Why Can't danah boyd understand how COPPA Works? She should start with her employer's data targeting practices targeting teens

danah boyd has consistently failed to meaningfully analyze the online advertising and data collection marketplace, and its relationship to the COPPA privacy issue.  [COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act]).   If she did, she would learn that a broad range of commonly used online data targeting practices found practically everywhere online are not robust on the commercial children's online sites that have to follow COPPA's privacy safeguards.
 
 Ms. boyd just posted a question she debated in the Wall Street Journal and states the following:   "In our efforts to protect youth, we often exclude them from public life. Nowhere is this more visible than with respect to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This well-intended laws was meant to empower parents. Yet, in practice, it has prompted companies to ban any child under the age of 13 from joining general-purpose communication services and participating on social media platforms. In other words, COPPA has inadvertently locked children out of being legitimate users of Facebook, Gmail, Skype, and similar services. Interestingly, many parents help their children circumvent age restrictions. Is this a win? I don't think so."
 
It's astounding that Ms. boyd has avoided critically assessing the commercial online marketing apparatus, especially in the context of social media. She could start by examining the data targeting practices of her employer--Microsoft.  If Ms. boyd merely examined how her own employer engaged in data practices, I would hope she would feel the need to resign (if she really believed in protecting privacy and empowering users).  As we have said, Facebook and other social sites could create COPPA complaint areas so kids and parents wouldn't have to lie.  Mr. Zuckerberg and company (a Microsoft partner, btw) are fearful of COPPA, because it is a precedent for empowering a user with the right to opt-in and control their data collection.
 
We challenge Ms. boyd.  Conduct a study of online advertising practices targeted at teens.  Start with Microsoft.  Then we hope you would call on Congress to pass privacy legislation that would give everyone over 13 the same kind of safeguards COPPA provides.