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Comment by wuliwong | Hacker News Reader

>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.

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> 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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