Lawsuit Reveals How Facebook Profited Off Confused Children: Report (salon.com)

Documents outlining how Facebook profited off children are expected to be made public soon, according to Reveal News of the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), who requested the documents. From a report: In a report about the trove of previously-sealed documents, Reveal News explains that Facebook has previously faced lawsuits for failing to refund charges made by children playing games on Facebook. According to Reveal, the children did not know that their parent's credit card was stored on the platform when they clicked "buy," and in some cases, hundreds or even thousands of dollars were spent. In one case, the plaintiff, who is a child, spent several hundreds of dollars in just a few weeks. According to the report, more documents show "widespread confusion by children and their parents, who didn't understand Facebook continued to charge them as they played games."

Comments

Non-story: This happened on Google Play and iTunes

[Echoez]

This has happened on Google Play and the Apple iTunes store. This seems more like a story of the lack of imagination on the part of Google/Apple/Facebook when it came to making purchases on a device where the user is a registered adult. As much as I hate Facebook, this isn't a unique problem to them. My guess is that right now, similar situations happen with the Nintendo Switch store, Xbox, PS4 and others. The real fault lies in a combination of the parents not monitoring or securing their phones, and the original settings that allowed you to save a password for those stores and not require it upon each purchase. Facebook is guilty of many many things, but this seems overhyped.

Game on Facebook, charged through Facebook

[SuperKendall]

Why does Facebook have anyone's credit card on file in the first place?

If you read the first part of the article (ahem), it says:

The child, referred to as âoeI.B.â in the case, did not know the social media giant had stored his momâ(TM)s payment information. As he continued to play the game, Ninja Saga, Facebook continued to charge his momâ(TM)s credit card, racking up several hundred dollars in just a few weeks.

But unlike iOS or Android, where often kids overcharging without parents knowing about it and they get refunded, Facebook was apparently a lot less lenient about refunds.