Under 18 workspace edu users unable to share in go...

cheruwc · 03-01-2022 06:35 PM

We're using google workspace education and the under 18 restrictions seems to have blocked sharing entirely for under 18 user accounts which were created after June 2021. They get a message "Sharing is turned off" if they try to access sharing in google photos. If an over 18 user tries to share a photo or album to these under 18 user, they'll get a "Trouble sending photos. Try again later." message.

The under 18 restrictions listed users will not be able to use partner sharing and did not mention that sharing will be blocked entirely.

The current workaround is to put them as over 18 but defeats the purpose of the under 18 setting.

Anyone else facing this issue?

Google support is not able to provide clarity on this so far since its not a core supported service.

Bruce_Maine

I am having the same issue at our school, only it seems like it is only impacting a handful of random students.

cheruwc

I've gotten reply from google and they're working on a fix for this. Hopefully it'll be resolved in the next few weeks.

zechaaron

I'm seeing the same issue in my domain. However, the cutoff date seems to be 01-01-2021. Any account created after that date doesn't have access to Google Photo sharing features.

Update: So it seems there are two factors - age of the account, and whether the user had used Google photos in the past. That determine if they can use the sharing features in Google Photos.

Bness

We just noticed this issue too. Only a few students in one of our grades can't share photos. They're all in the same OU so they should all have the same settings.

nburke1001

We are experiencing this too and it doesn't seem there is a setting to change the age restriction for just Google Photos. We are finding the only work aroud is for teachers to create a shared folder and students upload there-but then that gives students edit rights and the ability to delete other people's work-or students can download their image and email it to teachers, or upload it into a Doc or Slide. Not ideal for photo or art students.

bartdecoster

Has anyone got an update for this?
We found out this week we had the same problem.

It is kind of ridiculous that non-loggedin users can see a shared album but loggedin students can't.
We use Chromebooks so they are loggedin by default.

aaron_smith

We have had several folks report this issue to us as well. I can't find a pattern. I just created a new test account in an under 18 OU and signed in and this account can share, everything works as expected. We have a student in the same OU whose account was created in March 2022 that sees the sharing is turned off message.

zdrucker

I did the same. As soon as you move the user to any other OU (that's still under 18), it breaks and the user won't be able to use the photo sharing feature.

kengland2

We have been seeing this for months now. Is it possible for a parent to use the family link app with a Gmail account and add their student and turn this off? That's the current theory I havehttps://support.google.com/families/answer/7103261?hl=en

aaron_smith

I tried adding a test Google Workspace account to family link but couldn't. It doesn't appear to be to be possible from what I've seen. Maybe it worked one time?

cryptochrome

Google Photos is not a Workspace product. You will not be able to configure any policies for it and Workspace users that are using Google Photos fall under the Photos umbrella - with all the policies and terms that pertain to that product. If Google Photos does not allow sharing for minors, there will be nothing you can do as a Workspace admin to change that.

kengland2

Yeah, that's what they have told me in the past. Was hoping something changed. Thanks for feedback.

aaron_smith

Correct, but it does allow sharing for some minors. I think if it was a hard no I would be fine with that. Here is the documentation that says they can't use partner sharing https://support.google.com/a/answer/10651918?hl=en#zippy=%2Cgoogle-photos it doesn't say anything about sharing in general. Sharing also seems to work for the majority of students.

bo_warmbold

This also seems to affect photos shared with link sharing turned on. No students in our domain can view photos shared publicly. Seems wrong that anyone on the web can see them but when you are signed into an account you can't...

varunchawla

I reached to Google support and found the solution.

Following is relevant if you're on an educational Google Workspace; I'm not sure how it may be for other workspaces.

Following steps may only be performed by someone with administrator rights.

Open administrator settings by going to, 'admin.google.com.'
Create a group for the people you'd want to give sharing access to. The people need to be of 18 years or older.
Refer the steps here: https://support.google.com/a/answer/9400082?hl=en#zippy=%2Cstep-create-a-group
Open up the menu. Go to Accounts > Account Settings > Age based access settings.
Select, 'Groups.' Search for your group and select it.
There would be two options, 'Some or all users in this group or org unit are under 18' and '
All users in this group or org unit are 18 or older.' Select the latter and click on save.

aaron_smith

Yea Google's told me to do the same thing before. I agree with @bartdecoster that's not a solution.

DidierBC

THANK YOU A MILLION!

It actually work for me for some unknown reason!

I followed the step in your link. Made sure that the Aged based settings is set to over 18 and kept the access "custom" not "public". Not sure if that made a difference but it worked!

You are my new Angel!

Didier Boulos-Callias

St. Anthony Secondary School

Antigua & Barbuda (Caribbean)

bartdecoster

Just a heads up: You know you're violating their terms by doing this, unless all your pupils are +18 (which I doupt since you say Secondary School).

Staying by my point that this is not a solution, just a verry dirty backdoor, ignoring terms. Which is never okay.

DidierBC

My problem with me was an "employee" not a student and with a "company
project" photo album that "I" created and have control. As a matter of fact
the pictures in that album has only construction pictures on it of a
tertiary classroom and cafeteria building that we are currently erecting.
All of our students are turned off from sharing photos.
We also have a tertiary department and some of theses students are over 18
but are also turned off from sharing photos.
I have not and will not infringed on any rules given by Google.
Googles problem is that they do not ask for birthdates for anyone. So once
in any OU any new account created is now and for whatever reasons is
assimilated to be under 18.
A simple fix would be that if an account is created for any OU other than
students to simply add the birth date of that person.
Hope this helps.
Didier

bartdecoster

My appologies, I misinterpreteded. In this case you're absolutely right. For our teachers we do the same thing.

I was in the assumption that when you set en OU as over 18, every person you add is labeled als over 18. But you say this isn't the case? That would be absoluetely ridiculous.

I'm sorry for the first reaction! Didn't mean anything bad with it, just a warning because I thaught most of the people here are looking for a solution for the under 18 accounts. In our case it's not that students need to share photo's but that teacher want to share it with their students, after like an excursion, so they can give an assignment where the pupils use those pictures.
I'm glad this one worked for you!

bartdecoster

You do know that's not a solution?

My users are not 18years old. That's like the point of the problem that it doesn't work for this group of users

Bruce_Maine

It's understandable that Google wishes to protect kids and I am 100% for doing so. What is sad is that as fingerprinted and trusted teachers, we can't be trusted to know what we should and shouldn't share with kids. In addition to the tech stuff I teach and take care of, I am a photographer. I shoot thousands of photos every year at sporting events, plays, music events, academic settings and extra curricular fun activities. The kids love my photos and beg me to see them and I have always loved sharing them and hearing them giggle and laugh as they go through them. Most of them have figured out that they can forward my links to their personal accounts and view them anyway, so I'm not sure why Google feels like this policy is protecting any of our kids. Just saying.

Phelpsj

Last year was the first time I came across this issue. And it does not affect 85% of my students. It is no rhyme or reason for who is unable to share. Some new, some old, some upper grade, some lower grade. It makes no sense. And it prevents me from running my photography classroom.

Any help without bending the rules??

cheruwc

Google has just provided an update on this. They will block sharing for all workspace edu under 18 users from November 2023.

https://support.google.com/a/answer/10651918#zippy=%2Cgoogle-photos

wgibson

Nov 2023 (eeeeek, that's now....such an "old" thread):
https://support.google.com/a/answer/10651918#zippy=%2Cgoogle-photos:~:text=The%20following%20restric....

bartdecoster

Really sad.
We used to use this to share photo's from educational trips where students had to write an essay about and use pictures.
Was fun for them to browse trough the pictures in an environment that's made for that.

Well, we share them with GDrive now.

I don't understand why they don't allow it within our own organisation. Blocking it outside makes some sence but blocking all. Is just sad.

dring

so no solution to this, a workaround is to save the photos to a folder in your drive and share a link to that folder.

hammondedu

So does anyone have a solution for situations where teachers would like to share a group of pictures with students? We have an online school newspaper and are trying to share pictures in an album sort of form.

zdrucker

The work around above your comment seems somewhat sufficient? Create a shared drive or folder and then share it with the correct students?

hammondedu

I tried this with a test account. It is a workaround but it does not seem
to show a preview and from what I can tell, you would only be able to view
one pic at a time. The end goal is that they can see all of the pictures
in one space without it being too cumbersome. Our tech director and I put
our heads together and think we have come up with a viable solution that
does not include google. We use thrillshare to manage our school website.
We are going to create a subpage to that site that our teacher can manage.
This would allow them to upload the photos to that page and share as
needed. Thanks for the response!

--
Denny Hammond
Instructional Technology/Data Coach @ Adena Local Schools
Ohio GEG Co-Leader

*Twitter*: @DennyHammondEd
*Youtube*: bit.ly/mrhammondyoutube

"If you can't do everything, do something." Unknown

Bruce_Maine

I feel like Google could come up with a solution very easily. Groups can be moderated by admin, so why can't Google Photos have a moderation feature that would allow admin to approve a set of photos for students? We can be trusted to be teachers and be with the kids every day, but we can't be trusted to know what photos are safe and what photos aren't? For that matter, create an AI solution that automatically moderates images shared with students. In fact, tell another AI to create the AI. Like Denny suggests: "If you can't do everything, do something."

aaron_smith

Our communications department started using SmugMug instead of Google Photos a few years ago. It seems to work a lot better and we don't have to deal with these issues. There is also a good underlying directory structure to the photos where Google Photos doesn't really have that.

Under 18 workspace edu users unable to share in google photos