pop-ups every time I manually type in my card cause I don’t trust websites saving that info for more than I need it to. My parents specifically never saved their cards onto my sibs and my accounts to avoid frivolous spending. it’s an awful situation to be in, but the dad kinda reaped what he sowed here
Seems to me that this is a dual fail. The father should have monitored his kid more closely and not used his company card for this, but Google should have noticed the unusual spending pattern and flagged it somehow—I mean, it looks like something someone might do using a stolen card, in which case Google might never have gotten its money, if you need a self-interested reason why they should have been keeping a more careful eye on this.
Why would a $120k spend on a business card (entered by the cardholder on an advertising account under their name) be suspicious?
This doesn’t follow the pattern of a stolen card at all.
EDIT: Dad set up the YT brand account using his employer’s Google Workspace. He handed all his work emails and sensitive auth to the kid too. Dad is stupid as fuck.
Dad is gonna lose his job and 100% blame it on his kid. Nobody that stupid would ever be capable of taking personal responsibility.
$120K spent advertising a kid’s Minecraft channel is suspicious. The initial flag should just have been for “card not normally used suddenly spending a shit-ton of money—does this look legit?” After that, a ten-second check of what was being advertised would have shown that something was fishy.
Eh, not necessarily. Those kidslop channels can pull in serious income, a company starting one up makes sense.
A $120K marketing budget for a single beat of a campaign would match a company with credit cards with limits that large. Usually you don’t use a credit card for marketing spending though and your Google bill is paid by a bank account. It should have been flagged but they could be using their company cc’s recklessly making this a normal transaction.
Two weeks ago, Google served me a sponsored link that led right to a malicious site trying to install malware. Not only did they not prevent this from being the top hit, they even profited off of it.
The link looked a little dodgy in hindsight. To me. I feel like a company like Google should pick up on it. But they just don’t give af anymore.
Having an adblocker is basic security.
I forgot to mention that this was on a freshly installed osx. I had just pulled Firefox and was looking for the homebrew website. Google was the default search. I normally have it set to the duck or qwant but I just hadn’t come around do it yet.
I also never click on the sponsored links as a matter of principle but I was in a hurry and I was getting sloppy. But was always because I didn’t want them to have even more money, not because I thought those links could be harmful.
They only have to be successful once…
You assume Google cares or held to account about your privacy and protection like any physical businesses have such as banks, shops or phone companies??
Have you seen how little regard they give to the meet app spam situation? It is telling how little they have gotten away with care about their consumers.
Try to contact Google as a user.
How easy a company is to contact is very telling.
You can speak to someone at Google for sales within 5 minutes tho.
Any company that issues its employees credit cards with six figure limits will have no issue reversing the charges trying to sue Google.
I assumed it was his own company
Article references his manager
Thanks I missed that
If they have a Workspace account for the entire business, they could be big enough to be in the “Google actually cares because they bring in $$$” category and will drop the charge.
This isn’t the first time somebody learned the hard way that you should never save your card info on a divice that children can access.
I thought people learned the hard way with echo dots
Dave said he entered the company card himself to buy Robux for his son, and it then sat saved on the Google account that also carries his work email, calendar, and files. Dave did not say why he used the company card for that purchase.
Man steals from his employer, is surprised to get in trouble for it 🙄
Hey everyone found the bootlicker
Keeping company card saved to an account that is not expressly used for work is a bad idea. Not sure how that makes one a bootlicker.
Didn’t he say he used the card for robux or a smal $20l ad campaign? That’s how it got saved in there. So, he (the dad) started it. Why did he use the company card at all for personal spending?
That’s what I’m saying. Work should be completely separate from personal life, doubly so for expenses. This is wholly on the father, of course. I like the idea of giving youngsters agency and such, but it must come with guard rails and some amount of supervision. The father clearly had no idea what he was getting himself into.
Even if one has one’s very own personal single-owner company, you keep company stuff separate from personal stuff.
There are accounting reasons for this, there are management reasons for this, there are even legal reasons for this (for example if you own limited company is sued, keeping its shit totally separate from your shit means none of your stuff is part of the discovery process and if it loses the lawsuit, none of your personal stuff gets taken).
This is even more so when the company is not yours and you’re just an employee - you don’t want company troubles to end up hitting you and the company doesn’t want you troubles to end up hitting it, so it’s a win-win for both sides.
Always suspect when companies want to start mixing company stuff with personal stuff - in my experience they’re either small amateurish operations, they’re doing it to get you to do unpaid work for them outside work hours (i.e. the “company phone” that gets calls from management at odd hours) or its some weird tax evasion scheme and/or ties you more to the company (the “company car” that you don’t really use for company stuff).
This guy fucked things up massivelly, even if a $118k “lesson” is maybe a bit too much.
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Defending Google? He used a company card on an account to pay for Roblox money. Shouldn’t do that. If he had not done that, then he would not be on the hook for so much money. Also, please don’t tell people to injure themselves. Personal responsibility is a thing.
Google automatically saving credit cards is scummy, and should not be a thing.
Also what the fuck kind of company expense is Robux anyway? I’d get some questions from the tax authority if I did that. If you’re going to use a company card for personal expenses, at least do it for expenses that are believable as company expenses.
💯
We don’t know what kind of company it is or what kind of job this guy does. It’s unlikely-but-possible that researching a gaming platform aimed at kids is a reasonable business activity for him.
Fun fact, two things can be true at the same time. Like corporations can be bad AND people can be stupid.
I can agree with you on this, but fuck the other bootlickers
That’s an odd take here.
Man uses company card for personal purchases, then leaves account management with 9 year old son.
Let’s say this was:
Bob has Bill’s key to his house, so he can take care of it while Bill is away. One day, Bob’s son says he needs some peanut butter. Bob says “let’s use some of Bill’s — he’s away, and we can replace it before he gets back.”
So Bob and his son go over to Bill’s place and take his peanut butter. Bob leaves the key with his son.
Later that day, his son is hungry but Bob isn’t around. So the son goes over to Bill’s house and eats everything in Bill’s fridge.
Bill gets home the next day and finds his fridge empty an a note from Bob saying he borrowed his peanut butter.
It doesn’t matter that Bill was off at a puppy shooting convention. Bob and his son are both in the wrong here.
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That’s an interesting case of hypocrisy you’ve got there.
It’s possible for everyone in this scenario to be wrong, and they are. Including you.
Oh well, looks like it’s the company’s problem now since it’s their card. They should be more careful. Hope they have fun dealing with YT.
Anyway everyone needs to go to that kids minecraft YT channel, subscribe and hit the bell icon. Also sign up for his highest Patreon tier. Don’t forget to donate to dad’s legal fund.
And use your company card if you got one.
now i kinda want to see his channel
i would not be that patient. props to that father.
You’re in luck. It’s linked in the article
