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.
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.
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
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.
The dad was a dummy. First, your little kid shouldn’t have a YouTube channel. Second, you don’t use a company card to buy Robux. That’s a moronic thing to do. Might have gone unnoticed but then he got careless with it and it came back to bite him. Bad parenting all around. Don’t blame the kid, blame the dad. Hopefully he learns a hard lesson and can find new work.
- 9 yo Kid is making vidya
- Doesn’t have many viewers
- Want to make kid happy
- Spend 20 $ on ads
- maybe_a_couple_views.png
- Three weeks later
- I’m literally 118 009 $ in debt
MFW
Honestly, if you can’t understand how absolutely debilitating this is over a tiny misstep, I hardly know what to say. People commit manslaughter and get off easier that this. It’s in no way reasonable to say that “Oh, you shouldn’t have used the company card to pay 20$ for your kid - you deserve life-ruining debt”.
Allowing a child to associate their happiness with view counts is a terrible idea. Already too many sociopaths in “content creation” as it is.
Sure, I’m not advocating for doing what he did, regardless how he paid for it. I’m putting myself in the shoes of a young father that just wanted to make his kid happy and didn’t properly consider the bigger picture.
People buy their kids all kinds of things that are bad for them with the best intentions. We usually don’t conclude that they deserve debilitating debt as a consequence.
a tiny misstep
Multiple colossal missteps.
you shouldn’t have used the company card to pay 20＄ for your kid
Correct. He should have spent $0 on a company credit card for his kid. He could have spent $20 from his own personal card, which presumably would have more reasonable limits. He should have ensured the card required a pin to use so that unauthorized charges couldn’t accrue.
I feel bad for him, too, but he’s incredibly stupid and I don’t see why anyone else should have to cover his ass for his own fuckup.
As far as I can tell none of my cards have any single limits. When I remodeled my house I charged 45k to one to buy materials and pay contractors.
You have a credit limit so you can’t have a balance above it. You can easily spend 45K of you keep paying off, though
Of course there is an overall limit. I was just pointing out that charging a large amount single purchase doesn’t put anything in your way unless your purchase will exceed that upper limit
These companies literally design their product with the intention of making people overspend. As long as micro transactions have existed, the problem of kids over spending their parents money because they were allowed a single purchase has been a problem.
The companies in question are making bank off this. They know it’s an issue, and they actively exploit it to make more money. It’s extremely unethical.
At the same time, all my coworkers leave their shit logged in all day at several computers walk around and use random computers logged in with other people’s stuff and they look at me like im an asshole because i put a lock screen password on my machine. (Im the one doing what’s actually written in the employee handbook of course).
So yeah, i yearn for the day they make a six figure fuck up because of shit like this.
Blame the dad
Honestly, it shouldn’t be legal to pull more than like 100 USD off a card without re-verifying the card holder. Fuck these companies that take your card once and have no fucking limit on how much they’ll pull from it without verifying it’s you.
Sure, you should have a limit on your card. That doesn’t make it okay for others to exploit you when you make an obvious mistake. Let’s not pretend these companies aren’t aware how much money they’re making off people’s kids spending more money than they’re allowed to.
I don’t disagree that the companies should have measures in place but the point still stands. Dad needs to be smarter. He did a lot wrong.
Yeah the guy fucked up. Id also say the company fucked up if they didn’t have the cards auto sending receipts from purchases somewhere as well. (Then again it could have been an option the father didn’t have on once again). Anytime I’ve had a company card for something I would turn on all the notifications and input everything into the ADP app or whatever system they are using right away. I wouldn’t even walk out of the store without taking a picture of the receipt to upload it to make sure if I lost thr receipt I wasnt going to be screwed. You’re spending money that isn’t yours, that shit will bite you.
I bought jewelry with a company card so my SO wouldn’t see it on the statement. Paid that off immediately, no cost to the company. My boss was fucking LIVID and chewed me out later. I still have no clue why it mattered but I never did that shit again.
Edit: Damn, the corporate bootlickers really came out of the woodwork for this one. No harm no foul but chew me out again boss.
It matters because accounting has to ledger expenses and balance books. Its a super pain when an employee makes a non work expense and then maybe uses cash to pay off instead of the intracompany accounts, because then the outgoing and incoming doesn’t zero out…usually needs a manual books adjustment to account for the discrepancies.
To add on to this: If your company is not tiny, then having properly managed accounts is literally a legal requirement in most countries and having people make random, not accounted for purchases raises questions.
Accounting is a big problem.
And you can say it was jewelry for your girlfriend - but realistically it could have been literally anything else. I’m not saying illegal dugs - but it sounds really shady and it puts the responsibility on the company.
With prior communication it might had been okay with your boss, or he would have lent you his personal card for this.Damn your drug dealer tales credit cards?? Fuckin righteous dude
It mattered because he could have fired you for cause on the spot, our entire legal/financial system is built on the assumption that you don’t mix business money with personal money. Your company accountant(s) had to write a paragraph explaining to the auditors how you made an innocent misclick mistake and company policy is very clear that they don’t do that, otherwise the auditors would have not signed your company’s financial statements.
Bunch of people explaining why it matters legally and financially, your only takeaway is they’re bootlickers. Yes, YTA.
I mean pretty much. This is some real drop in the bucket low level stuff so the over reaction here is surprising. Just for that Im gonna go steal some pens tomorrow too.
You caused additional costs to the company by making them do extra work. Do not underestimate how obnoxious accounting can be.
That’s not a defense of corporations, it’s an explanation of why they will get mad, and why it often is a firing offense if you do it for a large sum (because then it might even impact taxes as it can be viewed as compensation, or as a loan)
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
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.
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
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?
Fuck Google, but if you’re advocating for them to do identity and age verification before buying services imma have to disagree
You should need to prove that the card is yours, at the very least. Like, that amount of money and nobody even reviews the content being made? That somehow a child has spent over 100k? It should never have been allowed to reach this point.
That the CC can be used without any form of validation seems to be a problem here.
If Google would just verify the security code or something, couldve easily claimed the user made a willing purchase in such case.
But removing such barriers is more profitable.
The problem there is that the adult made the account and started the transactions and (presumably) completed all verifications required. This looks an awful lot like the parent is primarily at fault, doing just a little bit of sparkling embezzlement for his kid’s youtube career.
Now, the shoe on the other foot, I don’t think 9 year-olds should be allowed to be “content creators”. The whole thing just feels like child labor modernized. Which ends up in a strange place when I think about child actors, because it also feels like forced child labor but everyone seems to be OK with that apparently…
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
Google sitting over there just like “sux to be you, dude”.
something tells me the dad is the one is behind the channel and used his son as a shield. a 9year old isnt going to know how to set up a ad campaign.
Pff. Kid probably has 8 years of experience using YouTube
Dave said that after the boy complained about views, he set up a roughly $20 promotion and talked through the steps aloud: set a budget, select who sees the ads, hit run. The boy then created his own campaigns, and Dave said his son did not understand the $20 as a limit. “The credit card, it just says approved every single time,”
YT has a simplified interface to promote videos. It’s not as complicated as a regular Google ad campaign setup
Something tells me you didn’t read the article, because this is explained in the article.
With LLMs a 9 year old could manage. It’s made accessible anything to anyone. Like vibe coding to untrained programmers
Don’t even need an LLM to set this up. It’s not hard, and it sounds like the dad helped and agreed to one 20$ spend which recurred into a massive ad spend.
Or gives the illusion of being accessible anyway, see end result.
Something should also tell you that there’s a direct incentive for companies to make it as easy as possible to spend money on their services.
Seems odd that he made a new ad account and bypassed the spending limits.
At max, unless you’re being invoiced by Google and have a line of credit, you can spend around $500/day. It’s a lot of money, but it would still take months to hit $100,000.
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
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.
$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.
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.
Eh, not necessarily. Those kidslop channels can pull in serious income, a company starting one up makes sense.
Dad is gonna lose his job and 100% blame it on his kid. Nobody that stupid would ever be capable of taking personal responsibility.
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.
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 is insane about billing any random ass card you’ve ever used in any system adjacent to them. I had them bill a domain name fee to my fucking government travel card just because I’d set it up once to pay for a hotel or something. Completely not the card I’d put in to pay for the domain name - they just changed it on their own.
That’s not what happended here though. Dad deliberately entered his business card and handed control if it to a child…
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.
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.
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.
Time to sell the kid
20 years ago I read an article that stuck with me ever since … it detailed at the time that on average, whether you can afford it or not, it costs about $200,000 to raise a child to the age of 18.
So selling the kid would cut the parents losses over the 18 year period
Its a million, been a million since early 2000’s (source had kids early 2000’s) read about it back then- that’s over there lifetime 0-18. fuck outta here with anything less, plus god forbid you have to pay child support to a mother that refuses to work, but also not spend money you pay on said children. Source fuck family court
that can’t be right (assuming USD), the highest US number I can find is 800k per child in San Francisco, but otherwise the national average is 300k.
I mean… $10k a year for survival for one human? I guess that makes sense?
The article I read at the time mentioned that this was the average bare minimum … like a single unemployed parent doing their best to raise and keep a child alive and fed until they were 18.
The cost is higher if there are two parents paying for expenses … and even higher if the parents have any bit of wealth
It’s gettin’ boomer up in here.
