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

Posted by msmash on from the race-to-the-bottom dept.

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."

3 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Fuckerberg is evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Both Facebook and Google live by surreptitiously collecting data on you - data that you wouldn't tell them - and then selling it.

    That's evil.

  2. Null AND Void by sdinfoserv · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I believe from the very beginning, Facebook's business social model was and continues to be mostly illegal. In the US, minors can't sign contracts. Any contract with a minor is considered 'null and void'. Therefore minors can not agree to any ELU (end user license agreement). Thus any data collect by the activity of a minor is illegally obtained.

    1. Re:Null AND Void by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I believe from the very beginning, Facebook's business social model was and continues to be mostly illegal. In the US, minors can't sign contracts. Any contract with a minor is considered 'null and void'. Therefore minors can not agree to any ELU (end user license agreement). Thus any data collect by the activity of a minor is illegally obtained.

      This is "stupidly wrong and wouldn't survive the first page of search results if you bothered to check before making the claim."

      In the US, minors can enter into contracts. By signing them. However, contract terms can't generally be enforced against minors. But they are still financially responsible for any goods or services they receive under the contract.

      The net result is that minors can cancel a contract at any time, regardless of the details of the contract, and they don't owe you anything at all if they return the goods, or if the service wasn't rendered for whatever reason including that their parents didn't let them finish doing it. So it is a really bad idea to engage in contracts with minors.

      And unless you're a lawyer, never move forwards to "thus." Those will always be wrong. Find out what lawyers say about it, choose one of those things, and repeat it. That's the only way to move from "words about the law" to "implications thereof."