If true, this seems to be one of the more clear cut recent examples of unethical policies devised by Facebook employees. I suspect certain other policies and programs can be mentally justified, but when it comes to very obvious things like this I would think it would have a bigger impact on whether top employees including engineers would be willing to continue working there. Everyone has their own personal line beyond which they’ll just decide to move one. I have already read about some people moving on lately but don’t know if it’s a trend yet.
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
#52If true, this seems to be one of the more clear cut recent examples of unethical policies devised by Facebook employees. I suspect certain other policies and programs can be mentally justified, but when it comes to very obvious things like this I would think it would have a bigger impact on whether top employees including engineers would be willing to continue working there. Everyone has their own personal line beyon…
" by Facebook employees"
The buck stops where?
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#53Just don't save payment card information in your Facebook account which you share with an irresponsible minor. If you primarily blame Facebook for this problem, you are failing as a parent. The fact that it is technically possible for Facebook to validate some purchases and prevent some instances of this problem does not make it Facebook's responsibility not to do something practically equivalent to handing your wall…
Ah yes, blame the parents.
A 9% chargeback rate on payments identified from minors is an awful lot of careless parents. The real fraud rate would be a lot higher as plenty might write it off to experience come credit card bill. Quite often these things are remarkably difficult to cancel too (no idea if that applies to Facebook).
The fact is many of these ongoing payments, and the use of separate game currencies rather than simple $1.99 are deliberately unclear, even to fully clued up adults. That's rather the whole point of them.
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#54If my child takes the money that I left on the desk, goes to the shop, buys candies and eats them...can I go to the bank and ask them to give back my crisp bills? Or maybe go to the candy store and whine there?
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#55Just don't save payment card information in your Facebook account which you share with an irresponsible minor. If you primarily blame Facebook for this problem, you are failing as a parent. The fact that it is technically possible for Facebook to validate some purchases and prevent some instances of this problem does not make it Facebook's responsibility not to do something practically equivalent to handing your wall…
Ah yes, blame the parents. A 9% chargeback rate on payments identified from minors is an awful lot of careless parents. The real fraud rate would be a lot higher as plenty might write it off to experience come credit card bill. Quite often these things are remarkably difficult to cancel too (no idea if that applies to Facebook). The fact is many of these ongoing payments, and the use of separate game currencies rathe…
> The fact is many of these ongoing payments, and the use of separate game currencies rather than simple $1.99 are deliberately unclear, even to fully clued up adults. That's rather the whole point of them.
Well, so are amusement park tickets. That doesn't mean you are absolved of responsibility for controlling your cash when you go to an amusement park.
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#56It's interesting watching Silicon Valley discover the purpose of government regulations from first principles.
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#57Earlier 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 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").
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 teaching children about gambling is a good thing!
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#58So they can just return money to all the wronged people now? Or did they already? How about people outside of US?
I mean there would have to be some criteria for deciding who to return money to, but I'm sure they can come up with something less arbitrary than the original decision making that's hinted at in the article.
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#59Is anyone surprised that 11 year-old Johnny "didn't realize" he was spending money? Sounds like parents looking to blame anybody but themselves.
That's odd, the article I read did contain specific instances of parents retracting the steps of their spendthrifty offspring which confirmed there was no indication of actual money being spent, e.g.: “I saw all these $19 charges from Facebook,” she said. “It added up to nearly $1,000.” She asked her son why he would do that. But he was flabbergasted by the charges too. So Bohannon asked her son to play the game so s…
Holy cow, that's frightening. Mobile games with in-app payments are clear about "These cost gems {or some other bought-with-real-money mcguffin)", but refilling those gems nearly always makes it clear that you're going to have to pay.
Re: Facebook Let Kids Rack Up Charges on Parents' Credit Cards
#60I 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 games are now infested with this. It's disgusting.) Very few things and services have my payment information saved -- usually just Apple and PayPal have it saved. I never save credit or debit card details to the keychain so the browser doesn't auto-complete it. I always go out of my way to set payment confirmation dialogues to always appear. Whenever I subscribe to something, I use PayPal or the App Store subscription feature. In case it's a yearly recurring subscription, I always go out of my way to cancel auto renewal. If nothing else, I delete the authorisation from PayPal for automatic renewal. I always go and double-check if some place saved my credit card details or not and if they have then I delete them.
While not completely fool-proof, these steps have made it easier to more carefully manage my online spendings and not to suckered into parting with my money.