Mobile games are a very common form of entertainment for young children. All it takes is a simple game, full of colors and sounds, and more than one little one can be completely captivated. But these days, there's one element to consider: in-app purchases.
Thousands of euros spent by a child
Many games require small payments to acquire abilities, tokens to continue playing, or simple decorative items, and ultimately, it all adds up to a credit card payment that requires adult supervision . This process, fairly well-controlled on iOS and Android, seems to have caused quite a few problems for Facebook users a few years ago, as those who played many of the games integrated into the social network were surprised to find large sums of money charged.
Many of these cases involving parents who felt scammed went to court, and now, a company in charge of uncovering old archived cases that may be of public interest ( Reveal ), is taking charge of shedding light on all these claims to demonstrate that Facebook acted in bad faith with the majority of those affected.
The file with all the related documents will be released in a few days after obtaining the approval of a federal court, but in the meantime, they have managed to publish some pages of the file in which you can see some examples like the following.
It all goes back to 2012, when a boy, identified only by the initials IB , asked his mother to make a $20 payment for one of the games he was playing. The mother agreed, paid the amount using her credit card information, and continued letting the boy play for the next few days. The shock came when a Facebook bill for hundreds of dollars arrived, something that surprised both the boy and his mother, since they had only requested a $20 purchase. Where did they go wrong?
The whale
Apparently, the boy believed that all the purchases he continued to make on the app were being made with virtual currency and not with his mother's credit card, since the app never asked for the information again. Because it didn't require the credit card , the boy thought it was all part of the game, hence the confusion, both for him and other affected children. The mother requested a refund from Facebook , but the tech giant refused. And that's when the whole dispute began.
There are many more cases like this, and it seems Facebook took quite a while to address the issue, as most users were also surprised by the sudden payments. To make matters worse, the files contain conversations between Facebook employees, many of which demonstrate the level of respect they showed towards users. In one of them, they even discuss a child who spent over $6.000 using the term "whale ," a term commonly used in casinos to describe players who squander large sums of money. The revealed conversation reads:
Gillian: Would you refund this ticket from a whale? The user is disputing ALL charges...
Michael: What is the total spend on user history?
Gillian: It's $6.545, but the card was added on September 2. I think they are fighting over everything. That user also appears to be a minor. Well, maybe he's not under 13.
As you can imagine, if they were using such terms internally, there's no doubt that the tech giant had little concern for preventing these problems, and the suspicions that the methods used were designed to confuse and exploit the innocence of children are quite telling. More shocking cases could be revealed in the coming days, although the agreement reached for their publication stipulates that some records will remain sealed to avoid causing further damage to the social media giant, since, according to the judge who granted permission for their release, it would not serve the public interest. We'll see how this all plays out.