Facebook Knowingly Let Children Steal Parents Money for Games

So it shouldn’t really be a terrible surprise that Facebook is a terrible company led by terrible people. But new, leaked documents from Reveal reveals how Facebook was willing to abuse children in order to make a quick buck for themselves.

Here's the long and the short of it: Facebook is full of casual games. It’s also got a feature where saved credit cards can be used without any kind of authorization by the credit card holder. These two features, when combined with sticky-fingered children who aren’t capable of knowing that mom doesn’t have an infinite well of money, meant that it was shockingly common for children to rack up enormous amounts of debt on in-game video game purchases, leaving parents none the wiser.

According to this report, Facebook not only knew about this problem but actively avoided trying to fix it. In fact, in one internal email, one employee said, "If we were to build risk models to reduce it, we would most likely block good TPV,"  with TPV being Total Purchase Value.

If there is one bright spot, it’s that people can still be good even if they work for an evil company, and internally many employees tried to raise the subject, while others made a point to honor refund requests from distraught parents who suffered from this “friendly fraud.” The company as a whole, however, was and is more than happy to let it continue.

Sad news, of course, but extremely far from shocking. As the months roll on, we’re increasingly confronted with more and more evidence that Facebook is literally evil, and this is just the latest of a long line of revelations.

The big question is if it means anything, anymore. It seems it gets easier and easier to ignore bad behavior in the modern world, leaving big companies unaccountable for this kind of thing. I hope that doesn’t stay the case, but… it probably will.

We’re in the second-darkest timeline here, people. Maybe the third darkest. Could be the fourth if there’s a timeline where Skies of Arcadia was never made.