This feels like it should be "obviously illegal", in the same way that it's illegal to market casinos, or loans to children, and illegal to market fast food to children in many countries.
Given this, the only reason this is able to happen is because it flew under the radar for some time and then governments take time to legislate. By the time it actually becomes illegal, there could have been years of exploitation.
How do we solve this? Assuming that governments are slow moving (there can be benefits of this), and assuming that there will always be people with more flexible morals who will happily build these products, how do we create a society where this can't happen?
> how do we create a society where this can't happen?
FB employees can and should protest. I've gone as far as refusing to work for Facebook or any other adtech firm, but not everyone is privileged enough to make that choice.
I would argue that everyone is privileged enough to make that choice. Who are these people whose only choice is FB or starve? Surely in this field anyone who can get hired there can get hired elsewhere.
I love the spirit of this comment: Facebook employees as poor pawns to be pitied.
I share the sentiment as a corporate family-oriented programmer from a flyover state that has been heavily recruited by FANNGs. I don't like working for anyone, and being a teensy cog being ground up in a duct-taped together machine like that seems like torture.
You have to have a focus on strong families. If the child has parents or guardians who are aware of what they're doing and will stop them from doing it then there wouldn't really be a problem in the first place at least with five year olds
There will always be kids who don't get a strong family, whatever you do. You can certainly reduce this sort of thing (with adequate parental leave, financial parental support and broader societal compassion for parents (hard!)) but you can never reduce it to zero.
Because these children are the most vulnerable to begin with, they are the reason protections are required in law against e.g. marketing gambling products and junk food to children.
You will also always get people targeting kids, even outside of the law. Reducing the number of kids without a family still might be a lot more effective than regulating the world into being as safe as an extended family (although both would be nice).
Are you sure it’s wise to put the onus solely on the parents? Some kids are born into families with crappy parents. Are they to be exploited at the whim of whatever corporate goal is out there due to their bad luck of having crappy parents?
It’s more reasonable to say that parents ought to be on top of things and recognize that not all of them are. Thus it’s best to have other safeguards in place. Like make Facebook liable for its exploitive behavior.
Have you ever misplaced something? Have you dealt with kids with curiosity or who desire something without thinking about the consequences? Facebook had an employee who gave the company specific steps it could easily take to prevent children from becoming whales. They refused to do this. Let’s not lose sight of just how shitty the people at Facebook who decided to do this are. This was a deliberate act on their part. The focus ought to be on them.
Kid asks parent if she's allowed to buy 10$ worth of gaming stuff
Parent agrees, enters cc info, which is stored by FB without any warning
Games are designed in a way that you just click some cuddly icon without even realizing that you spend real money
That's not just only the darkest of patterns it's also geared towards vulnerable kids. Intentionally and by design.
In my book we're slowly in executives should wind up in jail territory when it comes to this evil carbunkel of a company without any morals, whatsoever.
> Kid asks parent if she's allowed to buy 10$ worth of gaming stuff
So, stop right here. The solution is for parents to take a look at what their kids are playing and refuse to let them play F2P stuff. Mine aren't allowed anywhere near F2P games for the very reasons you outlined.
If you let them play F2P games, you know that inevitably the "pay" part is going to rear its ugly head repeatedly, even with perfectly-implemented controls that prevent the kid from taking your credit card for a ride. Every damn day they're going to ask you to buy that stupid in-game currency. Just say no before it ever starts. Otherwise, good luck.
The solution is for all parents to be aware of potential for dark patterns and to put the onus on them to refuse to let their kids play F2P games? It would be nice to live in a society in which the government doesn’t view actions that Facebook engages in as something every parent ought to be aware of. Caveat emptor works in some cases but not all of them. Your diligence in this situation is not something every parent has the foresight or willpower or knowledge to do. What Facebook did was morally reprehensible. There aren’t other parties to blame in this case.
> The solution is for all parents to be aware of potential for dark patterns and to put the onus on them to refuse to let their kids play F2P games?
The pattern is very simple. If the game has an in-app purchase along the lines of:
* Buy 10 gems: $0.99
* Buy 50 gems: $2.99
etc. then it's F2P garbage. Get rid of it. Take the five minutes to see what your kid is playing.
Otherwise, you're asking to ban these games altogether or make them 18+. All because it's too much trouble to see what they're actually doing with that iPad you throw in front of them.
How many people outside of HN even know what "F2P" is and how it works? In-app purchases aren't limited to F2P, either. Nor are they always a dark pattern.
My parents would buy me $10 of gaming stuff as a kid, like a month subscription to an MMO. Seems unreasonable to expect them to know there's some in-game button I can press that keeps charging their card. I played World of Warcraft for five years and still couldn't tell you if that feature existed in-game. How would my mother?
Seems like a tall order especially with all the other things a parent needs to stay on top of when raising kids. "Just don't make digital purchases" seems like a weak solution. Small measures like having to re-enter the CC control code after a time interval would really help parents.
You're right that parents should be aware of what their children are playing, but that in no way justifies these deceptive practices by Facebook and other companies.
You say "the solution ...". I think there are others.
Like have a default maximum spend in Facebook of $5 per app and $50 total, and require at least a double-lock to enable a higher level of payments.
Double lock: user confirms by ticking a box and by following a link in an email, say; then they get a message on their Facebook saying "you authorised higher spending for $game, up to $amount".
They could require pre-deposit, not allow use of credit cards, only allow spending if your credit rating is good, etc.. But none of this things increase mindless spending.
Sounds like it would be about as successful as abstinence only sex education.
The reason we end up with laws covering stuff like this is because it's a lot easier to do that than fix the whole of society. I don't think anyone disagrees that every child having a caring and attentive parent would solve a lot of problems, but how do we get there? While we work that out, we can pass some laws to protect those children.
The problem with that thinking was that those games were engineered in a way, where those kids couldn't even realize that they got fleeced for real money.
And Facebook handsomely and intentionally profited from that.
Did you read the article before launching straight into victim blaming? It’s not about supervision, it’s about dark patterns. Parents were aware of what their kids were doing, but weren’t aware of what FB was doing.
> You have to have a focus on strong families. If the child has parents or guardians who are aware of what they're doing and will stop them from doing it then there wouldn't really be a problem in the first place at least with five year olds
You're half right. We have to focus on strong families who would raise kids who, as adults, will have a strong enough moral compass to 1) say no to being involved in stuff like this stuff at Facebook, 2) blow the whistle when they find out about it, and 3) take urgent action when they hear the whistle being blown.
What about offering more perks/options for whistle-blowers? I suppose the financial gain of whistle-blowing something like this is rather low... while the person will likely be barred from working at a lot of places (referring to an article on the Frontpage here a few days ago).
The financial gain of whistle-blowing something like this is pretty comparable to the societal value of whistle-blowing something like this. One random Facebook employee (of unknown rank and seniority) called a kid a whale; that doesn't matter in the slightest beyond its impact on an existing story. We can't incentivize people to run to the media with every chat log that looks bad out of context.
Really I think what is needed for that are far more robust protection against blacklisting of whistleblowers - although the devil is in the details given the general difficulty of proving employment discrimination.
If they couldn't keep their ethical fences up we would see far more impact from the same numbers of whistleblowers - criminals think they won't be caught.
> How do we solve this? Assuming that governments are slow moving (there can be benefits of this), and assuming that there will always be people with more flexible morals who will happily build these products, how do we create a society where this can't happen?
This is something that happens all the time in all sorts of industries. It's sort of the thing that happens with free markets, people try various things, some are positive and some are negative.
So how do we not throw out the positives when mitigating the negatives? The answer is well known but imperfect. Open and public debate, journalistic investigation, political action.
You missed regulation, unless it's meant to be implied from political action. The others are mostly ineffectual when there's billions in profit and marketing against them.
That's what I meant. Political action can mean regulating, as in not allowing tobacco ads, or taxing as in sugar taxes on soft drinks, or banning, as with certain drugs. Or it can mean subsidising or other encouragement outside of basic market forces.
>how do we create a society where this can't happen?
By compromising on some other value we hold dear. These things are always trade-offs. Exploiting kids for money will be something we don't permit but ultimately tolerate.
We don't permit or tolerate accidental nuclear explosions as a contrasting example. We've create a society where that just doesn't happen or can't.
It's illegal in many countries to market unhealthy food to kids, so while they can buy the candy, or ask to be bought it, kids TV channels for example won't have ads for them which limits the negative impact.
You can market toys to kids, but most toys aren't harmful to their health, mental wellbeing, or financial state. Arguably many kids toys promote good health, wellbeing, educational material, etc.
What if it's a game that is good for mental development but has microtransactions, allowing them to unknowingly spend $1000s while also stimulating their brain?
In my country, marketing to children is illegal period.
They have no monetary concept.
Coca-cola was recently found guilty of this in the "food industry self governing organ" in Norway [1]. This is where complaints go first and if Coca-cola continues it can result in fines and whatnot.
They were using people from youtube channels that primarily makes videos for children in their own youtube channel videos.
Well in the UK, you may not advertise junk food to children. A tabloid aimed at adults could contain that ad for your lollipop. A comic, kid's magazine or website, or TV channel or kid's time slots may not.
From my now very vague memory of childhood TV, most ads for toys and games came in the evening news and soaps slots. When the adults were around too. Junk food was still OK, so kid's tv ads were for comics, and sweets, and sugar, oops I mean cereal: Sugar Puffs, Ricicles, Frosties etc.
I think it's a big mistake our regs on advertising toys to children have faded over the years. It's been shown time and again kids 12 and under can't understand commercial intent by ad industry research. So the real age may be higher.
If I post a video of my game on Reddit, am I marketing to children? There are a lot of children there, but it isn't a childrens' website. Does it matter if my game is strategy-/turn-based or animated with cute graphics?
I don't think reddit is a primary channel for kids so probably not, unless you specifically go into a reddit where it is known that a lot of children frequent and advertise there.
Identifying demographics and targeting the marketing to them is the bread and butter of modern advertising. The entire justification for Google's and Facebook's mass consumer surveillance is to offer corporations more targeted advertising.
There are gray areas but if you're marketing to children, you know you're marketing to children.
That’s all well and good but despite your indignation you haven’t actually explained what it means to market to children. Maybe I accept your premise that marketeers know how to single out specific demographics, but I don’t work in marketing so I have no idea what separates “marketing at children” versus just marketing in general.
I don't know, but it seems absolutely absurd that Facebook or anyone else gives someone a hard time about refunding thousands of dollars of virtual goods. Especially when you consider Nordstrom's or Costco's return policies for physical goods!
I understand that you need to make a balance between easy refunds and running a business, but the COGS for a virtual good after development cost must be a fraction of a penny. Forcing parents to shell out thousands for their kids' actions in an online game is an insane policy. One would hope "the market will correct it", but maybe it does take legislation.
Puhleeze, I haven't heard any remotely viable way that any even halfway decent alternative to Facebook becomes possible. I see multiple posts a day bitching about the evils of FB, and then they come out yesterday with enormous revenue and user numbers.
The only way FB will slow down is if they are trustbusted.
This is the parents’ faults. What kind of imbecile willfully gives Facebook permanent access to their credit card? Right now their bloodlines are being pruned in slow motion as their children accidentally destroy their own futures, and that’s a good thing because those children carry the same faulty genes that compel someone to enter their credit card information on Facebook. Don’t get in the way of Darwinian evolution in action, you’ll just further damage the gene pool. If you really, truly, sincerely want to stop big companies from frequently doing these “exploitative” things (even though, again, it’s a good thing because it encourages dangerously naive genetic trash to kill themselves off), the only actual solution would be labeled highly anti-semitic so I won’t even bother describing it.
So essentially, when you used the credit card one time, facebook remembers it for future purchases and doesn't ask confirmation? Kind of like amazon's "one-click" option?
Not good enough. As an "Opt-out" with no password required, there will always be cases of unintentional purchases. This is obvious. IMO a company should be obligated to give refunds if their default settings are this way.
Reducing the barriers to payment this way does 2 things.
* Consumers are more likely to impulse buy. This can affect everybody, but severely affects people with low impulse control who can't manage money.
* Consumers are more likely to unintentionally buy.
Both are taking advantage of people.
It would be nice if there were consumer protections similar to "Explicit Consent" in the GDPR. I.e. Explicit Consent should be required when purchasing something.
> Reducing the barriers to payment this way does 2 things. * Consumers are more likely to impulse buy. This can affect everybody, but severely affects people with low impulse control who can't manage money. * Consumers are more likely to unintentionally buy.
This should be solved by easy and simple refund system (for example, like the one that Valve has). Not by taking away ease of use for people who know what they are doing.
For example, I hate when Steam asks me for CVV number periodically when I buy. If they asked to retype the whole CC number every time I would be less likely to even buy some of the games I want to play.
What Facebook has been doing should be kept on check. Private data of teenagers for the past 3 years, targeting children less than 10, someone should really sue Facebook and slap Mark's face
It's depressing how true this probably is for many of them. In a lot of ways, it feels like the new Wall Street: cash large paychecks that distract you from the ethically repulsive work you do destroying privacy, undermining democracy and public discourse, and targeting young children for money that aren't capable of consenting to such financial decisions.
Stealing from families by exploiting toddlers. This is what many of the most talented minds in the world are working on. Truly tragic.
No we don't, we can choose not to accept it and to speak out against it. It's abhorrent behavior and shouldn't be tolerated in a modern society.
Many of the world's greatest atrocities began with apathy. It's so easy to look back and wonder how on Earth people accepted the behavior of the powerful that descended to tyranny, but looking into the future is much more difficult, and often, much more uncomfortable.
Accept doesn't imply that you are a against it or support it or tolerate it, but mearly acknowledging the reality that there are always gonna be people who do something that you deemed abhorrent or atrocities.
Well, I can't tell. Parts of the world still use cash primarily or commonly. I don't know what they do in the US. If the metaphor is prevalent, that must be because cash still is. I honestly would have a hard time identifying some of the currency around here in Canada because I almost never see it.
Facebook employees are not all scheming about the best way to target 5-year-olds. Just like any company (including 90s Microsoft!) for every one executive working out how to maximize business value at the expense of everyone else on earth, there are a couple directly complicit engineers, and a hundred engineers that mainly work on improving server uptime so that Joe Schmoe can catch up with his highschool friends, or so Grandma can use a computer (in the case of 90s MS).
Any company employing over 1,000 people is almost guaranteed to be involved in something evil because of the corruptibility of mankind, but you can't just assume that every single person is a direct contributor. Another similar example would be how you can't blame every individual American citizen for the various crimes the CIA has been running around the world committing, because there really are only a few Americans who have any connection to those things. This is true despite the fact that Mother, Apple Pie, the CIA World Factbook and the assassination of third world government officials are all technically part of the same institution.
You might counter with, if people can claim innocence even though they are part of a guilty organization, what's the motivation to improve? The answer to that is that the moral calling of Americans isn't to all leave America until the CIA gets shut down, it's to stay and stubbornly assert their morals until things improve. Evil leaders would much rather have a slightly smaller but completely obedient workforce than they would a larger, more skilled but unmanageable (in evil directions) one.
I mean, and to pull the CIA analogy further... you could easily argue that any country you name has done (or is actively doing) equally or more evil acts, or will. Running away from problems allows bad actors to go unchallenged.
What a bunch of BS relativism. So every organization over 1000 people is equally evil? As Bill Maher said, working for HBO is not the same as working for Monsanto. And for who have been following, working for Facebook is like much more like working for Philip-Morris than its like working for HBO. And spare the nonsense about our collective guilt for the CIA. Those of us who vote (and vote against the fascists) have no reason to feel guilty.
>As Bill Maher said, working for HBO is not the same as working for Monsanto.
Replacing your own personal morality with the average morality of the organizations you are a part of is a trap, because you could also be way more evil than average. In fact, the most vile schemers at HBO might be worse than the most vile at Monsanto; and they could justify themselves by saying, "I can't be vile, I work at HBO, and HBO is not vile on average."
The best person at the NSA was probably Snowden while he was planning his defection. It's Snowden's actions that count for his judgment, not the morality of the NSA on average. If all NSA employees were traitors to the American people then Snowden would be one too! Obviously, only the NSA employees that do their jobs are traitors to the American people. There is more opportunity for heroism at Facebook because people could put their jobs on the line to defend what's right.
By no means am I justifying complicity, I'm saying that there's more opportunity to become a hero of the revolution in a terrible country than in a great one.
To use your fascist example, just because someone came from West Germany doesn't mean that they were members of the Statsi, and even if they were members of the Statsi, they could have been (and I would say they would have a duty to be) agents of the people working to undermine it from within.
Maybe the maligned FB research app was implemented as a clumsy clone of Onavo by such an agent of the people, working to undermine Facebook from within.
Never thought of it this way... because it's bloody ridiculous.
If FB has been infiltrated by so many "agents of the people", they're doing a pretty crap job at improving it.
>If FB has been infiltrated by so many "agents of the people", they're doing a pretty crap job at improving it.
Granted, my "revolution CIA the people NSA morals evil" language makes it sound kind of silly, but what I'm really talking about is the more mundane pushback that workers can achieve when asked to go beyond ethical boundaries. You don't know whether any individual Facebook employee is working in the right direction or against it, because although they might not be "plotting the people's coup, undermining the New Statsi from within," they might be gently pushing for more realistic improvements.
I don't expect everyone to pay attention to history but the Stasi was the _EAST_ German _COMMUNIST_ state secret police. They came after the Nazis.
I'm sorry but I can't follow your argument. By now if you work for Facebook you must already know that they are in the surveillance business.
Previous justifications for that seem to have revolved around them not doing anything bad with that information. Well here's the thing, using that information to target children with addictive games for money is a bad use of that information. If you work for Facebook you work for people that pay you with that money.
>I don't expect everyone to pay attention to history but the Stasi was the _EAST_ German _COMMUNIST_ state secret police. They came after the Nazis.
The parent was calling the people being voted for or against in the US "facists" even though the NSA is the secret police of a constitutional republic. East German communists were closer to fascism than the US today by a long shot, "everything is the state" and all that.
>By now if you work for Facebook you must all ready know that they are in the surveillance business.
I'm not trying to absolve Facebook, I'm pointing out that some Facebook employees may be using their position to push back against Facebook's evil, or to slow it down. So, you can't pick up your torches and pitchforks against everyone who works there, because some good people might get pitchforked.
I personally don't subscribe to this line of thinking, but a a fair share of people figure that it would happen anyway. So if someone is going to do it, then why not make sure you're the one to profit from it?
If I choose not to do evil then less evil is done in total. The amoral person who takes the Facebook job is not doing whatever evil they would have been doing instead.
I don't see a contradiction. If I avoid doing evil less evil will be done. And if we outlaw a particular kind of evil that will likely reduce the incidence of that kind of evil. Both things are helpful.
Yep. I work on Integrity at Facebook. The challenge is massive and a huge proportion of the world uses our services to communicate with friends and family.
Personally, this is true for me. I've lived in four cities and three countries in my relatively short life, and my immediate family is often in four countries at any one time. I have friends around the world, who are starting families, getting married and generally living their lives. Facebook's products are the best way for us to stay connected to each other.
The world has never dealt with issues we're now facing, on the scale we're now facing. The lessons we learn as a society from Facebook, both its successes and failures, will only make whatever comes next that much better. Every single day, I work alongside incredibly smart people who are empowered to turn the tide. We're making a difference but perception often lags reality. It's also a really, really big ship to turn around.
I've been given an opportunity to be part of the solution. I know that I would regret it forever if I didn't give it a try - if not me, who else?
One could also ask why anyone should be working for military contractors/armaments manufacturers/small arms/weapon manufacturers/industries of adverse environmental impact? I think the ethical hazard in working at these places are more serious, than Facebook, which is after all a non mandatory, non essential service, which most of its users use for idle pastime.
I do however why such questions are being asked of Facebook/Google and not of companies like Thales/Lockheed Martin? Perhaps the mainstream media feel more threatened by Facebook/Google, because like all the MSM crave power, and Google /Facebook /other social networks can democratize dissemination of opinions and erode the power of MSMs to act as gatekeepers of Ideas.
> "The Reveal reports that in one of the unsealed documents, two Facebook employees are recorded discussing whether or not to refund a child—whom they refer to as a "whale"—who racked up $6,545 in charges from a Facebook game."
I mean they aren't wrong. A person who spends that much money on a game would most certainly be considered a whale. Jesus, I've spent a lot of money on a game like Hearthstone but nothing close to 6.5k!!!
A five-year-old is certainly not capable of understanding the significance of such a decision, and it's disgusting to exploit such weakness for large sums of money.
We're told frequently that 18-22 year olds are incapable of understanding the implications of their college spending and the associated debt. Is a fifteen year old supposed to be more financially savvy?
Worse than that: most adults (in developed countries) don't understand the law of 72 (doubling time) yet own multiple compound interest debts (credit cards)
A five-year-old also doesn't have any money of his own. Ultimately, the parents are spending the money and also the ones responsible for changing the situation.
The parents were most likely not aware.
Some platforms/games purposefully design their UX so that it's hard to control for a parent and easy to spend for a child.
If you're not aware of 6k charges on your credit card (or even 6 dollars) then you're a very, very irresponsible person, let alone irresponsible parent.
So your child spent 6k$ and you are now aware of it. So what? This article specifically talks about the employees who talk about child as whales when discussing whether to refund or not. Presumably the 5 year old kids did not request the refund themselves.
That doesn't change the fact that they are, in fact, a whale; a user that is spending large amounts on the game. The same term could be used in a sentence that doesn't come across as morally bankrupt.
> This is a 5 yr old... that's a whale. Of course we're going to refund him, he has no concept of the money he spent.
The term whale is just a description of the user's spending habits on the game and has not moral connotation attached to it.
They're only called "whales" because they're a great catch, in the fishing sense, where historically a whale was a singularly huge source of meat, blubber etc. Something you can hunt and exploit for profit.
Should consumers be hunted and exploited for profit? Would high-spenders appreciate the label "whales" if this reasoning were explained to them?
The moral issue here is that people generally do not want to be hunted and exploited for profit. They imply that people are prey by labeling them "whale".
> Would high-spenders appreciate the label "whales" if this reasoning were explained to them?
I guess it depends on the environment, but it's common for (adult) whales in mobile games to know the term and use it in reference to themselves (and minnow, dolphin, etc).
IIRC, 'fish' is the term for someone who on average loses money in their gambling (in some particular game, or overall): a fish is a creature whose head is under water. In games like poker it roughly divides the recreational (and/or problem) gamblers from the pros. AFAIK 'whale' is probably an extension of that: a big fish.
If whales had a poker-equivalent I think it would be the high rollers getting special treatment because it is specifically referring to that last percent who can casually spend 1000x - 10000x more. Capturing a whale could sustain a village through an arctic winter.
A 5-year-old should not have unfettered access to Facebook nor should Facebook let them. If Facebook knew the user was 5-years-old and titled the child as a whale, that is essentially the definition of an exploited minor.
15 doesn’t actually make it better though. There aren’t a lot of valid excuses for micro transactions in a “free” game that can build up to $6500.
It’s an exploitive practice, and while it should be legal to part a fool with his money, it doesn’t mean the company doing it is good or shouldn’t be shamed.
Agreed. "Whale" is a standard term in the free-to-play game industry to refer to any account in the top 1% or 2%. It has nothing to do with the age of the player or anything other than the revenue for that account.
The majority of the revenue for a f2p game will often come from whales.
Where in this article (besides the headline) does it say Facebook "Referred to Kids as Young as Five as “Whales”"?
The article does say "the average age of Angry Birds players on Facebook was five years old" but includes no evidence of Facebook calling five year olds "whales".
It also includes a separate recorded incident (chat logs) where two Facebook employees referred to a 15-year old as a "whale" and refused a refund, but 15 is not 5.
I’m sure the the op knows this. The point that was made is that the article’s title stated that FB staff is using that term to describe children. The article doesn’t actually support the claim it makes in the title.
I’m not sure I agree it’s less of a scandal in that case.
If you’re dealing with a service that could potentially psychologically manipulate children, it’s on you to go the extra mile to separate metrics or risk factors related to that possibility and distinguish it from a lumped population.
If Facebook internally referred to high spenders as “whales” in an aggregate manner, and had not already done due diligence to distinguish & guard against this being applied to young children, that’s already maximally severe. Had they gone even further and intentionally applied the term to children, it would just be maximally severe from an ethical standpoint rather than an incompetence / negligence standpoint.
Not on this one, but in the original where the story was first posted is a screenshot of said documents where in fact they refer to the kids as whales (iirc)
This[0] is from the organisation that got the files unsealed, and includes the "whale" reference at the beginning of the chat mentioned. Not sure it proves that 5-year-old were referred to in this way, but it does sound very casual in it's usage.
> Gillian: Would you refund this whale ticket? User is disputing ALL charges…
> Michael: What’s the users total lifetime spend?
> Gillian: It’s $6,545 – but card was just added on Sept. 2. They are disputing all of it I believe. That user looks underage as well. Well, maybe not under 13.
> Michael: Is the user writing in a parent, or is this user a 13ish year old
> Gillian: It’s a 13ish yr old. says its 15. looks a bit younger. she* not its. Lol.
> Michael: … I wouldn’t refund
> Gillian: Oh that’s fine. cool. agreed. just double checking
Clickbait headline makes it sound like they were trying to recruit whales.
Oh great. What a moral. 'oh that's fine. cool. agreed. just double checking'. Thanks god he's not a judge. These guys side Facebook versus a 13 year old kid, nice morality.
Fair enough. They’re Facebook employees - them "siding with" their own company doesn't quite seem like the right way to describe this - but I'm glad you're not talking about me and thanks for the clarification.
The facts should stand on their own. If one feels it necessary to take the facts and "dress them up", it most certainly devalues the argument when it comes out that someone's been telling half-truths.
So, yeah, it kinda matters that we not let such sloppiness slide.
Agreed. Hyperbole is something we all fall victim to sometimes, but it is something we should fight against. Be exact as possible, even if huuuge sounds better.
A 15 year old could be working in many places - probably at least has a functional understanding of value for money based on past experiences, a 5 year old almost certainly doesn't.
Because prosecutors sometimes care more about being seen as tough on crime and not compassionate towards young kids who do stupid things at an age where they're not blessed with an abundance of restraint and good decision making skills?
Because it's cheaper and more fair to set an arbitrary limit and apply it across the board than to try to evaluate each offender's maturity level individually.
There is still a huge difference between 5 and 15. I am not saying the 15yo "got what they deserved" by any means, I'm just saying that it doesn't help anyone to pretend that they are developmentally identical. Laws may be descrete but morality is surely continuous.
Which, unfortunately, doesn't mean anything. Someone can have a full time job at 15 on this planet, earn a living wage, have a bank account, and for all intents and purposes be financially independent. A five year old pretty universally cannot.
A 15 year old likely makes some of their own financial decisions, occasionally, or even often, buys their own food, entertainment, etc. 15 year olds buy game consoles, computers and games all the time.
It's important because the article headline is a bit clickbaity. It's true that Facebook called children "whales" but not "as young as 5", since the linked chat transcript in the article mentions a 15-year old child.
Yeah my money, my decision. I had around $6k of bar mitzvah money and savings from working as a teaching assistant and summer jobs. I spent just over half on video games during high school and related costs. I made it all back the summer after high school as a tech intern and then spent it all going out drinking first year in university.
Legally there is none. Both are considered minors, not capable of giving informed consent for (in many US states) marriage, employment, military service, voting, driving, or opening a bank account independently. And it's not like Facebook deserves rebuke for exploiting 5-year-olds and a Nobel Prize for exploiting 15-year-olds. But it's also true that the content of the article doesn't support the headline.
Edit: Even the math is wrong. If they're asserting that everyone's eligible to be called a "whale" who plays Angry Birds, and that the average age of an Angry Birds player is 5, then the minimum age ("as young as") of a whale isn't 5, it's less than 5.
>The Reveal reports that in one of the unsealed documents, two Facebook employees are recorded discussing whether or not to refund a child—whom they refer to as a "whale"—who racked up $6,545 in charges from a Facebook game.
That's a lot different than what I got from the headline, which to me implied that they were regularly categorizing children as "whales" (high spenders) based on their age and susceptibility to marketing. In this case, that 5 year old is a whale. I doubt many are
In my opinion it should be ethically wrong to call a 5 years old a whale even if he/she is one.
> based on their age and susceptibility to marketing
When you realize that you are (by mistake or not) marketing to 5 years old that can spend thousands for addictive entertainment you should also realize that something is seriously wrong.
I think you’re both right. It’s morally wrong to categorize a 5yo as a whale but it also appears to be an isolated case, so the headline is very inflammatory.
It's not morally wrong to categorize them. It's morally wrong to use them to take their family's money, though. (And maybe that's what being gotten at: a notion of these as regular and eager customers of free will, which is wrong.)
Are you suggesting publishers should not view 5 year olds as valuable customers? Or is the total dollar amount the issue? If this was a child of an UHNWI there really isn't a problem with spending $5k on a video game at the end of the day. Really this article is just click bait jump on the FB hate wagon.
Who is the customer for children's toys? You might argue it's the parents because they supply the money, but I think that would be like arguing that the customer for any product is the actual customer's employer - who provides the money.
It is the child who supplies the purchase motivation and the child who your product needs to satisfy. I'd say the customer is the child.
I don't think there's anything wrong with thinking of children as customers. I do think there's something wrong with manipulating children into spending thousands of dollars on digital gems, but I think that actually generalizes - it doesn't strike me as good moral choice to manipulate anyone into wasting large amounts of money on mobile games.
> Are you suggesting publishers should not view 5 year olds as valuable customers?
Mu; your question is a shitty rhetorical trap and I am certain you know it. Designing systems to exploit children is reprehensible; designing systems to exploit anyone should give you pause but children haven't finished baking their brains and everyone involved knows it.
And Facebook does not need you to cape up for them. Their stock ticker will do just fine, thank you.
As I read more, I'm pretty sure the child in question was 15. It doesn't necessarily make it ok but it does seem like this article's title is pretty inaccurate. The conversation where the term "whale" was used was referring to a 15 year old that had spent around $6500.
Yes, nobody should view 5 year olds as valuable customers. Their parent or guardian can be, but you should not design a product that encourages the child to spend money, and you should not think of the child as the customer. The child can benefit from your product, but they aren't the one making purchasing decisions.
I feel it's worth noting that the intention is to remove any "purchasing decision". There is a "allow spending via Facebook" decision, and a key element is ensuring that customers don't question "but hey will my kid buy $10k cost of lootboxes when I'm not looking".
When people of any age click "get coins" or whatever, the system is designed to bypass purchasing decisions, reduce friction completely, make sure they're deep in to the "getting dopamine hits" like a zombie aspect of playing your game.
so the consensus is that fb shouldnt be collecting data but its ok when theres something that portrays fb in an ethically (not morally) bankrupt act through circumstance. smh
I think that there is some other concern about the general issue of clickbait or "fake news" that is entering this HN discussion.
I didn't get it at first but now looking at it it does appear that the title is a little misleading. It appears that the actual chat logs show them referring to a 15 year old as a whale. I'm totally with you that referring to a 5 year old as a whale is disturbing but if that isn't what the employees did then the headline of this article is incorrect.
I'm not really sure how I feel about the 15 year old and I'm not sure exactly what information they are working with. It does _seem_ like as long as the person is over 13 then it's policy for FB to charge them. Can a 13 year old even have a credit card?
Any wallet that keeps on paying, regardless of its age, is a whale. The fact that facebook calls them whales is basically a convenient way to not have to question how the HELL five year olds have spending habits to begin with. Because I can guarantee you that's not because Facebook enables them. You know, what with the whole "5 year olds don't have jobs or bank accounts" and the like.
Terms like Whale are derogatory and dehumanizing words used to remove empathy from a conversation. When you refer to a "whale" you're not bringing humanity into the discussion and thus precluding it form influencing your decisions.
Alternatively, the term is intended to frame the developers of these applications as whalers trying capture some percentage of the public without their clear-headed consent.
Essentially the term is intended to refer to the developers of these applications as predators.
Even when the term is turned around it serves the same function. The distinction is that you agree with it's use in one context but perhaps not the other.
I'm not necessarily advocating for or against it's usage in either context, just pointing out the effect of using such a term has in terms of framing a conversation.
Facebook shouldn't have to factor "this person is 5" into their decisions at all. Minors, in countries where Facebook can rake in the dough, can't legally own or use creditcards. The term whale is derogatory, and is a super great subversion tactic: its presence distracts you form paying attention to the real problem, and instead tricks you into falling over the word itself, ignoring the real problem. And hey, looks like it got the job done.
How does one go from “two employees referred to...” to “Facebook referred to...”? it’s kind of like taking “Trump said” and changing it to “America said”, ewww. Is that even honest journalism? Writing an accurate headline isn’t hard.
> discussing whether or not to refund a child—whom they refer to as a "whale"—who racked up $6,545 in charges from a Facebook game
I have a hard time understanding how there could be any discussion at all. It seems very clear to me that you refund. What kind of people are working at Facebook?
If that were standard policy then parents might get the idea to let their kids just spend whatever they want on FB games knowing it'll just get refunded, effectively scamming app developers.
Agreed with you there. The real solution is to prevent them from happening in the first place, but I guess a refund policy which is very favourable for the player could help encourage that.
In most legal systems contracts/transactions with minors are void to begin with and not enforcable. It's beyond me, why transactions beyond a limited monthly allowance are even possible, if the game is clearly aimed at minors.
The burden of checking age for each transaction should be with the seller, as it is enforced in retail. If the seller doesnt check for proof, then the transaction should be trivially refundable at least.
The app developers that are selling microtransactions to children? I’m not sure I’m supposed to feel pity. Even if they weren’t sold to kids, if every such game disappeared off of the app stores tomorrow, I would be more happy than upset.
This software exists solely to manipulate irrational gambling tendencies.
Some FB games have thousands of whale players who spend over $1k per month. Not all of those purchases are obvious mistakes or instances of children not knowing what they are doing. It makes sense that they would review these purchases before refunding them. If they didn't they would potentially lose millions in revenue.
I see what you are saying. It seems the article is conflating different things to make it appear worse unless I too am missing the quote where they refer to a 5 year old as a 'whale.'
This type of predatory behavior has been happening for a long time. When I was about 9 years old, my brother and I bought Link's Awakening on Gameboy. On the back of the booklet that comes with the game was a line that read, "Need Help? Call this number" with an 800 phone number listed.
We had access to the home phone and wanted to beat the game. So of course, we called the number a few times to get hints on how to beat hards parts of the game. This was before the internet where you could just lookup a walkthrough online.
You can imagine my mother's shock when she received a $200+ charge on her phone bill for a phone number she had never heard of. Apparently the cost of the call was about $5/minute.
We got yelled at and we weren't allowed to call the number anymore after that. I'm proud to say we still be the game though.
Perhaps they've finally made it illegal, but I remember plenty of complaints from people about 800 numbers that were scams that charged to your phone bill when you called them, even if accidental. I remember being surprised at the time because I thought all 800 numbers were free by design.
Good point. To be honest, this was about ~20 years ago and I don't remember the exact phone number. Might have been a 900 number. Either way, the phone number was being primarily marketed towards children who probably didn't know that the calls would cost money.
Exploiting children for money is mass hysteria? Using very shady root certs to bypass Apple store rules is mass hysteria? Cambridge Analytica is mass hysteria?
I'm a little unclear. If the account is owned by the parent and the child is using it to play the game, how does FB know it was a child?
Did the specific employees cited learn from the lawsuit and then make the "whale" comment or did they say this and have the knowledge that it was a child before the lawsuit?
--Edit--
It looks like from the chat logs that the employees had the information that it was a child.
I have always wondered who is clicking on ads. Do not look further. Kids and.... babies!!! I have seen so many parents and nannies letting babies hours per day on youtube. It is scary.
Besides ElsaGate... even when the “programming” isn’t suggestive insanity, it’s still garbage. It’s never high quality well thought out content with a message or positive vision of what children should be seeing - it’s a pig and dog sprite in roughly “animated” cars and replaying the same couple sound effects. The exact polar opposite of say Mr Rogers content.
Exactly. Coupled with it's complement: "roach" or "cockroach" was similarly used in sales to refer to non-spending tire-kickers.
I bet you'd find a few more issues with children being called such because they only played the free tiers, or didn't take part in micro-transactions to get ahead.
Not really, it isn't an offensive term inherently. It's just a lot easier to say than "the XXth% percentile of customers by spending" or "customers who spend Y% more than the median" or whatever else. The exact definition varies by organization. Identifying and attracting whales is a big part of a successful sales program.
The fact that an analogy is drawn to an animal may be dehumanizing in the most literal sense, but it does not seem offensive or carry a negative connotation on its own, as the term 'dehumanizing' implies. If it indeed dehumanizing as the term is actually defined, then what you're saying is that discussing the spending characteristics of a customer somehow deprives said customer of individuality (the definition of 'dehumanizing' in its non-literal sense, where it carries the negative connotation). But how else can you describe various cohorts of prospective customers except to describe traits like spending behaviors?
This just seems like overblown outrage and much ado about nothing, fanned by how fashionable it is to go after Facebook these days.
Just a thought. What if facebook had fake accounts on hacker news to up and downvote new items. Would hacker news be able to identify it and if so would they let the rest of us know?
No, you've got him all wrong. Zuck is sorry about all of this. He's said so since 2003, also in 2006, and in 2007, and in 2008 (four times), also in 2010... it goes on to this day. He's incredibly and perpetually sorry for being a total scumbag: https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-t...
Related note: when my 3-year-old says he's sorry, but keeps punching his sister, we put him in time out.
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[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadGiven this, the only reason this is able to happen is because it flew under the radar for some time and then governments take time to legislate. By the time it actually becomes illegal, there could have been years of exploitation.
How do we solve this? Assuming that governments are slow moving (there can be benefits of this), and assuming that there will always be people with more flexible morals who will happily build these products, how do we create a society where this can't happen?
An incidence of zero is a difficult number to reach in any category. Everything is about tradeoffs.
FB employees can and should protest. I've gone as far as refusing to work for Facebook or any other adtech firm, but not everyone is privileged enough to make that choice.
That's not true for everyone. They may not starve, but they may make much less or give up the resume boost.
I share the sentiment as a corporate family-oriented programmer from a flyover state that has been heavily recruited by FANNGs. I don't like working for anyone, and being a teensy cog being ground up in a duct-taped together machine like that seems like torture.
Because these children are the most vulnerable to begin with, they are the reason protections are required in law against e.g. marketing gambling products and junk food to children.
It’s more reasonable to say that parents ought to be on top of things and recognize that not all of them are. Thus it’s best to have other safeguards in place. Like make Facebook liable for its exploitive behavior.
In my book we're slowly in executives should wind up in jail territory when it comes to this evil carbunkel of a company without any morals, whatsoever.
So, stop right here. The solution is for parents to take a look at what their kids are playing and refuse to let them play F2P stuff. Mine aren't allowed anywhere near F2P games for the very reasons you outlined.
If you let them play F2P games, you know that inevitably the "pay" part is going to rear its ugly head repeatedly, even with perfectly-implemented controls that prevent the kid from taking your credit card for a ride. Every damn day they're going to ask you to buy that stupid in-game currency. Just say no before it ever starts. Otherwise, good luck.
The pattern is very simple. If the game has an in-app purchase along the lines of:
* Buy 10 gems: $0.99
* Buy 50 gems: $2.99
etc. then it's F2P garbage. Get rid of it. Take the five minutes to see what your kid is playing.
Otherwise, you're asking to ban these games altogether or make them 18+. All because it's too much trouble to see what they're actually doing with that iPad you throw in front of them.
My parents would buy me $10 of gaming stuff as a kid, like a month subscription to an MMO. Seems unreasonable to expect them to know there's some in-game button I can press that keeps charging their card. I played World of Warcraft for five years and still couldn't tell you if that feature existed in-game. How would my mother?
Seems like a tall order especially with all the other things a parent needs to stay on top of when raising kids. "Just don't make digital purchases" seems like a weak solution. Small measures like having to re-enter the CC control code after a time interval would really help parents.
Like have a default maximum spend in Facebook of $5 per app and $50 total, and require at least a double-lock to enable a higher level of payments.
Double lock: user confirms by ticking a box and by following a link in an email, say; then they get a message on their Facebook saying "you authorised higher spending for $game, up to $amount".
They could require pre-deposit, not allow use of credit cards, only allow spending if your credit rating is good, etc.. But none of this things increase mindless spending.
The reason we end up with laws covering stuff like this is because it's a lot easier to do that than fix the whole of society. I don't think anyone disagrees that every child having a caring and attentive parent would solve a lot of problems, but how do we get there? While we work that out, we can pass some laws to protect those children.
And Facebook handsomely and intentionally profited from that.
You're half right. We have to focus on strong families who would raise kids who, as adults, will have a strong enough moral compass to 1) say no to being involved in stuff like this stuff at Facebook, 2) blow the whistle when they find out about it, and 3) take urgent action when they hear the whistle being blown.
If they couldn't keep their ethical fences up we would see far more impact from the same numbers of whistleblowers - criminals think they won't be caught.
This is something that happens all the time in all sorts of industries. It's sort of the thing that happens with free markets, people try various things, some are positive and some are negative.
So how do we not throw out the positives when mitigating the negatives? The answer is well known but imperfect. Open and public debate, journalistic investigation, political action.
Don't hire developers who have worked for companies involved in these products. If you see Facebook on a resume, put it in the bin.
By compromising on some other value we hold dear. These things are always trade-offs. Exploiting kids for money will be something we don't permit but ultimately tolerate.
We don't permit or tolerate accidental nuclear explosions as a contrasting example. We've create a society where that just doesn't happen or can't.
A kid can walk into a store and buy as much candy as they want. The problem is that usually they don't have a credit card in their hands.
You can market toys to kids, but most toys aren't harmful to their health, mental wellbeing, or financial state. Arguably many kids toys promote good health, wellbeing, educational material, etc.
Coca-cola was recently found guilty of this in the "food industry self governing organ" in Norway [1]. This is where complaints go first and if Coca-cola continues it can result in fines and whatnot.
They were using people from youtube channels that primarily makes videos for children in their own youtube channel videos.
[1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3...
From my now very vague memory of childhood TV, most ads for toys and games came in the evening news and soaps slots. When the adults were around too. Junk food was still OK, so kid's tv ads were for comics, and sweets, and sugar, oops I mean cereal: Sugar Puffs, Ricicles, Frosties etc.
I think it's a big mistake our regs on advertising toys to children have faded over the years. It's been shown time and again kids 12 and under can't understand commercial intent by ad industry research. So the real age may be higher.
If I post a video of my game on Reddit, am I marketing to children? There are a lot of children there, but it isn't a childrens' website. Does it matter if my game is strategy-/turn-based or animated with cute graphics?
Identifying demographics and targeting the marketing to them is the bread and butter of modern advertising. The entire justification for Google's and Facebook's mass consumer surveillance is to offer corporations more targeted advertising.
There are gray areas but if you're marketing to children, you know you're marketing to children.
For cases like this it's much easier to evaluate it case by case.
I don't know, but it seems absolutely absurd that Facebook or anyone else gives someone a hard time about refunding thousands of dollars of virtual goods. Especially when you consider Nordstrom's or Costco's return policies for physical goods!
I understand that you need to make a balance between easy refunds and running a business, but the COGS for a virtual good after development cost must be a fraction of a penny. Forcing parents to shell out thousands for their kids' actions in an online game is an insane policy. One would hope "the market will correct it", but maybe it does take legislation.
Puhleeze, I haven't heard any remotely viable way that any even halfway decent alternative to Facebook becomes possible. I see multiple posts a day bitching about the evils of FB, and then they come out yesterday with enormous revenue and user numbers.
The only way FB will slow down is if they are trustbusted.
Facebook is dominant in social media, but this is mobile gaming micro-payments. Google and Apple are also large in this space.
That said, I've little confidence this oligopoly will do the right thing without regulation.
Hopefully, will be the next mechanism to be phased out via legislation.
Reducing the barriers to payment this way does 2 things. * Consumers are more likely to impulse buy. This can affect everybody, but severely affects people with low impulse control who can't manage money. * Consumers are more likely to unintentionally buy.
Both are taking advantage of people.
It would be nice if there were consumer protections similar to "Explicit Consent" in the GDPR. I.e. Explicit Consent should be required when purchasing something.
This should be solved by easy and simple refund system (for example, like the one that Valve has). Not by taking away ease of use for people who know what they are doing.
For example, I hate when Steam asks me for CVV number periodically when I buy. If they asked to retype the whole CC number every time I would be less likely to even buy some of the games I want to play.
Stealing from families by exploiting toddlers. This is what many of the most talented minds in the world are working on. Truly tragic.
No we don't, we can choose not to accept it and to speak out against it. It's abhorrent behavior and shouldn't be tolerated in a modern society.
Many of the world's greatest atrocities began with apathy. It's so easy to look back and wonder how on Earth people accepted the behavior of the powerful that descended to tyranny, but looking into the future is much more difficult, and often, much more uncomfortable.
Any company employing over 1,000 people is almost guaranteed to be involved in something evil because of the corruptibility of mankind, but you can't just assume that every single person is a direct contributor. Another similar example would be how you can't blame every individual American citizen for the various crimes the CIA has been running around the world committing, because there really are only a few Americans who have any connection to those things. This is true despite the fact that Mother, Apple Pie, the CIA World Factbook and the assassination of third world government officials are all technically part of the same institution.
You might counter with, if people can claim innocence even though they are part of a guilty organization, what's the motivation to improve? The answer to that is that the moral calling of Americans isn't to all leave America until the CIA gets shut down, it's to stay and stubbornly assert their morals until things improve. Evil leaders would much rather have a slightly smaller but completely obedient workforce than they would a larger, more skilled but unmanageable (in evil directions) one.
Replacing your own personal morality with the average morality of the organizations you are a part of is a trap, because you could also be way more evil than average. In fact, the most vile schemers at HBO might be worse than the most vile at Monsanto; and they could justify themselves by saying, "I can't be vile, I work at HBO, and HBO is not vile on average."
The best person at the NSA was probably Snowden while he was planning his defection. It's Snowden's actions that count for his judgment, not the morality of the NSA on average. If all NSA employees were traitors to the American people then Snowden would be one too! Obviously, only the NSA employees that do their jobs are traitors to the American people. There is more opportunity for heroism at Facebook because people could put their jobs on the line to defend what's right.
By no means am I justifying complicity, I'm saying that there's more opportunity to become a hero of the revolution in a terrible country than in a great one.
To use your fascist example, just because someone came from West Germany doesn't mean that they were members of the Statsi, and even if they were members of the Statsi, they could have been (and I would say they would have a duty to be) agents of the people working to undermine it from within.
Never thought of it this way... because it's bloody ridiculous.
If FB has been infiltrated by so many "agents of the people", they're doing a pretty crap job at improving it.
Granted, my "revolution CIA the people NSA morals evil" language makes it sound kind of silly, but what I'm really talking about is the more mundane pushback that workers can achieve when asked to go beyond ethical boundaries. You don't know whether any individual Facebook employee is working in the right direction or against it, because although they might not be "plotting the people's coup, undermining the New Statsi from within," they might be gently pushing for more realistic improvements.
I'm sorry but I can't follow your argument. By now if you work for Facebook you must already know that they are in the surveillance business.
Previous justifications for that seem to have revolved around them not doing anything bad with that information. Well here's the thing, using that information to target children with addictive games for money is a bad use of that information. If you work for Facebook you work for people that pay you with that money.
The parent was calling the people being voted for or against in the US "facists" even though the NSA is the secret police of a constitutional republic. East German communists were closer to fascism than the US today by a long shot, "everything is the state" and all that.
>By now if you work for Facebook you must all ready know that they are in the surveillance business.
I'm not trying to absolve Facebook, I'm pointing out that some Facebook employees may be using their position to push back against Facebook's evil, or to slow it down. So, you can't pick up your torches and pitchforks against everyone who works there, because some good people might get pitchforked.
If there is a market it will be exploited by someone.
The solution is to regulate the market so that Facebook cannot do whatever it is doing.
On short term, maybe.
The possibility of doing evil to customers is proportional to the market size, much like in the drug business.
Personally, this is true for me. I've lived in four cities and three countries in my relatively short life, and my immediate family is often in four countries at any one time. I have friends around the world, who are starting families, getting married and generally living their lives. Facebook's products are the best way for us to stay connected to each other.
The world has never dealt with issues we're now facing, on the scale we're now facing. The lessons we learn as a society from Facebook, both its successes and failures, will only make whatever comes next that much better. Every single day, I work alongside incredibly smart people who are empowered to turn the tide. We're making a difference but perception often lags reality. It's also a really, really big ship to turn around.
I've been given an opportunity to be part of the solution. I know that I would regret it forever if I didn't give it a try - if not me, who else?
I do however why such questions are being asked of Facebook/Google and not of companies like Thales/Lockheed Martin? Perhaps the mainstream media feel more threatened by Facebook/Google, because like all the MSM crave power, and Google /Facebook /other social networks can democratize dissemination of opinions and erode the power of MSMs to act as gatekeepers of Ideas.
I mean they aren't wrong. A person who spends that much money on a game would most certainly be considered a whale. Jesus, I've spent a lot of money on a game like Hearthstone but nothing close to 6.5k!!!
How about we don't do corporate apologism eh
> This is a 5 yr old... that's a whale. Of course we're going to refund him, he has no concept of the money he spent.
The term whale is just a description of the user's spending habits on the game and has not moral connotation attached to it.
The moral issue here is that people generally do not want to be hunted and exploited for profit. They imply that people are prey by labeling them "whale".
I guess it depends on the environment, but it's common for (adult) whales in mobile games to know the term and use it in reference to themselves (and minnow, dolphin, etc).
Like "hyper addicted".
It’s an exploitive practice, and while it should be legal to part a fool with his money, it doesn’t mean the company doing it is good or shouldn’t be shamed.
The majority of the revenue for a f2p game will often come from whales.
The article does say "the average age of Angry Birds players on Facebook was five years old" but includes no evidence of Facebook calling five year olds "whales".
It also includes a separate recorded incident (chat logs) where two Facebook employees referred to a 15-year old as a "whale" and refused a refund, but 15 is not 5.
Through, given context it is less of scandal.
It's also a bit misleading to call 2 employees out of over 25,000 "Facebook."
If you’re dealing with a service that could potentially psychologically manipulate children, it’s on you to go the extra mile to separate metrics or risk factors related to that possibility and distinguish it from a lumped population.
If Facebook internally referred to high spenders as “whales” in an aggregate manner, and had not already done due diligence to distinguish & guard against this being applied to young children, that’s already maximally severe. Had they gone even further and intentionally applied the term to children, it would just be maximally severe from an ethical standpoint rather than an incompetence / negligence standpoint.
[0] - https://www.revealnews.org/blog/a-judge-unsealed-a-trove-of-...
> Gillian: Would you refund this whale ticket? User is disputing ALL charges…
> Michael: What’s the users total lifetime spend?
> Gillian: It’s $6,545 – but card was just added on Sept. 2. They are disputing all of it I believe. That user looks underage as well. Well, maybe not under 13.
> Michael: Is the user writing in a parent, or is this user a 13ish year old
> Gillian: It’s a 13ish yr old. says its 15. looks a bit younger. she* not its. Lol.
> Michael: … I wouldn’t refund
> Gillian: Oh that’s fine. cool. agreed. just double checking
Clickbait headline makes it sound like they were trying to recruit whales.
That you think a clearly misleading headline is a matter of 'sides' is worrying.
What's worrying is a person deciding to not refund a 13-15 year old kid that I'm pretty sure doesn't know how many money has spent on games.
So, yeah, it kinda matters that we not let such sloppiness slide.
What is the relevant difference in this context?
It’s just a magic line. 17? No consequences. 18? Full adult.
Complete fiction. Minors being tried as adults happens all the time. It all depends on how heinous the crime is.
> Alcohol brand starts marketing campaign targeting 18 year olds
> Alcohol brand starts marketing campaign targeting 5 year olds
Edit: Even the math is wrong. If they're asserting that everyone's eligible to be called a "whale" who plays Angry Birds, and that the average age of an Angry Birds player is 5, then the minimum age ("as young as") of a whale isn't 5, it's less than 5.
I believe it was in paragraph 4.
> based on their age and susceptibility to marketing
When you realize that you are (by mistake or not) marketing to 5 years old that can spend thousands for addictive entertainment you should also realize that something is seriously wrong.
Yes? I mean, 5 years old...
It is the child who supplies the purchase motivation and the child who your product needs to satisfy. I'd say the customer is the child.
I don't think there's anything wrong with thinking of children as customers. I do think there's something wrong with manipulating children into spending thousands of dollars on digital gems, but I think that actually generalizes - it doesn't strike me as good moral choice to manipulate anyone into wasting large amounts of money on mobile games.
Mu; your question is a shitty rhetorical trap and I am certain you know it. Designing systems to exploit children is reprehensible; designing systems to exploit anyone should give you pause but children haven't finished baking their brains and everyone involved knows it.
And Facebook does not need you to cape up for them. Their stock ticker will do just fine, thank you.
The problem is not the relative amount of money being spent by a family's child whether that family be wealthy or of means.
The problem is that five-year-old children cannot provide informed consent.
EDIT: remove superfluous "the".
When people of any age click "get coins" or whatever, the system is designed to bypass purchasing decisions, reduce friction completely, make sure they're deep in to the "getting dopamine hits" like a zombie aspect of playing your game.
I didn't get it at first but now looking at it it does appear that the title is a little misleading. It appears that the actual chat logs show them referring to a 15 year old as a whale. I'm totally with you that referring to a 5 year old as a whale is disturbing but if that isn't what the employees did then the headline of this article is incorrect.
I'm not really sure how I feel about the 15 year old and I'm not sure exactly what information they are working with. It does _seem_ like as long as the person is over 13 then it's policy for FB to charge them. Can a 13 year old even have a credit card?
Essentially the term is intended to refer to the developers of these applications as predators.
I'm not necessarily advocating for or against it's usage in either context, just pointing out the effect of using such a term has in terms of framing a conversation.
I have a hard time understanding how there could be any discussion at all. It seems very clear to me that you refund. What kind of people are working at Facebook?
The burden of checking age for each transaction should be with the seller, as it is enforced in retail. If the seller doesnt check for proof, then the transaction should be trivially refundable at least.
This software exists solely to manipulate irrational gambling tendencies.
And even putting the kid issue aside, anything that discourages repeated-purchase IAPs is itself a net benefit to gaming and app development.
Are parents really that stupid to tell them?
We had access to the home phone and wanted to beat the game. So of course, we called the number a few times to get hints on how to beat hards parts of the game. This was before the internet where you could just lookup a walkthrough online.
You can imagine my mother's shock when she received a $200+ charge on her phone bill for a phone number she had never heard of. Apparently the cost of the call was about $5/minute.
We got yelled at and we weren't allowed to call the number anymore after that. I'm proud to say we still be the game though.
If Facebook is "evil," then not having a flood of news items is just giving them a pass on their behavior.
How would you know if not for the news?
That's probably what causes this spike in "look what they did NOW".
What sort of mentality is going on at Facebook where this can be seen as acceptable not to refund them?
Did the specific employees cited learn from the lawsuit and then make the "whale" comment or did they say this and have the knowledge that it was a child before the lawsuit?
--Edit--
It looks like from the chat logs that the employees had the information that it was a child.
Besides ElsaGate... even when the “programming” isn’t suggestive insanity, it’s still garbage. It’s never high quality well thought out content with a message or positive vision of what children should be seeing - it’s a pig and dog sprite in roughly “animated” cars and replaying the same couple sound effects. The exact polar opposite of say Mr Rogers content.
But hey, free babysitter!!
I bet you'd find a few more issues with children being called such because they only played the free tiers, or didn't take part in micro-transactions to get ahead.
The fact that an analogy is drawn to an animal may be dehumanizing in the most literal sense, but it does not seem offensive or carry a negative connotation on its own, as the term 'dehumanizing' implies. If it indeed dehumanizing as the term is actually defined, then what you're saying is that discussing the spending characteristics of a customer somehow deprives said customer of individuality (the definition of 'dehumanizing' in its non-literal sense, where it carries the negative connotation). But how else can you describe various cohorts of prospective customers except to describe traits like spending behaviors?
This just seems like overblown outrage and much ado about nothing, fanned by how fashionable it is to go after Facebook these days.
Here's some interesting research on that topic
https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...
Related note: when my 3-year-old says he's sorry, but keeps punching his sister, we put him in time out.