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

theandrewbailey

This is one reason why I don't save my payment method for anything. No saved payment method means one less way for surprise charges.

joshstrange

The craziest part of this story, for me, is it was on the dad’s _company_ credit card. Which might not be as surprising except the reason it was already on file is because the dad used his company’s (not _his_ company, the company he works for as an employee) credit card to buy Roblox for his son previously. Is this common? I’ve had access to company credit cards before on a one-off basis (never in my name). Do people legitimately make this mistake? “oops, I put it on the company cards”?

kristopolous

This can be a fairly pure case study on the convergence rate of youtube ads.

lo_fye

Do not let that kid (or his dad) anywhere near an OpenClaw instance.

hacker_homie

They should have to ask for the ccv every double in billing average.

zwischenzug

Didn't the card have a limit?

nkrisc

There are so many things wrong with this story before you even get to the headline. From the information in the article, I can’t really blame Google for this one. This was a series of deliberate blunders on the part of the father. The first blunder was letting a 9 year old have a YouTube account. Putting aside whether a 9 year old should be making videos, the father should have been the one with the account and managing the channel.

amelius

Well, at least he has the YouTube ads.

zug_zug

I blame youtube. I feel like any online service provider has a duty to verify your identity on transactions over $10k USD by default and that should be enshrined in law. Honestly maybe lower.

Ekaros

I feel something is horribly wrong with these ad-companies if there is no contact and automatic approval for spending over 100k on ads... From seemingly small and unknown entity. I would expect some verification or contact, but maybe I just don't understand how world operates...

ModernMech

When I was 9, long ago in the dial-up age, I dialed into a long distance number within our area code and we got a $100 charge for my using Active Worlds. Suddenly, I don't feel so bad about that anymore.

tapper

$118000 and just 37k subs. A shit retern!

spicyusername

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...

hilbert42

This is really terrible, I feel deeply for the father's predicament. This ought to be a salient lesson: never store card details online despite the convenience. Further, as I do, use only a debit card for online purchases with the available credit only marginally more that for one's immediate purchase. It's also an excellent policy in case of being hacked. Companies that allow employees to use cards with essentially unfettered credit have to take a large amount of the blame in circumstances such as this. There's no reason other than bad policy or irregular monitoring of expenses to allow expenses of this magnitude to build up. The company's financial policies need drastic overhaul.

reacharavindh

I feel like there is a bizarro world I’m not privy to…. I cannot relate to this story as a Dad of a 7 year old.. 1. Dad setting his son up on YouTube with his own channel at 9! 2. Proceeding to tell him about the creepy world of ads and targeting. 3. Creating an ad campaign for the kid! 4. Putting that charge on a company card! 5. Saving the card in an online account! Probably means the kid was using the Dad’s account? 6. When things go south, even saying the words “matter has been escalated and he does not yet know whether he will get to keep his job or have to repay the costs.” as if it is all the universe’s or someone else’s fault… or such a common mishap that it is worthy of just waived away. As judgemental as it sounds… I feel sad for the outcome, but even more sad if this is the normal in our society of today :-(

4ndrewl

"after the (9-year old) boy complained about views"...what a time to be alive.

ofrzeta

Is there not something like fraud detection for an unusual amount of spending, like 40k per week?

daft_pink

Pretty crazy. We use Ramp at work and it allows you to specifically set budgets for every single credit card and get approvals, etc. This should be an advertisement for them. Hope they setup a go fund me as I would be happy to contribute $20 towards paying the $'s back.

burnt-resistor

Would've been much cheaper to buy subscribers and views from a Russian-style vending machine.

mid-kid

It looks like it paid off, since the screenshot in the article, the channel has more than doubled in subscribers (now 70k), and it seems to still be climbing.