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.
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.
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.
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.
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??
Roblox keeps the kid occupied and thus makes dad more efficient at his job. It’s a legit expense.
Rofl
Dad wants to punish the son and to show him that actions have consequences…
Dad also records a viral video for that chanel and mentions that the chanel is probably not gone for long…
“I left my son unsupervised with no controls or access restrictions, This is clearly someone else’s fault!”
What? What led you to conclude this? I didn’t read this specific article, but I watched the video and as far as I can remember the father says that he didn’t mean to do that, it was an accident and he acknowledges it as his fault
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.
Why is a nine year old on you tube, worse with their own channel?
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
Sometimes the parent needs the teaching moment. This was one.
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
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
now i kinda want to see his channel
i would not be that patient. props to that dad.
You’re in luck. It’s linked in the article
Well hope it least help the campaign. Lol wow!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
it’s very reasonable that it’s the child’s acquaintances spending 100k
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.
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
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
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 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…
Talk about pay to win for dad of the year.
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.
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.
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.
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 🤑🫰😈
Yeah that’s why I only put virtual card number with a short expiration date and a locked amount.
Klarna has one-time digital burner cards you can create within the app. Very good for certain situations.
klarna is a shit company for everything else, sadly
They are arguably worse than paypal nowadays, in regards to consumer treatment
How so? I’ve not seen anything in the news, and they’ve treated me well so far.
Anything to share regarding that? I’m curious.
It’s mostly their “pay later” stuff, which is quite predatory and has horrible terms for the users
But they had trouble with shitty behavior towards customers, employees and bad data privacy in the past as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klarna#Regulation_and_controversies
Interesting, that’s quite the list. I suppose that’s natural regarding a relatively new form of financial business?
