Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#151

Post by pesenti » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

A friendly fraud implies that the refund was actually made to the customer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fraud). The article states:

"“Friendly fraud” is the term Facebook used when children spent money on games without their parents’ permission."

That's incorrect and completely reverses the meaning of the internal FB memo. “Friendly Fraud – what it is, why it’s challenging, and why you shouldn’t try to block it.”

(Disclaimer: I work at Facebook but wasn't there at the time.)

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#152

Post by efdee » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

miluge wrote: post #146

AlexandrB wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point the game companies should bear some of the responsibility for deceiving children. I hope a reckoning is coming in this regard. Many games include mechanics that are hard to distinguish from video slot machines and should be regulated the same way gambling is (rated 18+, audited for "fairness").

Candy Crush is litterally a slot machine on smartphone at least thats how I see it.

I've been playing Candy Crush casually for the last 4 years, I'm at a ridiculously high level and have never spent a penny on it.

I don't think calling it a slot machine is fair.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#153

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #112

dylan604 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of this is the result of parents allowing children to play games unattended with games they themselves have not played to vet? With all things parenting, it ultimately falls on their shoulders on what they allow their kids to do. Not shilling for the slime balls preying on kids knowing parents are lazy, but parents are not blameless.

> How much of this is the result of parents allowing children to play games unattended with games they themselves have not played to vet? None of it. You can try it. You can have a million parents leave a million children alone for most of the day, and not even a bitmap image of one cartoon coin or anything will magically be created, much less the code and distribution channels for a whole game. It doesn't make exist…

> In my mind, only a.) children and b.) very careful, well trained and aware adults should make entertainment for children.

I absolutely agree with the thrust of your post, but this strikes me as a little extreme. I don't believe J.K. Rowling, for instance, had any specific training on child psychology or the like when she began writing Harry Potter.

Creating non-exploitive content targeted at children is not rocket science.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#154

Post by fredophile » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

tinus_hn wrote: post #123

a12432 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMEX is what provides that solution, and fine the merchant as a bonus. It's called disputing a charge. Other cards have the option too, but AMEX will fight for you the most. I've literally had merchants issue a partial refund, disputed the original charge, and ended up with bonus money, multiple times. There is a cost to using credit cards. One of the main reasons to use them is this protection against bad actors, an…

Reversing the charges doesn’t work with Facebook because they will block your account and for most people that’s not an option. And Americans Express is not going to fine Facebook or suspend their merchant account. That’s for small merchants.

I doubt even a company like Facebook is very big by credit card processing standards. Visa and Mastercard constantly run a huge amount of money through their systems. If your fraud rate goes above a certain level they give you a warning. If it stays too high they'll cut you off.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#155

Post by Chris_Chambers » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #79

beezischillin wrote: post #60

I explicitly make spending money online harder for myself as a protection from things like this. (Well, primarily I also don't play any games with micro-transactions for one because they're universally a rip-off designed to exploit addictive personalities. Games based around these shady tactics should never have been tolerated, let alone allowed to become the standard to such a degree where even real AAA $60 video ga…

I have the same habits. Every month, I have to enter my payment info for phone,car,etc. They always have that little check box for "save payment info for later". Nope. To the point that my car payment is now done over the phone each month because they changed their website to force you to enter a payment (checking/routing). At the rate sites are getting hacked, I will not enter any more information that required to m…

How does doing it over the phone help? Now the call center employee can write down your details and rob you later, as can anyone who reviews a recording of the call. Your risk increases every month you call and reveal your payment details to yet another stranger.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#156

Post by fhbdukfrh » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 8:39 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #89

Spooky23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely. Society shifted and gambling is stigma free. My son is old enough that arcades are interesting to him now. I was pretty shocked to see how they have declined into shitty skinner boxes and games of chance to win tickets. That was always a factor, but is much more prominent today. The casual acceptance of sports betting is another example of that shift. There’s probably some free marketeer who will opine that…

honestly I think gambling could be a good thing for a child if they use money they've worked hard for themselves. sooner or later they will suffer a bad loss and have no new toys for a while. maybe give them some "margin" too to really get the point home.

Why do you expect a child to learn a logical lesson that millions of adults don't understand?

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#157

Post by golemiprague » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

It's not only facebook, all platforms have difficult way of managing kids spending. You have to put "payment method" which is saved and invoked automatically, or you don't and then have to fill it up every time you want to buy something and then remove it. They should do an email and confirmation system, when a kid buy something it sends an email to the parent who can confirm it or not, that's all.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#158

Post by mcv » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

yholio wrote: post #35

leereeves wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “It doesn’t necessarily look like ‘real’ money to a minor,” This is intentional. In many games, some things cost "gold" earned by playing the game, and others cost "gems" bought with real money. Or maybe "gold" is the one that costs real money. It's designed to be confusing and hide the distinction between in-game points and real money. At some point the game companies should bear some of the responsibility for dec…

This whole idea of storing a payment token that a company can charge at will (as opposed to a fixed top-up with cash) and then for me to be unable to deny those charges, I find it all unacceptable and refuse to allow it ever. After providing such a payment token there should be no proof and dispute involved, just a single click in a web interface "I refuse to pay for that and I revoke the token". The user of the toke…

This is in my opinion the core problem with credit cards: that the information to authorise payment is sent through the vendor, who can store it and reuse it without the customer being aware of it. That's just a broken payment system.

A good payment system should require explicit authorisation through your own bank. That's how for example the Dutch iDeal system works. I never use a credit card for a site that accepts iDeal, and the only reason I have a credit card at all, is that many foreign sites don't specifically cater to Dutch customers, and therefore haven't implemented iDeal. I wish they did, or that there was a similar international payment standard that went through banks rather than merchants.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#159

Post by bigbugbag » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

mindgam3 wrote: post #15

The issue is Facebook denying refund requests after children were suckered in to make large in-game payments using their parents' stored credit cards. It's not just that this whole scenario is slimy. It's that Facebook was fully aware of it, had a nice in-house term for it ("friendly fraud"), and not only chose not to approve refunds but also chose not to implement the most basic measures to prevent it. [edit: as a c…

Are you really surprised ? To me this seems exactly as intended and expected from facebook, this is fully in line with how facebook thinks and works. Everything facebook is designed to maximize profit in any possible way out of people not knowing better.

The scheme described in this article is akin to the multiple techniques used by facebook to acquire users, they used and abused the whole black book of dirty tricks, dark patterns and such.

Heck there's even one dark pattern named after the ceo and founder of facebook.

Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

#160

Post by bigbugbag » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 11:04 PM UTC

efdee wrote: post #152

miluge wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Candy Crush is litterally a slot machine on smartphone at least thats how I see it.

I've been playing Candy Crush casually for the last 4 years, I'm at a ridiculously high level and have never spent a penny on it. I don't think calling it a slot machine is fair.

Except it is exactly like a slot machine, well akin to an evolved version actually.

It is designed to be addictive with compulsion loops and reinforcement, exploiting brain mechanisms you are not aware of such as disproportionate feedback coming directly from slot machines. Candy crush is a sort of glorified skinner box.

Same as gambling machines, candy crush makes use of "illusion of control" by congratulating the player for being skilled for things that actually happened by chance (or were made to happen by the game itself).

The comparison does not stop here, similar to gambling machines candy crush makes money not on the vast majority of people but on a limited few that will spend lots of money the "whales". The fun thing with candy crush is that as long as you never pay the game plays fair but once you've become a paying customer the game starts to play tricks on you to nudge you into paying more, it will become harder or impossible to win without the use of bonus you have to pay to get. The game actually adapts to you to maximize profit it can squeeze out of you.

There was a detailed article about all this mechanism a few years back when I did not shaarlize[0] all my interesting findings so I can't link it here, but everything I just written comes from memory of what was described in this article.

[0] : https://shaarli.readthedocs.io/en/master/