Timeline for Why did the EU give stronger "protections" to minors in the GDPR, considering that COPPA has had the effect of restricting those it tries to protect?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1, 2022 at 1:16 | comment | added | Someone | @Caleth with both COPPA and the child provisions of the GDPR, the intent was for sites to stop tracking children. In both cases, it's been very common for them to accomplish that by discriminating against those the law is meant to protect. | |
| Sep 30, 2022 at 2:23 | comment | added | Kevin | @Obie2.0: Restrictions can be content-based rather than audience-based. Under US law, YouTube had to apply COPPA-like restrictions to any children's content on the website, regardless of whether the viewer is logged into a children's account or an adult's account (because, according to the FTC, some children have fake accounts, and therefore YouTube has to make a reasonable effort to apply COPPA to videos that those children are likely to watch, regardless of what account they use to watch said videos). | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 21:13 | comment | added | JonathanReez | GDPR itself is a disaster, this is just one more negative economic consequence of it. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 11:16 | comment | added | Caleth | The law isn't to stop minors from accessing anything, it's to encourage companies to not collect so much data on everyone, because it isn't cost-effective to provably restrict minors from the site. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 6:59 | answer | added | o.m. | timeline score: 5 | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 6:22 | comment | added | Obie 2.0 | These kind of laws may impose additional regulatory burdens on companies, and change the data collection practices of those whose user base must perforce consist of many children, but I doubt that it will prevent any private citizen from doing absolutely anything. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 6:19 | comment | added | Obie 2.0 | What is perhaps more surprising is that in 2022, anyone still believes that laws can prevent children from accessing whatever websites they want. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 6:12 | comment | added | Someone | @SJuan76 sites with content inappropriate for minors are a small segment of the Internet. Sites that collect information and are not willing to comply with complicated parental consent requirements are a large portion of the Internet. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 5:55 | comment | added | SJuan76 | The title does not match the body & comments. And regarding or did they determine that protecting the privacy of teens 13 to 15 is more important than their ability to use the Internet with few limitations? Well, this principle was well established before (for example, with laws that prevented minors access to porn and gambling sites). Hardly surprising. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 5:48 | comment | added | Someone | @o.m. that's my point; I'm asking why they picked 16 as the age of consent for data collection, when it causes very significant, seemingly unwarranted restrictions. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 5:01 | comment | added | o.m. | @Someone, there are different ages of consent for different things. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 4:50 | comment | added | Someone | @o.m. then why isn't the age of consent 18? | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 4:49 | comment | added | o.m. | @Someone, children are legally minors because they cannot be expected to make reasoned/reasonable decisions for themselves. So any reasoning that involves them reading terms of service is missing the point. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 4:47 | comment | added | Someone | If parents object to the data collection, then they can make sure their child does not consent to data collection. If the child objects, they will not give consent. Only if the parent and child both agree that the tracking is okay, or if the child is okay with it and the parent does not care, will the child be tracked, if the GDPR treated everyone the same. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 4:45 | comment | added | Someone | @Ryan_L but is restricting teens from Web sites that are suitable for them except for the site's noncompliance with a privacy law much stricter than most people care about (I'm referring to the GDPR as it applies to children, not to adults; I think the GDPR as applied with adult users is overall reasonable) a reasonable way to protect them? The restriction is inability to use a sizable portion of the Internet that does not have content it's necessary to protect children from; the protection is against data collection that most people do not object to. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 4:41 | comment | added | Ryan_L | Protecting people often involves restricting them. Look at prison informants, they often get solitary confinement, not because they did anything wrong, but so they don't get killed for snitching. Look at toddlers; we put them in playpens so they can't wander off and get themselves into dangerous situations. | |
| Sep 29, 2022 at 3:54 | history | asked | Someone | CC BY-SA 4.0 |