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Comment by Ajedi32 | Hacker News Reader

Where in this article (besides the headline) does it say Facebook "Referred to Kids as Young as Five as “Whales”"?

The article does say "the average age of Angry Birds players on Facebook was five years old" but includes no evidence of Facebook calling five year olds "whales".

It also includes a separate recorded incident (chat logs) where two Facebook employees referred to a 15-year old as a "whale" and refused a refund, but 15 is not 5.

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>The Reveal reports that in one of the unsealed documents, two Facebook employees are recorded discussing whether or not to refund a child—whom they refer to as a "whale"—who racked up $6,545 in charges from a Facebook game.

I believe it was in paragraph 4.

> discussing whether or not to refund a child—whom they refer to as a "whale"—who racked up $6,545 in charges from a Facebook game

I have a hard time understanding how there could be any discussion at all. It seems very clear to me that you refund. What kind of people are working at Facebook?

If that were standard policy then parents might get the idea to let their kids just spend whatever they want on FB games knowing it'll just get refunded, effectively scamming app developers.

Which might lead to fewer micro-transactions in games marketed to kids? I'm okay with that.

In most legal systems contracts/transactions with minors are void to begin with and not enforcable. It's beyond me, why transactions beyond a limited monthly allowance are even possible, if the game is clearly aimed at minors.

The burden of checking age for each transaction should be with the seller, as it is enforced in retail. If the seller doesnt check for proof, then the transaction should be trivially refundable at least.

Agreed with you there. The real solution is to prevent them from happening in the first place, but I guess a refund policy which is very favourable for the player could help encourage that.

The app developers that are selling microtransactions to children? I’m not sure I’m supposed to feel pity. Even if they weren’t sold to kids, if every such game disappeared off of the app stores tomorrow, I would be more happy than upset.

This software exists solely to manipulate irrational gambling tendencies.

This seems like a feature, not a bug. If developers know that tricking or coercing kids into IAPs will not profit them, they will stop doing so.

And even putting the kid issue aside, anything that discourages repeated-purchase IAPs is itself a net benefit to gaming and app development.

Some FB games have thousands of whale players who spend over $1k per month. Not all of those purchases are obvious mistakes or instances of children not knowing what they are doing. It makes sense that they would review these purchases before refunding them. If they didn't they would potentially lose millions in revenue.

That's a lot different than what I got from the headline, which to me implied that they were regularly categorizing children as "whales" (high spenders) based on their age and susceptibility to marketing. In this case, that 5 year old is a whale. I doubt many are

In my opinion it should be ethically wrong to call a 5 years old a whale even if he/she is one.

> based on their age and susceptibility to marketing

When you realize that you are (by mistake or not) marketing to 5 years old that can spend thousands for addictive entertainment you should also realize that something is seriously wrong.

I think that there is some other concern about the general issue of clickbait or "fake news" that is entering this HN discussion.

I didn't get it at first but now looking at it it does appear that the title is a little misleading. It appears that the actual chat logs show them referring to a 15 year old as a whale. I'm totally with you that referring to a 5 year old as a whale is disturbing but if that isn't what the employees did then the headline of this article is incorrect.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the 15 year old and I'm not sure exactly what information they are working with. It does _seem_ like as long as the person is over 13 then it's policy for FB to charge them. Can a 13 year old even have a credit card?

Well, yes. I had credit card since I was 16 and I believe 13 was the lower limit (but that's not in US).

Any wallet that keeps on paying, regardless of its age, is a whale. The fact that facebook calls them whales is basically a convenient way to not have to question how the HELL five year olds have spending habits to begin with. Because I can guarantee you that's not because Facebook enables them. You know, what with the whole "5 year olds don't have jobs or bank accounts" and the like.

Terms like Whale are derogatory and dehumanizing words used to remove empathy from a conversation. When you refer to a "whale" you're not bringing humanity into the discussion and thus precluding it form influencing your decisions.

Alternatively, the term is intended to frame the developers of these applications as whalers trying capture some percentage of the public without their clear-headed consent.

Essentially the term is intended to refer to the developers of these applications as predators.

Even when the term is turned around it serves the same function. The distinction is that you agree with it's use in one context but perhaps not the other.

I'm not necessarily advocating for or against it's usage in either context, just pointing out the effect of using such a term has in terms of framing a conversation.

Facebook shouldn't have to factor "this person is 5" into their decisions at all. Minors, in countries where Facebook can rake in the dough, can't legally own or use creditcards. The term whale is derogatory, and is a super great subversion tactic: its presence distracts you form paying attention to the real problem, and instead tricks you into falling over the word itself, ignoring the real problem. And hey, looks like it got the job done.

I think you’re both right. It’s morally wrong to categorize a 5yo as a whale but it also appears to be an isolated case, so the headline is very inflammatory.

It's not morally wrong to categorize them. It's morally wrong to use them to take their family's money, though. (And maybe that's what being gotten at: a notion of these as regular and eager customers of free will, which is wrong.)

Yes, I have overreacted and read a bit more than what was written. I stand by my point, but the reality is more nuanced than how I portrayed.

Pretty sure I got worse than that in the playground at 5 years old.

Oh I'm sure it stopped at one 5 year old - said no one ever. Are you kidding me?

If you read the article it apparently was about a 15 year old not a 5 year old. The title is apparently misleading.

The child in that incident was 15, not 5.

How does one go from “two employees referred to...” to “Facebook referred to...”? it’s kind of like taking “Trump said” and changing it to “America said”, ewww. Is that even honest journalism? Writing an accurate headline isn’t hard.

I see what you are saying. It seems the article is conflating different things to make it appear worse unless I too am missing the quote where they refer to a 5 year old as a 'whale.'

Not on this one, but in the original where the story was first posted is a screenshot of said documents where in fact they refer to the kids as whales (iirc)

Mind linking to it? Otherwise this is just more hearsay on an already misleading click-bait title.

This[0] is from the organisation that got the files unsealed, and includes the "whale" reference at the beginning of the chat mentioned. Not sure it proves that 5-year-old were referred to in this way, but it does sound very casual in it's usage.

[0] - https://www.revealnews.org/blog/a-judge-unsealed-a-trove-of-...

Relevant part:

> Gillian: Would you refund this whale ticket? User is disputing ALL charges…

> Michael: What’s the users total lifetime spend?

> Gillian: It’s $6,545 – but card was just added on Sept. 2. They are disputing all of it I believe. That user looks underage as well. Well, maybe not under 13.

> Michael: Is the user writing in a parent, or is this user a 13ish year old

> Gillian: It’s a 13ish yr old. says its 15. looks a bit younger. she* not its. Lol.

> Michael: … I wouldn’t refund

> Gillian: Oh that’s fine. cool. agreed. just double checking

Clickbait headline makes it sound like they were trying to recruit whales.

Oh great. What a moral. 'oh that's fine. cool. agreed. just double checking'. Thanks god he's not a judge. These guys side Facebook versus a 13 year old kid, nice morality.

Is "these guys" supposed to be me? I'm not 'siding' Facebook. I think they should have forgiven the debt.

That you think a clearly misleading headline is a matter of 'sides' is worrying.

These guys => 2 guys in your transcribed conversation. I'm talking about the conversation.

What's worrying is a person deciding to not refund a 13-15 year old kid that I'm pretty sure doesn't know how many money has spent on games.

Fair enough. They’re Facebook employees - them "siding with" their own company doesn't quite seem like the right way to describe this - but I'm glad you're not talking about me and thanks for the clarification.

Thank you for doing your part to protect us from clickbait while Facebook ... what was it they were doing again?

The facts should stand on their own. If one feels it necessary to take the facts and "dress them up", it most certainly devalues the argument when it comes out that someone's been telling half-truths.

So, yeah, it kinda matters that we not let such sloppiness slide.

Agreed. Hyperbole is something we all fall victim to sometimes, but it is something we should fight against. Be exact as possible, even if huuuge sounds better.

In this case it is beyond hyperbole. I would say the title is just inaccurate.

> but 15 is not 5.

What is the relevant difference in this context?

A 15 year old could be working in many places - probably at least has a functional understanding of value for money based on past experiences, a 5 year old almost certainly doesn't.

A child is a child.

Which, unfortunately, doesn't mean anything. Someone can have a full time job at 15 on this planet, earn a living wage, have a bank account, and for all intents and purposes be financially independent. A five year old pretty universally cannot.

There is still a huge difference between 5 and 15. I am not saying the 15yo "got what they deserved" by any means, I'm just saying that it doesn't help anyone to pretend that they are developmentally identical. Laws may be descrete but morality is surely continuous.

A 15 year old likely makes some of their own financial decisions, occasionally, or even often, buys their own food, entertainment, etc. 15 year olds buy game consoles, computers and games all the time.

Why do we try children as adults for certain crimes?

It’s just a magic line. 17? No consequences. 18? Full adult.

Because prosecutors sometimes care more about being seen as tough on crime and not compassionate towards young kids who do stupid things at an age where they're not blessed with an abundance of restraint and good decision making skills?

Because it's cheaper and more fair to set an arbitrary limit and apply it across the board than to try to evaluate each offender's maturity level individually.

It’s just a magic line. 17? No consequences. 18? Full adult.

Complete fiction. Minors being tried as adults happens all the time. It all depends on how heinous the crime is.

I was missing a ? Mark in there. Other two posters figured it out. Will edit for you.

Age matters

> Alcohol brand starts marketing campaign targeting 18 year olds

> Alcohol brand starts marketing campaign targeting 5 year olds

When I was 15 I spent $3,500 on a video game console, controllers, Xbox live, halo, halo map packs, etc. When I was 5 I spent $1 on gum.

Was it your money? Was it really your decision as to whether you could spend it?

Yeah my money, my decision. I had around $6k of bar mitzvah money and savings from working as a teaching assistant and summer jobs. I spent just over half on video games during high school and related costs. I made it all back the summer after high school as a tech intern and then spent it all going out drinking first year in university.

It's important because the article headline is a bit clickbaity. It's true that Facebook called children "whales" but not "as young as 5", since the linked chat transcript in the article mentions a 15-year old child.

Legally there is none. Both are considered minors, not capable of giving informed consent for (in many US states) marriage, employment, military service, voting, driving, or opening a bank account independently. And it's not like Facebook deserves rebuke for exploiting 5-year-olds and a Nobel Prize for exploiting 15-year-olds. But it's also true that the content of the article doesn't support the headline.

Edit: Even the math is wrong. If they're asserting that everyone's eligible to be called a "whale" who plays Angry Birds, and that the average age of an Angry Birds player is 5, then the minimum age ("as young as") of a whale isn't 5, it's less than 5.

Could you expand on what you mean by "relevant difference?"

Good catch. They said 15 in the chat. The article was sloppily written.

Whale is industry term for player that gives a lot of money. If any of those 5 years old ended up paying a lot of money, he would be called whale.

Through, given context it is less of scandal.

I’m sure the the op knows this. The point that was made is that the article’s title stated that FB staff is using that term to describe children. The article doesn’t actually support the claim it makes in the title.

It's clear however that the article had an agenda.

It's also a bit misleading to call 2 employees out of over 25,000 "Facebook."

I worked on the recommenders for an e-commerce site. We deliberately renamed called those customers "platinum level", because of the optics.

I’m not sure I agree it’s less of a scandal in that case.

If you’re dealing with a service that could potentially psychologically manipulate children, it’s on you to go the extra mile to separate metrics or risk factors related to that possibility and distinguish it from a lumped population.

If Facebook internally referred to high spenders as “whales” in an aggregate manner, and had not already done due diligence to distinguish & guard against this being applied to young children, that’s already maximally severe. Had they gone even further and intentionally applied the term to children, it would just be maximally severe from an ethical standpoint rather than an incompetence / negligence standpoint.

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