Google just forced me to identify myself through credit card because it threatened to delete one of my kids’ gmail accounts. Somehow they detected that my kids weren’t over 18 and said if I didn’t register them under my account it would be deleted.
The fact they can figure out my kids’ ages based on their online behavior, and through their tracking and monitoring is fucking chilling. They don’t even use Gmail often at all.
Based on Google’s documentation on supervised accounts [1], sounds like your child is/was under 13?
They don’t have these checks in place for the fun of it. They’re usually legally mandated, otherwise some parent will sue them because “Google exposed my child to X Y or Z”
The issue isn’t with the registration, which is another issue altogether. It’s with them tracking the behavior somehow and then deducing their age to such confidence that they threatened to delete their account in 14 days. It wasn’t a guess.
And yet they are so fallible in their other forms of detection like fraud that lock people out of their accounts. The entire thing is creepy and maddening at the same time.
We don't. This is the exact opposite of that, children are breaking the law and possibly exposing themselves to things that will be harmful to them when they access the web without adult supervision, google is attempting to force parents to take some responsibility for their children.
And what is that harm that Google allegedly protects the kids from? Because the harm it causes to them - losing access to service - has been explained above.
This is such a problematic mechanism. What if your bank requires you to KYC with a passport in order to get a credit card, and Google requires a credit card like you mention? If your passport is expired you might find yourself in a catch-22 between Google, your bank and the government.
Your assumption would be wrong. They were never asked their age and even if they were they would know to ask me what to do because I told them that they would get locked out if they put in the wrong numbers. And as expected they can no longer post to YouTube for some reason even though there are plenty of YouTubers below 13.
Ads and spam is what's ruining everyone's experience. If we would pay for services rendered then there is no need for tracking. If we could effectively prosecute and/or block spammers then there would be no need for anti-spam algorithms (from email to services like twitter and discord, iirc yesterday there was a thread about automatic bans based on secret algos with no recourse).
Government regulation is an attempt to make people aware this tracking exists: every time you see a wall, that means the site requires a level of tracking for which there exists no legal basis other than consent, thus it has to ask you if you're okay with that (like any ethical site should do anyhow).
Automated decision making is also part of GDPR but unfortunately is very very weakly implemented. Basically, companies just have to tell you it exists (if and only if it has a significant impact on your life), and then your only recourse is to request a human in the loop, and they will just press the same button as the AI did and you have no idea if they even looked at your case because the decision making doesn't have to be transparent. And that's only for important life things, none of this even applies to being banned from google account unless you sue them and get the judge to agree this has a major impact on your life.
The fact they can figure out my kids’ ages based on their online behavior, and through their tracking and monitoring is fucking chilling. They don’t even use Gmail often at all.