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Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards

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

#161

Post by austincheney »

Jare wrote: post #116
austincheney wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not to implement the most basic measures to prevent it. The most basic implement to prevent this behavior is for parents to limit their children's access to Facebook. The consequence for that lack of supervision is spent money. Who should we feel sorry for?

Feel sorry for parents who are struggling to keep up with a crazily fast technology uptake for which they are not prepared but which has many high impact features in their profession, in their spare time, and in their kids' lives. If you know parents without tech education or a comfortable economic position and lifestyle, try asking them how the deal with all this stuff.

Do you think parents should limit their children's access to porn? In my household we limit social media access no differently. What parent (with Facebook and integrated credit card data) doesn't know what social media is at this point?

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

#162

Post by hopler »

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #156
leetcrew wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because the adults didn't learn when they were impressionable children?

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

#163

Post by Cu3PO42 »

miluge wrote: post #147
Cu3PO42 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to their website you need either a US checking account or debit card, so for all intents and purposes, yes. If you're in (certain parts of) Europe, Revolut will offer you one-time use virtual debit cards if you're on one of their paid plans. However, I have no personal experience with them. Being limited to one transaction each makes them a lot less interesting in my opinion, since I can't set up my subscri…

You can have a virtual CC ( or more but didnt check ) with Revolut that can be one time use or multiple, its all up to you for how long You want to use it.

I recently looked into them. You can have up to 5 on their premium plan. But these are still "normal" debit cards with no limits beyond the funding of your account.

The service that privacy.com offers is different in that it allows you to control very precisely what kind of charges are allowed on any of your virtual cards (and allows you to have more than five). If I used a particular card only for Spotify, I could put a $10/month limit on it, for example. This is more akin to the one-time card offering, but it's not quite the same since it doesn't support recurring payments.

On that note: if anyone is aware of a service like privacy.com available to users in mainland Europe, I'd be very interested to hear about it.

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

#164

Post by a12432 »

acct1771 wrote: post #131
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…

>I've literally had merchants issue a partial refund, disputed the original charge, and ended up with bonus money ...why is this ethical?

First, I don't have to be ethical in response to someone acting unethical towards me. If someone tries to stab you and you also have a knife, you are not limited to the use of your fists in retaliation.

Second, I dispute the charge as a fraudulent charge, and get my money back. It is then on them, when contacted by AMEX, to tell AMEX they already issued a partial refund, point to the transaction where they did, and the credited amount then gets lowered. I am not here to do their job for them. By the way, out of the ~10 times this has happened over 20 years of me using AMEX, the vendor has done this only once. All the other times they know they are a scammer and simply do not reply to the dispute at all. By scammer, I mean companies like paypal, Travelocity, Transaero Airlines, and Uber. And no, I cannot use services by any of those companies anymore as they do block you after you do that. Which is fine by me.

Question to you - why did you assume by default this was unethical, and that you have to be ethical towards scammers? I'm going to go on a limb here and claim you are white and like to scream racism. While warring behind your keyboard.

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

#165

Post by Mirioron »

leereeves wrote: post #20
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…

> “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…

At some point parents should have to take some responsibility for parenting their children. Absolutely everything seems to be somebody else's fault, except for the parents.

Kids don't earn their own money. If kids are spending real money in a game then the parents had to okay it.

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

#166

Post by Mirioron »

asynchrony wrote: post #88
fhbdukfrh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, i went to the local arcade with my 9 year old last weekend. It is fully licensed, has games where you drop a ball (at a cost of about 2 bucks) to win tickets ranging in value from 10 to 500 points and redeem them for prizes like candy and video game themed toys. I'd say that's stigma-free.

Legislation is stuck at the money-in-money-out mechanic.

That's because gambling, by definition, requires money to change hands.

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

#167

Post by Mirioron »

FiveSquared wrote: post #70
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…

Well sports betting has been around forever, but dark patterns and intentional deception in mobile games leads to children being manipulated. Not consenting adults, CHILDREN. https://humanetech.com/

Yeah, I wonder where the parents are when kids do this. Kids don't earn their own money. But I guess expecting parents to actually parent is too much nowadays.

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

#168

Post by Mirioron »

bigbugbag wrote: post #160
efdee wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

>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.

So, in your opinion what makes something a slot machine is which psychological effects it tries to use?

Do you know where else all of these same psychological effects come up? Human interaction. Candy Crush is basically somebody trying to sweet talk you and wrap you around their finger. Do you consider that to be a slot machine too?

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

#169

Post by Mirioron »

mcv wrote: post #158
yholio wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>A good payment system should require explicit authorisation through your own bank.

This would basically make sure I would almost never spend any money online, because going through a bank authorization is annoying enough that I'd rather just go do something else. Forget microtransactions, I wouldn't even buy most games.

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

#170

Post by i_cant_speel »

Mirioron wrote: post #165
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…

At some point parents should have to take some responsibility for parenting their children. Absolutely everything seems to be somebody else's fault, except for the parents. Kids don't earn their own money. If kids are spending real money in a game then the parents had to okay it.

I would imagine that in a lot of cases parents just don't understand how these apps work. Something like this happens the first time, and then they figure out how to put those controls into place.
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