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Comment by askafriend | Hacker News Reader

This outrage culture is getting to be a bit much.

Anyone who's worked in gaming knows that "Whale" is a term to refer to high spenders that are several deviations from the norm.

A 1-year old racked up $10k in bills on a game where people normally spend $30? Whale. Period.

That's not unreasonable at all because the 1-yr old is in-fact a high spender several deviations from the norm.

Does any of this mean the game was explicitly marketed to 1-year olds? No.

Is it possible that the parent racked up the $10k in bills and blamed it on their kid? Entirely.

Have at it HN.

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It reveals the attitude that pervades among these companies towards children that have been duped into spending via dark patterns and addictive games.

You're making an argument that since the word is consistent, everything is fine and dandy, but the meaning of the word hardly changes the situation here. Not everything is about outrage, there are legit disturbing points this article makes.

Forget for a moment that they're calling children whales.

They've normalized calling people whales (and dolphins and krakens and...). They've dehumanized their clients; made it easier to not feel concerned that people are dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on intentionally addictive video games.

Most high-dollar industries have clients that are referred to as whales (gambling, forex, stock exchanges, crypto markets). Facebook didn't normalize it. It's a term that has been use for years.

The fact that the word "children" part of the discussion is a side-note. They're high-dollar spenders (whales).

I don't understand the outrage about the term "whale" here.

I do understand outrage about the targeting of underage gamers though.

You are justifying widespread use of a dehumanizing term by its widespread use. I think, you should revisit your line of reasoning, especially from a historical perspective concerning other terms certain groups were called by.

While whale does not carry a very offensive undertone when you're characterizing a group falling victim to some scheme, it is certainly insulting and dehumanizing when they are your targets, especially when calling individuals as such.

I think you should revisit your emotional reasoning. I explained a term. Your vague comment about "certain groups" names, doesn't add anything to the conversation, nor address anything that I said.

My reasoning is fine. I don't like Facebook, and I don't recommend it, because it is dehumanizing, by nature.

Assume less. It makes for better conversation..

They are applying a term that originally describes an adult, and in this context the term "whale" is very clearly connected to several aspects of being an adult, onto a child. Now any descriptive term means the speaker considers there is some sort of equality between all the objects they describe with the term.

Or in other words, calling a child a "whale" implies they think it is perfectly fine that children are high stakes gamblers, because this is the value judgement that comes with the term "whale".

Or maybe they called the user a whale, because as a software engineer, the user is simply a "number on a screen", and that this "number", is spending 100x more $ than all of the other "numbers" (aka, users). So you might refer to that "number" as a whale, by comparison.

If they are knowingly _targeting_ underage users, I do not condone that at all, and it should be addressed. Stop with the "outrage" about the term "whale". It doesn't add to the conversation

> Most high-dollar industries have clients that are referred to as whales (gambling, forex, stock exchanges, crypto markets).

And that makes it OK to refer to people (often those with addiction problems) spending money they don't have on videogames as whales? To target them explicitly with psychological tactics to get them to spend even more money?

I disagree. It's dehumanization. It's morally wrong. Am I in a bubble for thinking such actions are wrong, or are others justifying their own immoral behavior in thinking "well, it's their fault for playing the games and spending the money"?

Who are you disagreeing with? I never said it was "okay". I just explained the term. Check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_roller

Facebook, by nature, is a dehumanizing company. They have over 1 billion user accounts...

As someone who works for a software company, I have never considered it my responsibility to check whether a user is "spending money they don't have" on my product. How is that tenable?

I've also never targeted underage users - before you throw me under that bus for no reason, as well..

normalized calling people whales

You live in a weird and not particularly healthy bubble. In every industry I've ever worked in that has lots of clients but derives most revenue from the big fish, "whale" is the common and standard term. It's not demeaning and the whales are generally proud of their status.

If you need some pop culture orientation, watch just about any TV show set in Las Vegas.

Right, the fact that children are affected by all of the mess on the internet is the last line of defense, the last chance to complain, since adults are fair game.

All of us are rational actors who should dicuss EULAs with their lawyers and fully understand and evaluate the consequences of tracking and surveillance.

> It reveals the attitude that pervades among these companies towards children that have been duped into spending via dark patterns and addictive games.

All video games are addicting. To a kid's perspective, they're just playing a regular game.

Uh, I guess there is always someone out there that can get addicted to your game, but to call Myst addicting is a bit weird.

You've stretched the word "addicting" pretty far when you use it to put an equality between both "Spec Ops: the line" and "Candy crush saga".

Some games are more addicting than others, but I don't see how Candy Crush Saga can be worse for a child than Bejeweled, for example.

Whale is a gambling term. Which shows exactly what was happening here, Facebook (and yes, a lot of the gaming industry) provides gambling to kids. It should be illegal. And no, you won't shame me into not being outraged by it.

Yeah I'm sure the employee in question used the term explicitly because he or she gets off on corrupting 5 yr old brains as a hobby.

It might have been a quick reaction to the exorbitant expenditure and it was the first word that occurred to the employee because it's a common term and they've dealt with 50 other cases that day.

>This outrage culture is getting to be a bit much.

[HN user proceeds to post his outrage at outrage culture]

That’s awesome, reminds me of the movie PCU, where the students protest protesting.

I think you are misinterpreting the backlash with the article and what's been happening overall.

> Facebook wouldn't refund large purchases made by underage gamers. (Regardless of if they are 1 years old)

Need more be said?

My interpretation of all these stories coming out on the news this past year is the creation of a narrative (you could also say exposing) of the reality of Facebook's corporate culture. One that lacks empathy towards its users and society overall, and instead is focused solely on the ends of user engagement, data collection, and revenue generation plowed with a blind following of the word of "Zuck". This all regardless of the means to get there.

Given the prominence of FB's products in so many people's lives, I don't think the outrage is misplaced.

It doesn’t matter if it was marketed to them or not. They have both a moral and legal duty of care to protect children.

Legally the parents consented to the charges, but it’s clear from the leaked documents Facebook knew parents thought it was a one time charge not something their kid could spend without limits.

Of course they have a duty to protect children or at the very least not knowingly market to children.

But the complaint here is that the headline implies that it means something that they used the term whale. It doesn't.

Whales are just a segment of customer. And incidentally, there are real, legit whales. There are a lot of rich people in the world who willingly throw money at luxury items like exotic cars, expensive vacations, lavish parties, etc. And some of those people like to play video games too and are totally content spending $500 or $5,000 on coins and junk for a game.

Basically there are two ways to interpret this story. One of them has Facebook salivating while asking themselves, "Is this kid a whale?" The other interpretation has Facebook asking themselves with some degree of concern, "Is this whale a kid?"

Presumably if they were using an industry term to categorize these young children they were definitely aware of what they were doing. That implies a level of malice on their part and is what I believe people are actually outraged about, not simply the usage of the term.

It's not unjustified "outrage culture". It's Facebook's actual outrageous, egregious behavior, repeated over and over again, that is getting to be too much.

> Have at it HN.

Sure thing. COPPA.

https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-...

If they knew these patrons were as young as five and didn't have informed consent from their parents, they're in deep.

Counterpoint: how you contextually frame something says something about how you value it. Facebook, by calling young kids “whales” (a term usually reserved for corporate arenas and large clients) objectified what was actually happening such that they could wipe their conscience clean of the badness of it.

Have at it, askafriend.

> This outrage culture is getting to be a bit much.

Kids under 2 aren't supposed to be getting any screen time, except possibly to talk with their parents or grandparents on Skype/Hangouts/Facetime. If people are outraged about 1-year-olds racking up enormous gambling debts, then they're not nearly outraged enough since for every 1 kid who does that there needs to be thousands or tens of thousands using the app in the first place.

Related: "Is there an actual Facebook crisis, or media narrative about Facebook crisis?"

https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo...

So sick of seeing this junk on HN every day.

You, and the other facebook [ex-]employees in this discussion, have an ethical responsibility to disclose that you've worked at the company being criticized.

Moreover the Facebook requires that its users be above 13+ to use it, but these kids/their parents are in violation of that.

I do think the outrage culture as found in Reddit, etc and most of main stream media are slowly creeping in to HN.

Now my automatic reaction to articles like this, any side that resorts to appeals to emotion in an argument, is trying to be manipulative.

@askafriend: You are totally missing the point. I am not saying you don’t have a point. Just that your point is completely irrelevant to the context and sentiment of the post. Just because you have a valid point from a domain perspective doesn’t mean it’s applicable to any and all discussions within a domain. Considering asking a friend on it :)

The parents probably won't even pay those bills. They'll just call the credit card company, dispute the charge, and tell them it must be an error. No individual generally sees those sorts of charges from Facebook.

I would like to see a source for this quantitative claim.

$100 on Facebook, sure. $1000, probably not. $10K, no way. The CC company is going to believe it is an error. It is wayyyyy out of line. No source is needed.

> "The parents probably won't even pay those bills."

If that were certain, then it's irrational for facebook to refuse the refund.

Of course, it's not certain. I said probably. There is a difference between FB giving a refund and a credit card dispute. The dispute may fail and they will be forced to pay , since the charges are technically legitimate. If Facebook simply refunds them, there is no chance of them paying. The rational thing for FB is to never refund them, take what you can get...

This is what you took away from this article?

The headline implies that "Whale" is used with explicit malicious intent towards young children. People are taking that and running with it, rather than discussing the details of the actual story which are far more nuanced.

The entire piece starts with a faulty, provocative implication that has no basis in reality.

But the optics aren't good

Completely agree with you sentiment. In the cryptocurrency world, a whale is referred to some that owns a lot of a cryptocurrency because they 'make a splash' in the ecosystem. Getting kind of tired seeing daily Facebook posts on HN

Everyone knows what whale means in the context of sales and marketing. I feel like this thread is missing the forest for the trees. It’s the immorality of trying to get young children hooked on gambling that people are angry about, not that they’re being equated to the mammal.

I'd argue it's bad parenting and lack of education. Don't parent's realize you can get notifications when ever there is a charge on a credit card? Why would you give your child who has no concept of financial responsibility a credit card?

Businesses will always try to profit maximize. Not stating what Facebook is doing is right or wrong because that's subjective depending from which perspective you look at it but the root of the problem is not Facebook itself; it's people using Facebook.

When Facebook exploits a child who has bad parents, there are two roots to the problem. If facebook thinks children with bad parents are fair game (they obviously do) then they are deeply immoral.

Define "deeply immoral". I'm sure we'll have different interpretations and so do many others (obviously). Completely disagree that there are two root problems. It's still one and that's the parents. Media and social companies are not obligated to tailor to bad parents.

I think you've been hitting the libertarian juice a bit too hard if you need somebody to explain why exploiting children is morally wrong.

Define "morally wrong". You're failing to understand that people with differing principles doesn't make yours any more 'correct'.

Getting mad at Facebook for allowing kids to perform in-app purchases is like getting mad at McDonalds for allowing kids to purchase junk food. Unless you of course think that McDonalds is "exploiting children" as well when parents take them in the restaurant, then we don't have much to debate here.

> Define "morally wrong".

Yeah, you hit that libertarian sauce way too hard. Stop worshiping money and relearn how to respect humans.

Thanks for sharing your perspective and beating around the bush.

Feel free to keep blaming corporations for bad parenting and lack of responsibility for their own children.

Would recommend that you start worshipping money yourself so you can buy yourself a better education. Maybe then you'll stop telling people how to live their lives in a way that tailors to ignorance.

Cheers.

Lots us are fed up with seeing almost daily posts about the dodgy behaviour that Facebook employees get up.

The solution would be for Facebook employees to stop doing this kind of thing on an almost daily basis.

If Facebook the corporation can't or won't control its behaviour because its first loyalty is to maximise shareholder value then it's up to various governments to get together and sort out some kind of regulation.

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