Facebook has abolished guarantees to prevent children from spending money in Facebook games

Facebook is accused of favoring excessive spending by minors in free games on Facebook, and internal documents now show that the company has chosen not to put in place security measures that would have prevented children from without knowing the money from their parents in games. .

According to Reveal of the Center for Investigative Reporting, court documents containing memos, strategies, and emails internal to Facebook show that Facebook employees have been knowingly exploiting the spending habits of children who play free games and, in some cases refused to pay back their parents. who have become aware of their children's expenses.

This is a troubling affair, but game developers should pay particular attention to this, as the conversation about ethical monetization, especially when children are involved, is not likely to end at some point.

You will find a complete overview of the particularly disturbing elements of what has been published on the Reveal website, including links to published documents and excerpts of conversations between Facebook and the developers of the games in question.

Some of these documents describe children as "whales". The term generally used refers to the biggest spenders of the base of players of a free game. In many cases, the excessive spending of minors was caused by the fact that children did not realize that they were spending real money by buying goodies and currency in the game, or that the Parents do not know that their credit card information had been stored in the games that their children use. playing.

According to internal documents, a team of Facebook employees set out to solve the problem and finally developed a system that would require players to re-enter certain credit card information to verify that the expenses were intentional and authorized by the owner of the card. The change had the effect of reducing credit card and refund requests from unhappy parents, but it was not implemented, lest it affect revenue.

"If we built risk models to reduce it, we would probably block the good ones [total purchase value], "Said a Facebook employee in the unsealed documents.

Another anecdote shared by the Reveal News report tells a conversation between angry Birds Developers Rovio and Facebook reported that 5 to 10% of in-game transactions were repaid. "It sounds pretty high, but it could be normal for Facebook gaming," wrote the Rovio employee.

In a study that aimed to explain the high reimbursement rate, Facebook found that 93% of these repayments were due to parents not knowing that the game debited their credit card, mainly because the parents "did not think that the Child would be allowed to buy anything without their pbadword or prior permission. "