Facebook is no stranger to the world of gaming, with plenty of users playing games via the social media site all the time, but now a new report from Reveal has made claims that Facebook has targeted children to try and increase revenue from games like PetVille and Angry Birds.
This comes from court documents unsealed after Reveal's legal action, which are part of a class-action lawsuit including internal documents from Facebook dating between 2010 and 2014. One piece of information we get is that Facebook encouraged "friendly fraud" as part of their game strategy, which means they said developers could let children spend without permission from their parents. Sometimes children didn't even realise they were spending money either, something the documents say that Facebook employees knew.
A team within Facebook had compiled a strategy to reduce the risk of children spending money without realising, but this was never put in place by Facebook, with the focus allegedly instead being on increasing revenue.
There are also claims that Facebook denied requests for refunds, and that children were paying thousands of dollars in these games. These rejected requests meant that parents needed to turn elsewhere like courts or credit card companies to get the money back.
Judge for the US District Court Beth Freeman ordered that the documents become unsealed earlier this month after she claimed the public should know about Facebook's strategies, although some records are still sealed or had parts redacted.
"We routinely examine our own practices, and in 2016 agreed to update our terms and provide dedicated resources for refund requests related to purchased made by minors on Facebook," a Facebook statement said.
The documents also reveal that a lot of parents didn't realise Facebook had their credit card information, nor did they know their children could use it without needing verification. Facebook employee Tara Stewart also adds that children didn't know they were spending it because "it doesn't necessarily look like 'real' money to a minor."
To take Angry Birds as an example, this has refund rates of 5-10%, with 93% of the refunds a result of credit card holders being unaware that the game was charging. With the average age of Angry Birds players being five according to Facebook's own analysis, these two things are no doubt linked.
A Facebook memo called 'Friendly Fraud - what it is, why it's challenging, and why you shouldn't try to block it' was circulated within the company according to this report, making clear that developers should let children spend money in these games without permission from the parents. It also adds that those who express dissatisfaction should be given free in-game items as compensation.
Among the rest of the documents, we also see that only about half of Facebook customers were receiving receipts for their purchases, and several users had noticed they were spending money without noticing.
"We were contacted by the Center for Investigative Reporting last year, and we voluntarily unsealed documents related to a 2012 case about our refund policies for in-app purchases that parents believe were made in error by their minor children," an official statement from Facebook reads. "We intend to release additional documents as instructed by the court. Facebook works with parents and experts to offer tools for families navigating Facebook and the web. As part of that work, we routinely examine our own practices, and in 2016 agreed to update our terms and provide dedicated resources for refund requests related to purchased made by minors on Facebook."