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Facebook Referred to Kids as Young as Five as “Whales” for Its Monetized Games
- danpalmer 8y agoThis feels like it should be "obviously illegal", in the same way that it's illegal to market casinos, or loans to children, and illegal to market fast food to children in many countries. Given this, the only reason this is able to happen is because it flew under the radar for some time and then governments take time to legislate. By the time it actually becomes illegal, there could have been years of exploitation. How do we solve this? Assuming that governments are slow moving (there can be benefits of this), and assuming that there will always be people with more flexible morals who will happily build these products, how do we create a society where this can't happen?
- VMG 8y ago> how do we create a society where this can't happen? An incidence of zero is a difficult number to reach in any category. Everything is about tradeoffs.
- smt88 8y ago> how do we create a society where this can't happen? FB employees can and should protest. I've gone as far as refusing to work for Facebook or any other adtech firm, but not everyone is privileged enough to make that choice.
- telchar 8y agoI would argue that everyone is privileged enough to make that choice. Who are these people whose only choice is FB or starve? Surely in this field anyone who can get hired there can get hired elsewhere.
- smt88 8y agoI'm not saying they'll starve, but I'm giving up nothing by avoiding adtech. That's not true for everyone. They may not starve, but they may make much less or give up the resume boost.
- josephv 8y agoI love the spirit of this comment: Facebook employees as poor pawns to be pitied. I share the sentiment as a corporate family-oriented programmer from a flyover state that has been heavily recruited by FANNGs. I don't like working for anyone, and being a teensy cog being ground up in a duct-taped together machine like that seems like torture.
- smt88 8y agoYou seem to have misunderstood the spirit of the comment and then projected your own notions onto it.
- rektomatic 8y agoYou have to have a focus on strong families. If the child has parents or guardians who are aware of what they're doing and will stop them from doing it then there wouldn't really be a problem in the first place at least with five year olds
- Spooky23 8y agoSo kids who lack strong families are left to the wind to be exploited? Really?
- fredley 8y agoThere will always be kids who don't get a strong family, whatever you do. You can certainly reduce this sort of thing (with adequate parental leave, financial parental support and broader societal compassion for parents (hard!)) but you can never reduce it to zero. Because these children are the most vulnerable to begin with, they are the reason protections are required in law against e.g. marketing gambling products and junk food to children.
- whatshisface 8y agoYou will also always get people targeting kids, even outside of the law. Reducing the number of kids without a family still might be a lot more effective than regulating the world into being as safe as an extended family (although both would be nice).
- fredley 8y agoYou still want the law to be there to go after the bad guys though. I agree any sensible solution will incorporate both approaches.
- skh 8y agoAre you sure it’s wise to put the onus solely on the parents? Some kids are born into families with crappy parents. Are they to be exploited at the whim of whatever corporate goal is out there due to their bad luck of having crappy parents? It’s more reasonable to say that parents ought to be on top of things and recognize that not all of them are. Thus it’s best to have other safeguards in place. Like make Facebook liable for its exploitive behavior.
- glenneroo 8y agoWhat about offering more perks/options for whistle-blowers? I suppose the financial gain of whistle-blowing something like this is rather low... while the person will likely be barred from working at a lot of places (referring to an article on the Frontpage here a few days ago).
- SpicyLemonZest 8y agoThe financial gain of whistle-blowing something like this is pretty comparable to the societal value of whistle-blowing something like this. One random Facebook employee (of unknown rank and seniority) called a kid a whale; that doesn't matter in the slightest beyond its impact on an existing story. We can't incentivize people to run to the media with every chat log that looks bad out of context.
- Nasrudith 8y agoReally I think what is needed for that are far more robust protection against blacklisting of whistleblowers - although the devil is in the details given the general difficulty of proving employment discrimination. If they couldn't keep their ethical fences up we would see far more impact from the same numbers of whistleblowers - criminals think they won't be caught.
- lordnacho 8y ago> How do we solve this? Assuming that governments are slow moving (there can be benefits of this), and assuming that there will always be people with more flexible morals who will happily build these products, how do we create a society where this can't happen? This is something that happens all the time in all sorts of industries. It's sort of the thing that happens with free markets, people try various things, some are positive and some are negative. So how do we not throw out the positives when mitigating the negatives? The answer is well known but imperfect. Open and public debate, journalistic investigation, political action.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoYou missed regulation, unless it's meant to be implied from political action. The others are mostly ineffectual when there's billions in profit and marketing against them.
- lordnacho 8y agoThat's what I meant. Political action can mean regulating, as in not allowing tobacco ads, or taxing as in sugar taxes on soft drinks, or banning, as with certain drugs. Or it can mean subsidising or other encouragement outside of basic market forces.
- onion2k 8y agohow do we create a society where this can't happen Don't hire developers who have worked for companies involved in these products. If you see Facebook on a resume, put it in the bin.
- shanghaiaway 8y agoPut it in the bin, write a blog post about it, submit the post to hn.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y agoMore likely to happen: write a blog post about it on Medium, submit the post to HN, continue with life as usual.
- SilasX 8y agoInterestingly, it's legal to market colleges to 16/17 year olds, which almost certainly now involves taking out big loans.
- s_dev 8y ago>how do we create a society where this can't happen? By compromising on some other value we hold dear. These things are always trade-offs. Exploiting kids for money will be something we don't permit but ultimately tolerate. We don't permit or tolerate accidental nuclear explosions as a contrasting example. We've create a society where that just doesn't happen or can't.
- emerongi 8y agoIs it illegal to market toys to kids? A kid can walk into a store and buy as much candy as they want. The problem is that usually they don't have a credit card in their hands.
- danpalmer 8y agoIt's illegal in many countries to market unhealthy food to kids, so while they can buy the candy, or ask to be bought it, kids TV channels for example won't have ads for them which limits the negative impact. You can market toys to kids, but most toys aren't harmful to their health, mental wellbeing, or financial state. Arguably many kids toys promote good health, wellbeing, educational material, etc.
- nwsm 8y agoWhat if it's a game that is good for mental development but has microtransactions, allowing them to unknowingly spend $1000s while also stimulating their brain?
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoGood mental development includes not being tricked in to spending other people's money, so I think such a game is impossible.
- rubidium 8y agoPractically speaking, if 8 year old walked into my store with their parents credit card, I wouldn't allow them to buy much more than a pack of gum.
- tyfon 8y agoIn my country, marketing to children is illegal period. They have no monetary concept. Coca-cola was recently found guilty of this in the "food industry self governing organ" in Norway [1]. This is where complaints go first and if Coca-cola continues it can result in fines and whatnot. They were using people from youtube channels that primarily makes videos for children in their own youtube channel videos. [1] https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nrk.no%2Fkultur%2Fcoke-tv-felt-for-reklame-rettet-mot-norske-barn-1.14366096 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&u=https%3...
- emerongi 8y agoWhat even qualifies as "marketing to children"? Can I not set up a tabloid with a lollipop on it?
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoWell in the UK, you may not advertise junk food to children. A tabloid aimed at adults could contain that ad for your lollipop. A comic, kid's magazine or website, or TV channel or kid's time slots may not. From my now very vague memory of childhood TV, most ads for toys and games came in the evening news and soaps slots. When the adults were around too. Junk food was still OK, so kid's tv ads were for comics, and sweets, and sugar, oops I mean cereal: Sugar Puffs, Ricicles, Frosties etc. I think it's a big mistake our regs on advertising toys to children have faded over the years. It's been shown time and again kids 12 and under can't understand commercial intent by ad industry research. So the real age may be higher.
- trimbo 8y ago> How do we solve this? I don't know, but it seems absolutely absurd that Facebook or anyone else gives someone a hard time about refunding thousands of dollars of virtual goods. Especially when you consider Nordstrom's or Costco's return policies for physical goods! I understand that you need to make a balance between easy refunds and running a business, but the COGS for a virtual good after development cost must be a fraction of a penny. Forcing parents to shell out thousands for their kids' actions in an online game is an insane policy. One would hope "the market will correct it", but maybe it does take legislation.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago> One would hope "the market will correct it" Puhleeze, I haven't heard any remotely viable way that any even halfway decent alternative to Facebook becomes possible. I see multiple posts a day bitching about the evils of FB, and then they come out yesterday with enormous revenue and user numbers. The only way FB will slow down is if they are trustbusted.
- gnode 8y ago> I haven't heard any remotely viable way that any even halfway decent alternative to Facebook becomes possible. Facebook is dominant in social media, but this is mobile gaming micro-payments. Google and Apple are also large in this space. That said, I've little confidence this oligopoly will do the right thing without regulation.
- dooglius 8y agoIt's called "fraud", and it is illegal in most if not all countries
- Chris_Chambers 8y agoThis is the parents’ faults. What kind of imbecile willfully gives Facebook permanent access to their credit card? Right now their bloodlines are being pruned in slow motion as their children accidentally destroy their own futures, and that’s a good thing because those children carry the same faulty genes that compel someone to enter their credit card information on Facebook. Don’t get in the way of Darwinian evolution in action, you’ll just further damage the gene pool. If you really, truly, sincerely want to stop big companies from frequently doing these “exploitative” things (even though, again, it’s a good thing because it encourages dangerously naive genetic trash to kill themselves off), the only actual solution would be labeled highly anti-semitic so I won’t even bother describing it.
- Insanity 8y agoSo essentially, when you used the credit card one time, facebook remembers it for future purchases and doesn't ask confirmation? Kind of like amazon's "one-click" option?
- TuringNYC 8y agoAnyone know if the credit card from Facebook "Causes" disaster relief donations are also saved as part of this one-confirm-use-many?
- babuskov 8y agoYes. You can go into settings and remove it easily though.
- Insanity 8y agoIn that case, I hope they at least ask if you want to use it as one-click in the future.
- uasm 8y ago> "Yes. You can go into settings and remove it easily though." Hopefully, will be the next mechanism to be phased out via legislation.
- Complexicate 8y agoNot good enough. As an "Opt-out" with no password required, there will always be cases of unintentional purchases. This is obvious. IMO a company should be obligated to give refunds if their default settings are this way. Reducing the barriers to payment this way does 2 things. * Consumers are more likely to impulse buy. This can affect everybody, but severely affects people with low impulse control who can't manage money. * Consumers are more likely to unintentionally buy. Both are taking advantage of people. It would be nice if there were consumer protections similar to "Explicit Consent" in the GDPR. I.e. Explicit Consent should be required when purchasing something.
- babuskov 8y ago
- duxup 8y agoWouldn't this fall under all those rules about tracking children / those notices on kids sites that ask someone's age so they can stop tracking them?
- ishan1121 8y agoWhat Facebook has been doing should be kept on check. Private data of teenagers for the past 3 years, targeting children less than 10, someone should really sue Facebook and slap Mark's face
- option 8y agoThe only Facebook “thing” my daughters are getting (until they are independent enough to decide for themselves) is PyTorch.
- detaro 8y agosource discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823
- save_ferris 8y agoAny current Facebook employees care to chime in on what makes this company worth your time as an employee in 2019?
- pault 8y agoBeing showered with wealth?
- save_ferris 8y agoIt's depressing how true this probably is for many of them. In a lot of ways, it feels like the new Wall Street: cash large paychecks that distract you from the ethically repulsive work you do destroying privacy, undermining democracy and public discourse, and targeting young children for money that aren't capable of consenting to such financial decisions. Stealing from families by exploiting toddlers. This is what many of the most talented minds in the world are working on. Truly tragic.
- matz1 8y agoIt's the reality, you have accept it or be depressed all the time then.
- save_ferris 8y ago> you have to accept it No we don't, we can choose not to accept it and to speak out against it. It's abhorrent behavior and shouldn't be tolerated in a modern society. Many of the world's greatest atrocities began with apathy. It's so easy to look back and wonder how on Earth people accepted the behavior of the powerful that descended to tyranny, but looking into the future is much more difficult, and often, much more uncomfortable.
- matz1 8y agoAccept doesn't imply that you are a against it or support it or tolerate it, but mearly acknowledging the reality that there are always gonna be people who do something that you deemed abhorrent or atrocities.
- justanegg 8y agoisn't the minimum age for facebook use 13?
- colmvp 8y ago> "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 mean they aren't wrong. A person who spends that much money on a game would most certainly be considered a whale. Jesus, I've spent a lot of money on a game like Hearthstone but nothing close to 6.5k!!!
- save_ferris 8y agoA five-year-old is certainly not capable of understanding the significance of such a decision, and it's disgusting to exploit such weakness for large sums of money.
- Ajedi32 8y agoThe person in that incident was fifteen, not five.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Ajedi32 8y agoWhere 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.
- watwut 8y agoWhale 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.
- alexpetralia 8y agoIt'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."
- konceptz 8y agoI’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.
- mlthoughts2018 8y agoI’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.
- babuskov 8y ago> asks their parents for their credit card info Are parents really that stupid to tell them?
- icedchai 8y agoSo the parents are the real "whales." The kids are just having fun.
- andygcook 8y agoThis type of predatory behavior has been happening for a long time. When I was about 9 years old, my brother and I bought Link's Awakening on Gameboy. On the back of the booklet that comes with the game was a line that read, "Need Help? Call this number" with an 800 phone number listed. We had access to the home phone and wanted to beat the game. So of course, we called the number a few times to get hints on how to beat hards parts of the game. This was before the internet where you could just lookup a walkthrough online. You can imagine my mother's shock when she received a $200+ charge on her phone bill for a phone number she had never heard of. Apparently the cost of the call was about $5/minute. We got yelled at and we weren't allowed to call the number anymore after that. I'm proud to say we still be the game though.
- bagacrap 8y ago800 numbers are toll free. Was it a 900 number?
- wccrawford 8y agoActually, not all 800 numbers are toll free. Just another dark pattern.
- jdsudo 8y agoYou sure about that? https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/what-toll-free-number-and-how-does-it-work https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/what-toll-free-number-a...
- wccrawford 8y agoPerhaps they've finally made it illegal, but I remember plenty of complaints from people about 800 numbers that were scams that charged to your phone bill when you called them, even if accidental. I remember being surprised at the time because I thought all 800 numbers were free by design.
- andygcook 8y ago
- rollulus 8y agoFacebook. Yes, they are evil. Most of us always knew. But this flood of news items lately, isn't this just mass hysteria?
- TwoNineA 8y agoExploiting children for money is mass hysteria? Using very shady root certs to bypass Apple store rules is mass hysteria? Cambridge Analytica is mass hysteria?
- ardy42 8y ago> Facebook. Yes, they are evil. Most of us always knew. But this flood of news items lately, isn't this just mass hysteria? If Facebook is "evil," then not having a flood of news items is just giving them a pass on their behavior.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago> Facebook. Yes, they are evil. How would you know if not for the news?
- martin_a 8y agoI think it's just becoming more and more obvious how f*cked up Facebook business practices are and how little they care about the implications. That's probably what causes this spike in "look what they did NOW".
- chris_wot 8y agoWhat the hell is wrong with an employee of Facebook who laughs at a kid who wracks up thousands of dollars accidentally on their parent's credit card? What sort of mentality is going on at Facebook where this can be seen as acceptable not to refund them?
- seeker61 8y agoIt's probably part of their metrics and counts against them come review time. Just a guess.
- wuliwong 8y agoI'm a little unclear. If the account is owned by the parent and the child is using it to play the game, how does FB know it was a child? Did the specific employees cited learn from the lawsuit and then make the "whale" comment or did they say this and have the knowledge that it was a child before the lawsuit? --Edit-- It looks like from the chat logs that the employees had the information that it was a child.
- caiobegotti 8y agoI have grown so accustomed to Facebook scandals every other day that I think have become desensitized to these kinds of news :-(
- TheRealPomax 8y agoNo it didn't, but hey clickbait's fun, right?
- IdontRememberIt 8y agoI have always wondered who is clicking on ads. Do not look further. Kids and.... babies!!! I have seen so many parents and nannies letting babies hours per day on youtube. It is scary.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoIt is scary. Besides ElsaGate... even when the “programming” isn’t suggestive insanity, it’s still garbage. It’s never high quality well thought out content with a message or positive vision of what children should be seeing - it’s a pig and dog sprite in roughly “animated” cars and replaying the same couple sound effects. The exact polar opposite of say Mr Rogers content. But hey, free babysitter!!
- throwawaysea 8y ago“Whales” is a common industry term for a high spending account.
- anonymousab 8y agoA common dehumanizing term. You can understand why people take offense to that being applied to children.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoExactly. Coupled with it's complement: "roach" or "cockroach" was similarly used in sales to refer to non-spending tire-kickers. I bet you'd find a few more issues with children being called such because they only played the free tiers, or didn't take part in micro-transactions to get ahead.
- throwawaysea 8y agoNot really, it isn't an offensive term inherently. It's just a lot easier to say than "the XXth% percentile of customers by spending" or "customers who spend Y% more than the median" or whatever else. The exact definition varies by organization. Identifying and attracting whales is a big part of a successful sales program. The fact that an analogy is drawn to an animal may be dehumanizing in the most literal sense, but it does not seem offensive or carry a negative connotation on its own, as the term 'dehumanizing' implies. If it indeed dehumanizing as the term is actually defined, then what you're saying is that discussing the spending characteristics of a customer somehow deprives said customer of individuality (the definition of 'dehumanizing' in its non-literal sense, where it carries the negative connotation). But how else can you describe various cohorts of prospective customers except to describe traits like spending behaviors? This just seems like overblown outrage and much ado about nothing, fanned by how fashionable it is to go after Facebook these days.
- honksillet 8y agoJust a thought. What if facebook had fake accounts on hacker news to up and downvote new items. Would hacker news be able to identify it and if so would they let the rest of us know?
- 50656E6973 8y agoHighly doubtful that could be detected. Here's some interesting research on that topic https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock_puppets_in_rnetsec_last_year_and_are/ https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...
- _RPM 8y agoZuckerberg is so full of crap. He’s still the same creepy person he was in college, but now he has a money printing machine.
- wmeredith 8y agoNo, you've got him all wrong. Zuck is sorry about all of this. He's said so since 2003, also in 2006, and in 2007, and in 2008 (four times), also in 2010... it goes on to this day. He's incredibly and perpetually sorry for being a total scumbag: https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-tour-hasnt-fixed-facebook/ https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-t... Related note: when my 3-year-old says he's sorry, but keeps punching his sister, we put him in time out.
- fxfan 8y agoI thought whale was a term used by far-right for fat people like Amy Schumer and Lena Dunham?
- steveklabnik 8y agoCompletely different context. You're not wrong, but the usages are not connected.
- darepublic 8y agoIn poker whales are rich unskilled players who drop a lot of money on the table
- mcv 8y agoI've never played games on Facebook, but I did once discover that, after I purchased a game on Android for my son, he was able to make in-app purchases without authorisation. Turns out Android didn't require re-authorisation for half an hour after making an authorised purchase, which can make sense in some situations, but is a terrible idea with in-app purchases for an app you just bought for your kid. Fortunately they quickly refunded the money. I pointed out I wanted explicit authorisation for every purchase, and I think that's what Android now does.
- pier25 8y agoAndroid is great for refunds compared to iOS. If you uninstall an app before 2 hours after install you get an automatic refund.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoDo you mean, you get a refund just by performing the uninstall action; or that on request a refund will be allowed?
- wesd 8y agoI had similar issue with iOS. I didn't disable in-app purchase and right after installing the game, my 6 year old spent $55 and when I got the receipt email a day later it was too late to reverse the transaction. Lesson learned and in-app option turned off.
- cityzen 8y agoThe irony of this is that there is another group of people that "lol" at Facebook employees and call them whales as well. Just because you make a lot of money at a multinational advertising firm (lazy win) doesn't mean you're the smartest person in the room. lol indeed!
- honkycat 8y agoHow do you justify working for facebook at this point? Between stealing money from children, selling and abusing your user's data, and allowing your users to invite a literal genocide, where does the "good" come from?
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoIsn't 13 the minimum age for Facebook users?
- askafriend 8y agoThis 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.
- rmc 8y agoBut the optics aren't good
- slededit 8y agoIt 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.
- adrianmonk 8y agoOf 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?"
- icedchai 8y agoThe 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.
- pdkl95 8y agoA lot of people in this thread seem to be making a Thermian Argument[1]: > The diegetic argument aims to dismiss criticism at its core, suggesting that there aren't any problems with a text provided controversial elements are internally consistent with the rest of the story world. In slang terms, this could be referred to as The Thermian Argument. In the sci-fi classic Galaxy Quest, the thermians don't understand fiction as a concept. It doesn't exist in their language, and thus they see all texts as historical documents. Yes, "whale" is industry slang/jargon for a high spending account. It is also fiction that was made up by the gambling industry. As such, the term doesn't have any intrinsic meaning; it gains meaning from how it's used. Using a made-up definition as if it had a specific intrinsic meaning doesn't justify bad behavior, but it does revel some of the speaker's ethics. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxV8gAGmbtk
- Dirlewanger 8y agoYou're looking into it way too much. This has happened every single time the term "whale" has been used in any article pertaining to gambling in the past couple years. This has nothing to do with ethics. Every industry has its overloaded words/phrases that outsiders would be confused upon first hearing. This is why context is of paramount importance (something that's often lost in mediums that are ripe for hot takes, like Twitter). Don't try to turn this into something it's not.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoUh, have you used a lot of words to try to explain that names gain their meaning by how they are used? Thanks for the new way to express this fact, but I honestly don't see what you are arguing.
- openloop 8y agoDo you work for twitch?
- mkio 8y agoDoing customer support for one of the big app stores, you will encounter adults spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on play-to-win in-app purchases and subsequently blaming it on their child to get a refund on a daily basis.
- wufufufu 8y agoAt YouTube they must be called "gold mines" then.
- moistoreos 8y agoThis outrage is ridiculous when compared to mobile micro-transactions. Get off your high horses.
- throwaway98121 8y agoNot sure what these articles are trying to get at. Honestly we have some article against Facebook, Apple, and Amazon just about every day from some news outlet claiming the company is so horrible or terrible. I’m inclined to think this fake social justice focus is driven by big tech eating the media’s ad revenues.
- EGreg 8y agoI had anarcho capitalists tell me all they want from the government is enforcing contracts. Being a developer and mathematician I brought up edge cases right away: can a five year old sell themselves into slavery for a lollipop? I was kidding, but if you extrapolate, this comes close. Thankfully our society doesn’t let kids incur debts like that. Dark patterns and contracts of adhesion make the idea of “personal responsibility” in contracting a bit quaint. That’s also why smart contracts may have problems in the real world - in the real world we have forgiveness and mitigating arguments. Thanks to Privacy.com we can actually have some personal responsibility.
- dang 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18995823
- mxfh 8y agoIf even the developers of highly sucessful games come to the conclusion that whaling is basically exploiting a few psychologiaclly gameable people against their best interest. Even worse if happening with minors. Not all companies are in the position to address that but we should applaud the ones that do: https://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php https://www.clickerheroes2.com/paytowin.php https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15737008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15737008 In the long term, only extending and enforcing retail restrictions and legislation to the digital markets are the way to stem this ethically abusive behaviour at least when it comes to children.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JVIDEL 8y agoIs this 2011? How is this news?