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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."

5 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. Non-story: This happened on Google Play and iTunes by Echoez · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  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."

  3. Game on Facebook, charged through Facebook by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  4. Re:Non-story: This happened on Google Play and iTu by Solandri · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's not the parents' fault. These companies were slow to add the concept of child accounts - accounts which had access to the apps purchased by the main account, but which had fewer privileges (including no purchase privilege). As a result, if you as a parent wanted to buy an app for your child's device, you had two choices. Either buy them on your account, and use your account on your child's device. Or buy them on your child's account (add your credit card info to their account). Both solutions end up with the child's device having access to purchase permission.

    To be fair, the companies added the ability to require a passcode to be punched in before a purchase would go through. But then as you say, they also gave you the option to have the device remember the passcode so you wouldn't have to punch it in all the time.

    Given that children are necessary for the species to survive, the proper solution is to allow child accounts. These are accounts which have access to apps purchased by the parent account, but which have no purchase privileges themselves. I can understand why the companies are reluctant to do it though - it means you can let your friends use the apps you buy by setting them up with a child account. Google added this capability a few years back (dunno about Facebook or Apple), but hasn't publicized it well. So many parents continue to use their main account on their children' devices.