Facebook has been accused of deliberately targeting children in order to tempt them into making in-game purchases, pursuing revenues at the expense of children and their parents.
According to Reveal (via Reddit) - which reportedly obtained court documents from a class-action lawsuit that were ordered by a U.S. District Court Judge to be unsealed earlier this month - Facebook orchestrated a campaign to dupe children and their parents into paying thousands of dollars to maximise profits for games like Angry Birds, PetVille, and Ninja Saga. Facebook had until 24th January to make some of the court documents - which span from 2010 to 2014 - public.
Calling the practice "friendly fraud" and reportedly ignoring some of its own staff's efforts to protect vulnerable users, the children were encouraged to make purchases without their parents' permission, while in other cases, they weren't even really aware that they were spending "real" money at all. And in the instances where children had amassed huge spending - such as $6,500 in one case - Facebook employees were told to deny refund requests, reportedly calling the children "whales", the same term used by the gambling industry to disparage high spenders.