this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2026
569 points (97.8% liked)

Technology

88098 readers
3546 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)
[–] BananaLama@lemmy.ml 0 points 59 minutes ago
[–] Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 87 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

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

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 40 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 11 points 15 hours ago

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.

[–] epicstove@lemmy.ca 19 points 17 hours ago

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.

[–] bold_atlas@lemmy.world 19 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

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.

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 20 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] bold_atlas@lemmy.world 24 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Roblox keeps the kid occupied and thus makes dad more efficient at his job. It's a legit expense.

[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 20 hours ago
[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 11 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

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??

[–] Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago

At my company the direct manager approves the detail - although if the total looks reasonable for the assignment they don't scrutinize individual expenses - then above that there are automated flagging checks only. If mixed in with legit expenses, and the description or vendor type or whatever didn't trigger the automated flagging, $20 for something inappropriate would never be caught.

[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 61 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Why is a nine year old on you tube, worse with their own channel?

[–] bertlewirth@lemy.lol 4 points 3 hours ago

Parents don’t parent anymore.

[–] Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 hour ago

It's kind of the lemonade stand of our time. Get some feel for how markets work, and exercise some generally applicable skills (video editing).

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 40 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] JordanZ@lemmy.world 8 points 20 hours ago

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.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

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

[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 45 points 23 hours ago

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

[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 14 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

Sometimes the parent needs the teaching moment. This was one.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] chewypoops@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

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.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 17 points 23 hours ago

Dad is gonna lose his job and 100% blame it on his kid. Nobody that stupid would ever be capable of taking personal responsibility.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] amzd@lemmy.world 52 points 1 day ago (3 children)

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.

[–] chewypoops@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] SirLeToet@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

The guy you're responding to has a valid point.

No way the son would get away with these actions at a physical store. "My dad was in here earlier, you saw him, i like to keep using his credit card tho, thanks"

Gee, I wonder why scamming is so huge after turning the digital market in to full "end-user responsibility" and tech companies removing carefully curated practices over the centuties for profit maximization.

Google earns billions of these scummy tactics to get users to spend as much as possible by removing any barriers of control and security. Why dont they get any of the responsibility?

[–] PmMeFrogMemes@lemmy.world 22 points 23 hours ago (4 children)

Fuck Google, but if you're advocating for them to do identity and age verification before buying services imma have to disagree

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 34 points 1 day ago (5 children)

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

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)

now i kinda want to see his channel

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 39 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] lemmydividebyzero@reddthat.com 5 points 19 hours ago

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........

[–] warm@kbin.earth 290 points 1 day ago (19 children)

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.

load more comments (19 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›