Leaked Facebook Docs Depict Kids as 'Untapped' Wealth | Hacker News Reader

Leaked Facebook Docs Depict Kids as 'Untapped' Wealth

gizmodo.com

59 pointsweare13813 comments

I had an interview with FB last year for a Sr. Data Scientist role. The technical interview asked the following question (paraphrasing):

Tweens and teens view FB as a platform for their parents. How can we test this statement? And if this statement is true, how do we grow into this market and test that they are engaging with the platform?

I thought the question was odd thinking they could have provided a better hypothetical than focusing on getting more teens to use FB. Then I remembered why I don't have a FB account and deemed this probably wasn't hypothetical. I then told myself no paycheck is worth working on such problems.

Seems I wasn't far off in my assumptions.

Just as targeting and selling alcohol, cigs and MJ to juveniles is illegal, the same should be for certain services like FB and other things that can negatively affect (mental) health.

Tobacco and MJ growers could no doubt think of tweens as untapped markets too (looking at mr Cool Camel there).

> One such document is said to refer to children between the ages of 10 and 12 (“tweens”) as a “valuable but untapped audience.” Another suggests “leveraging playdates” as means to drive Facebook’s “growth.”

Oh come on, really? I really hope this is false and a smear piece. Otherwise, I have no idea how to respond to this reasonably.

Here's the quote from the report written by the Facebook researcher: "Is there a way to leverage playdates to drive word of hand/growth among kids?"

https://twitter.com/drewharwell/status/1442912550815821824

How is this surprising or offensive? Granted, minors are on the internet. This has been true for decades now. They are segments of the audience. FB is going to last until these kids are adults.

Everyone knows that FB has some utility as long as it remains at a minimum popularity. As it's obvious that these audience segments age out (eg AOL's audience) ofc there is a compelling reason to strategize on how to stave that off.

Why not have documentation about how children are NOT using FB? Seems as utterly innocuous to me as the fast food chain studies or EA/Blizzard looking for why people don't like Heroes of the Storm.

Have you figured out yet why Zuckerburg won't let his own kids use any of his products?

>“Congresswoman, My daughters are five and three and they do not use our products. Actually that is not exactly true my eldest daughter, Max, I let use Messenger Kids sometimes to message her cousins,” said Mr Zuckerberg.

Get those phones out of your kids hands. Socially, they are growing up on a diet of sugar.

I wonder if Facebook/Instagrams sudden interest in content for children has anything to do with the unexpected popularity of youtube childrens videos.

I don’t think that sort of thing translates very well to a platform like instagram. Youtube has autoplay and suggested videos. I cant imagine a child would want to scroll a feed all day.

Here's the thing. None of this matters if the parents use FB or Instagram. It won't matter if those parents read these articles and try to prevent their kids from using these services. Kids follow what their parents model.

Imagine what kind of a gross person put those docs together. Vile.

I don't have to imagine. I work with such people. You work with such people. Such people post regularly on HN. They're endemic to the tech industry. Ward Churchill calls such people "little Eichmanns". They just follow orders without giving any thought to the uses to which their work will be put. They only care about their careers; ethics are above their pay grade.

This doesn't seem that crazy to me? I think Facebook is probably bad for these kids, but obviously that's not going to be facebooks perspective, and of course they are going to want to go after target demographics they don't have.

It's more about it being immoral than it being crazy.

It's crazy because facebook is made of people, and most folks that don't spend time plumbing the depraved depths of US digital companies just don't connect with the fact that these people are all practicing the "ich habe es nicht gewusst" of current day.

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