Comment by tbh2347 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tbh2347 | Hacker News Reader

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I hope the OP is reading this - I highly doubt Google is mistrusting its teenager population, you might be reading into this more than you should. The invalid invites that got sent out - more than just the teenage crowd were offended.

Let's look at this a different way - you're 14, you're on the Internet. You start a hangout...to extended circles. Certain people join, and you get more "hanging out" than you had intended. And now questions are being asked. Did your parents consent to this? Where was the form that required parents to agree? Should there be restrictions on underage accounts? What kind of data should be public?

There's just a lot of legal issues, more than you'd expect. It requires a set of both design and engineering effort to get it just right. Google will get there. I hate to sound like a broken record but it's still in the feedback/reiteration stage (aka "field trial").

Thanks for your response! No, Google today still doesn't ask for your age when you create an account, and I'm actually not personally aware of any US bill that regulates how internet companies have to deal with teenagers. It seems like a bit of a legal gray area.

The thing is, we get that scenario that you gave with the hangouts and circles with Facebook, which teenagers use all the time. And, again, those questions you brought up are part of the legal gray area I mentioned above, of how much control the government and parents should have over how teenagers can use the internet.

I think the main frustration I have here is that I have other friends who never gave their ages to Google - i.e., who never signed up for a Youtube account - who have been able to get onto Google Plus. (I know because they keep sending me invites. It's quite aggravating.) Which just goes to show that Google's rules aren't even being evenly applied across the board.

But hey, fair enough. As I said at the end, I just hope they get out of the field trial stage soon. And for now, I'm off to make a new anonymous Google account. :)

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