
Facebook Referred to Kids as Young as Five as “Whales” for Its Monetized Games - throwaway2048
https://www.usgamer.net/articles/facebook-unsealed-documents-whales-mobile-games
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823)

------
Ajedi32
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.

~~~
xg15
> _but 15 is not 5._

What is the relevant difference in this context?

~~~
shittyadmin
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.

~~~
bg4
A child is a child.

~~~
brianwawok
Why do we try children as adults for certain crimes?

It’s just a magic line. 17? No consequences. 18? Full adult.

~~~
reaperducer
_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.

~~~
brianwawok
I was missing a ? Mark in there. Other two posters figured it out. Will edit
for you.

------
danpalmer
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?

~~~
rektomatic
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

~~~
skh
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.

~~~
j16sdiz
In this case (or the online casino case GP was suggesting), the parent should
keep his/her credit card safe. How this not the parent's responsibility?

~~~
CaptainZapp
Here's the scenario :

    
    
      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.

~~~
xienze
> 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.

~~~
skh
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.

~~~
xienze
> 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.

~~~
skh
I do not wish to live in the type of society you appear to be comfortable
with. I hope your view does not prevail.

------
colmvp
> "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!!!

~~~
save_ferris
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.

~~~
Ajedi32
The person in that incident was fifteen, not five.

~~~
wang_li
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?

~~~
nailer
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)

------
andygcook
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.

~~~
bagacrap
800 numbers are toll free. Was it a 900 number?

~~~
wccrawford
Actually, not all 800 numbers are toll free. Just another dark pattern.

~~~
jdsudo
You sure about that? [https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/what-toll-free-
number-a...](https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/what-toll-free-number-and-
how-does-it-work)

~~~
wccrawford
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.

------
mcv
I've never played games on Facebook, but I did once discover that, after I
purchased a game on Android for my son, he was able to make in-app purchases
without authorisation. Turns out Android didn't require re-authorisation for
half an hour after making an authorised purchase, which can make sense in some
situations, but is a terrible idea with in-app purchases for an app you just
bought for your kid.

Fortunately they quickly refunded the money. I pointed out I wanted explicit
authorisation for every purchase, and I think that's what Android now does.

~~~
pier25
Android is great for refunds compared to iOS.

If you uninstall an app before 2 hours after install you get an automatic
refund.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Do you mean, you get a refund just by performing the uninstall action; or that
on request a refund will be allowed?

------
save_ferris
Any current Facebook employees care to chime in on what makes this company
worth your time as an employee in 2019?

~~~
whatshisface
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.

~~~
rjkennedy98
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.

~~~
whatshisface
> _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.

~~~
blub
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.

~~~
whatshisface
> _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.

------
pdkl95
A lot of people in this thread seem to be making a Thermian Argument[1]:

> The diegetic argument aims to dismiss criticism at its core, suggesting that
> there aren't any problems with a text provided controversial elements are
> internally consistent with the rest of the story world. In slang terms, this
> could be referred to as The Thermian Argument. In the sci-fi classic _Galaxy
> Quest_ , the thermians don't understand fiction as a concept. It doesn't
> exist in their language, and thus they see all texts as historical
> documents.

Yes, "whale" is industry slang/jargon for a high spending account. It is also
_fiction_ that was made up by the gambling industry. As such, the term doesn't
have any intrinsic meaning; it gains meaning from how it's used. Using a made-
up definition as if it had a specific intrinsic meaning doesn't justify bad
behavior, but it does revel some of the speaker's ethics.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk)

~~~
Dirlewanger
You're looking into it way too much. This has happened every single time the
term "whale" has been used in any article pertaining to gambling in the past
couple years. This has nothing to do with ethics. Every industry has its
overloaded words/phrases that outsiders would be confused upon first hearing.
This is why context is of paramount importance (something that's often lost in
mediums that are ripe for hot takes, like Twitter).

Don't try to turn this into something it's not.

------
askafriend
This outrage culture is getting to be a bit much.

Anyone who's worked in gaming knows that "Whale" is a term to refer to high
spenders that are several deviations from the norm.

A 1-year old racked up $10k in bills on a game where people normally spend
$30? Whale. Period.

That's not unreasonable at all because the 1-yr old is in-fact a high spender
several deviations from the norm.

Does any of this mean the game was explicitly marketed to 1-year olds? No.

Is it possible that the parent racked up the $10k in bills and blamed it on
their kid? Entirely.

Have at it HN.

~~~
pcnix
It reveals the attitude that pervades among these companies towards children
that have been duped into spending via dark patterns and addictive games.

You're making an argument that since the word is consistent, everything is
fine and dandy, but the meaning of the word hardly changes the situation here.
Not everything is about outrage, there are legit disturbing points this
article makes.

~~~
falcolas
Forget for a moment that they're calling children whales.

They've normalized calling _people_ whales (and dolphins and krakens and...).
They've dehumanized their clients; made it easier to not feel concerned that
people are dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on intentionally
addictive video games.

~~~
kempbellt
Most high-dollar industries have clients that are referred to as whales
(gambling, forex, stock exchanges, crypto markets). Facebook didn't normalize
it. It's a term that has been use for years.

The fact that the word "children" part of the discussion is a side-note.
They're high-dollar spenders (whales).

I don't understand the outrage about the term "whale" here.

I do understand outrage about the targeting of underage gamers though.

~~~
falcolas
> Most high-dollar industries have clients that are referred to as whales
> (gambling, forex, stock exchanges, crypto markets).

And that makes it OK to refer to people (often those with addiction problems)
spending money they don't have on videogames as whales? To target them
explicitly with psychological tactics to get them to spend even more money?

I disagree. It's dehumanization. It's morally wrong. Am I in a bubble for
thinking such actions are wrong, or are others justifying their own immoral
behavior in thinking "well, it's their fault for playing the games and
spending the money"?

~~~
kempbellt
Who are you disagreeing with? I never said it was "okay". I just explained the
term. Check it out:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_roller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_roller)

Facebook, by nature, is a dehumanizing company. They have over 1 billion user
accounts...

As someone who works for a software company, I have never considered it my
responsibility to check whether a user is "spending money they don't have" on
my product. How is that tenable?

I've also never targeted underage users - before you throw me under that bus
for no reason, as well..

------
option
The only Facebook “thing” my daughters are getting (until they are independent
enough to decide for themselves) is PyTorch.

~~~
abbh62
React isnt a terrible thing either.

~~~
pier25
Or GraphQL

~~~
paulbr
Or OSQuery

------
icedchai
So the parents are the real "whales." The kids are just having fun.

------
Insanity
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?

~~~
babuskov
Yes. You can go into settings and remove it easily though.

~~~
Complexicate
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.

~~~
babuskov
> 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.

------
mxfh
If even the developers of highly sucessful games come to the conclusion that
whaling is basically exploiting a few psychologiaclly gameable people against
their best interest. Even worse if happening with minors. Not all companies
are in the position to address that but we should applaud the ones that do:

[https://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php](https://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15737008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15737008)

In the long term, only extending and enforcing retail restrictions and
legislation to the digital markets are the way to stem this ethically abusive
behaviour at least when it comes to children.

------
TheRealPomax
No it didn't, but hey clickbait's fun, right?

------
ishan1121
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

------
IdontRememberIt
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.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
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.

But hey, free babysitter!!

------
throwawaysea
“Whales” is a common industry term for a high spending account.

~~~
anonymousab
A common dehumanizing term. You can understand why people take offense to that
being applied to children.

~~~
throwawaysea
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.

------
wuliwong
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.

------
throwaway98121
Not sure what these articles are trying to get at. Honestly we have some
article against Facebook, Apple, and Amazon just about every day from some
news outlet claiming the company is so horrible or terrible. I’m inclined to
think this fake social justice focus is driven by big tech eating the media’s
ad revenues.

------
cityzen
The irony of this is that there is another group of people that "lol" at
Facebook employees and call them whales as well. Just because you make a lot
of money at a multinational advertising firm (lazy win) doesn't mean you're
the smartest person in the room. lol indeed!

------
darepublic
In poker whales are rich unskilled players who drop a lot of money on the
table

------
honksillet
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?

~~~
50656E6973
Highly doubtful that could be detected.

Here's some interesting research on that topic

[https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...](https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock_puppets_in_rnetsec_last_year_and_are/)

------
detaro
source discussed previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823)

------
duxup
Wouldn't this fall under all those rules about tracking children / those
notices on kids sites that ask someone's age so they can stop tracking them?

------
caiobegotti
I have grown so accustomed to Facebook scandals every other day that I think
have become desensitized to these kinds of news :-(

------
moistoreos
This outrage is ridiculous when compared to mobile micro-transactions. Get off
your high horses.

------
fxfan
I thought whale was a term used by far-right for fat people like Amy Schumer
and Lena Dunham?

~~~
steveklabnik
Completely different context. You're not wrong, but the usages are not
connected.

------
mkio
Doing customer support for one of the big app stores, you will encounter
adults spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on play-to-win in-app
purchases and subsequently blaming it on their child to get a refund on a
daily basis.

------
wufufufu
At YouTube they must be called "gold mines" then.

------
pbhjpbhj
Isn't 13 the minimum age for Facebook users?

------
EGreg
I had anarcho capitalists tell me all they want from the government is
enforcing contracts. Being a developer and mathematician I brought up edge
cases right away: can a five year old sell themselves into slavery for a
lollipop? I was kidding, but if you extrapolate, this comes close. Thankfully
our society doesn’t let kids incur debts like that.

Dark patterns and contracts of adhesion make the idea of “personal
responsibility” in contracting a bit quaint. That’s also why smart contracts
may have problems in the real world - in the real world we have forgiveness
and mitigating arguments.

Thanks to Privacy.com we can actually have some personal responsibility.

------
JVIDEL
Is this 2011? How is this news?

------
_RPM
Zuckerberg is so full of crap. He’s still the same creepy person he was in
college, but now he has a money printing machine.

~~~
wmeredith
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...](https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-tour-
hasnt-fixed-facebook/)

Related note: when my 3-year-old says he's sorry, but keeps punching his
sister, we put him in time out.

------
honkycat
How do you justify working for facebook at this point? Between stealing money
from children, selling and abusing your user's data, and allowing your users
to invite a literal genocide, where does the "good" come from?

------
rollulus
Facebook. Yes, they are evil. Most of us always knew. But this flood of news
items lately, isn't this just mass hysteria?

~~~
ardy42
> Facebook. Yes, they are evil. Most of us always knew. But this flood of news
> items lately, isn't this just mass hysteria?

If Facebook is "evil," then _not_ having a flood of news items is just giving
them a pass on their behavior.

------
babuskov
> asks their parents for their credit card info

Are parents really that stupid to tell them?

~~~
TwoNineA
No kid would ever go through mom's wallet without asking right?

~~~
babuskov
There's a difference between "asking" and "going through wallet". They should
put "going through the wallet" then and not "asking".

------
chris_wot
What the hell is wrong with an employee of Facebook who laughs at a kid who
wracks up thousands of dollars accidentally on their parent's credit card?

What sort of mentality is going on at Facebook where this can be seen as
acceptable not to refund them?

~~~
seeker61
It's probably part of their metrics and counts against them come review time.
Just a guess.

