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Submission + - YouTube Ads May Have Led to Online Tracking of Children, Research Says (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: This year, BMO, a Canadian bank, was looking for Canadian adults to apply for a credit card. So the bank’s advertising agency ran a YouTube campaign using an ad-targeting system from Google that employs artificial intelligence to pinpoint ideal customers. But Google, which owns YouTube, also showed the ad to a viewer in the United States on aBarbie-themedchildren’s video on the “Kids Diana Show,” a YouTube channel for preschoolers whose videos have been watched more than 94 billion times. When that viewer clicked on the ad, it led to BMO’s website, which tagged the user’s browser with tracking software from Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies, according tonew researchfrom Adalytics, which analyzes ad campaigns for brands. As a result, leading tech companies could have tracked children across the internet, raising concerns about whether they were undercutting a federal privacy law, the report said. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,or COPPA, requires children’s online services to obtain parental consent before collecting personal data from users under age 13 for purposes like ad targeting.

Adalytics identified more than 300 brands’ ads for adult products, like cars,on nearly 100 YouTube videos designated as “made for kids” that were shown to a user who was not signed in, and that linked to advertisers’ websites. It also found several YouTube ads with violent content, including explosions, sniper rifles and car accidents, on children’s channels. An analysis by The Times this month found that when a viewer who was not signed into YouTube clicked the ads on some of the children’s channels on the site, they were taken to brand websites that placed trackers — bits of code used for purposes like security, ad tracking or user profiling — from Amazon, Meta’s Facebook, Google, Microsoft and others — on users’ browsers. As with children’s television, it is legal, and commonplace, to run ads, including for adult consumer products like cars or credit cards, on children’s videos. There is no evidence that Google and YouTube violated their 2019 agreement with the F.T.C.

The report’s findings raise new concerns about YouTube’s advertising on children’s content. In 2019, YouTube and Google agreed topay a record $170 million fineto settle accusations from the Federal Trade Commission and the State of New York that the company had illegally collected personal information from children watching kids’ channels. Regulators said the company hadprofited from using children’s datato target them with ads. YouTube then said it would limit the collection of viewers’ data andstop servingpersonalized ads on children’s videos. On Thursday, two United States senators sent a letter to the F.T.C., urging it to investigate whether Google and YouTube had violated COPPA, citing Adalytics and reporting by The New York Times. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said they were concerned that the company may have tracked children and served them targeted ads without parental consent, facilitating “the vast collection and distribution” of children’s data. “This behavior by YouTube and Google is estimated to have impacted hundreds of thousands, to potentially millions, of children across the United States,” the senators wrote.

Comment Re:From WHO...some numbers! (Score 1) 195

and do you think that ALL reported covid19 deaths are REALLY from covid19?

- [German Infectologist Decimates COVID-19 Doomsday Cult In Open Letter To Merkel | Zero Hedge](https://www.zerohedge.com/health/german-infectologist-decimates-covid-19-doomsday-cult-open-letter-merkel)

"According to a report in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, not even the much-cited Robert Koch Institute knows exactly how much is tested for COVID-19."

"(...)the mistake is being made worldwide to report virus-related deaths as soon as it is established that the virus was present at the time of death – regardless of other factors. This violates a basic principle of infectiology: only when it is certain that an agent has played a significant role in the disease or death may a diagnosis be made.
The Association of the Scientific Medical Societies of Germany expressly writes in its guidelines: In addition to the cause of death, a causal chain must be stated, with the corresponding underlying disease in third place on the death certificate. Occasionally, four-linked causal chains must also be stated.“"

Comment some sanity? (Score 1) 521

[Re: Should the weboob package stay in Debian?](https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/07/msg00336.html)

>So apart from objectification of women, but without instrumentalization or degrading message, I was not able to find serious consequences. As much as I would prefer things to be different (I already told upstream in the past) I don't feel I have any right or special wisdom allowing me to dictate people to act and think differently. Banning content because it displease me and make people uncomfortable while no direct harm has been found is unlikely to have a positive effect. **Consequently unless harmful content I'm not aware of is discovered in this package I am not going to remove it from the archive.** I would consider adding a neutral warning message in the package description though, so people can individually decide for themselves if this is acceptable from their own point of view.-- Marc Dequènes

Submission + - Debian going insane! (phoronix.com)

quantic_oscillation7 writes: thought police strikes again!

"The latest notes from the Debian anti-harassment team on Wednesday caught my attention when reading, "We were requested to advice on the appropriateness of a certain package in the Debian archive. Our decision resulted in the package pending removal from the archive." Curiosity got the best of me... What package was deemed too inappropriate for the Debian archive? "

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