> Are you suggesting publishers should not view 5 year olds as valuable customers?
Mu; your question is a shitty rhetorical trap and I am certain you know it. Designing systems to exploit children is reprehensible; designing systems to exploit anyone should give you pause but children haven't finished baking their brains and everyone involved knows it.
And Facebook does not need you to cape up for them. Their stock ticker will do just fine, thank you.
Yes, nobody should view 5 year olds as valuable customers. Their parent or guardian can be, but you should not design a product that encourages the child to spend money, and you should not think of the child as the customer. The child can benefit from your product, but they aren't the one making purchasing decisions.
I feel it's worth noting that the intention is to remove any "purchasing decision". There is a "allow spending via Facebook" decision, and a key element is ensuring that customers don't question "but hey will my kid buy $10k cost of lootboxes when I'm not looking".
When people of any age click "get coins" or whatever, the system is designed to bypass purchasing decisions, reduce friction completely, make sure they're deep in to the "getting dopamine hits" like a zombie aspect of playing your game.
As I read more, I'm pretty sure the child in question was 15. It doesn't necessarily make it ok but it does seem like this article's title is pretty inaccurate. The conversation where the term "whale" was used was referring to a 15 year old that had spent around $6500.
Who is the customer for children's toys? You might argue it's the parents because they supply the money, but I think that would be like arguing that the customer for any product is the actual customer's employer - who provides the money.
It is the child who supplies the purchase motivation and the child who your product needs to satisfy. I'd say the customer is the child.
I don't think there's anything wrong with thinking of children as customers. I do think there's something wrong with manipulating children into spending thousands of dollars on digital gems, but I think that actually generalizes - it doesn't strike me as good moral choice to manipulate anyone into wasting large amounts of money on mobile games.
so the consensus is that fb shouldnt be collecting data but its ok when theres something that portrays fb in an ethically (not morally) bankrupt act through circumstance. smh
