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Comment by RexRollman | Hacker News Reader

It is really sad that Google can't figure out a way for those under 13 to have accounts, provided there is a parent signing off on it. And the first comment by someone about how their child can't log onto their Chromebook anymore is particularly disturbing.

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Losing access to Chromebook is an interesting case. Where did we go so wrong that breaching particular point of AuP causes our own hardware to become inaccessible?

People rally against zealous lockdown of PC (recently restricted boot in EFI, earlier TrustedComputing in general). Not being able to install any software of choice (with reasonably little effort) sure is bad, but having an already functioning computer swept right from under your fingertips could easily be way more damaging. Government couldn't do that without serious due process. Why a company can, and why aren't there voices of stern protest?

FYI, you can still log into a Chromebook with a Anonymous/Incognito/Guest account and use it as long as you don't care about persistence. Chromebooks are designed to be orthogonal to a Google account so changing the accounts that are attached to a given Chromebook is trivial.

"Log onto our website, but only with your parents' permission!" died quickly a decade ago for a reason. There's virtually no way of validating that. Which is why I'm still surprised that movie and video game sites still use the faded "Enter your age to continue" screen.

How is adding a decade or two to your age when registering any less difficult to validate?

I think you misread my comment. I am surprised that practice still exists.

Advertising to kids is a low to non-profit activity.

What?

That's nonsense - look at the hours of merchandise promotion across dozens of channels. Toys is billions of dollars per year.

The tobacco industry is targeting teens and pre-teens too.

If the parents are watching TV with them yes.

Is a parent going to look at untargeted (because of COPPA) gmail.com advertisements while their kid bangs out the odd email? No.

The point of targeted advertising from Google is to show you a relevant ad during the few times that you use their app. With COPPA, all of this goes out the window.

I assure you that even a child is capable of remembering a toy they saw on TV without parental help and, loudly in fact, proclaiming their knowledge as they pass said toy in Target.

The TV ads are not there for the parents to see, they're there for the kids to see.

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