Comments on: Welcome. How’d you like a stick in your eye?

By: Barry Hess

Barry Hess — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:29:01 +0000

YouTube doesn’t need to know my age unless I wish to access the mature content. I don’t know the ins and outs of the laws, but that’s how I see it.

I believe Yahoo! took my gender and age information before I arrived at Flickr. I’m sure it helped me out so I wouldn’t have to enter my stats at other Yahoo! sites. Thanks, Yahoo! (Or should that be “Thanks, Yahoo!!”)

By: jdbartlett

jdbartlett — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 22:05:55 +0000

Absolutely. “New account wizard” monotony has driven me away from more than one service. (Sorry, I can’t remember which ones. I should start keeping a list, though.)

Barry: YouTube has a “mature content” flag, hence the age check (I’m not sure what kind of “mature content” isn’t a breach of YouTube’s T&C; possibly it’s used to hide videos flagged as inappropriate from minors). I suspect Flickr is the same. I like your stats idea.

By: Barry Hess

Barry Hess — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 19:57:58 +0000

I underwent account creation at Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and MySpace today. Figured Scrawlers should get those handy URL’s under its umbrella. I was astonished that Flickr (Yahoo!) and YouTube (Google) insisted on knowing Scrawlers’ age and sex. WTF?!

Perhaps a friendlier interface would be for Google to just ask “stats?” Or “A/S/L?” :)

Incidentally, Scrawlers was born on January 1st, 1939.