Unsealed Internal Facebook Documents Reveal Deceptive Practices Against Children, Leading to FTC Complaint

On February 21, 2019, more than a dozen child advocacy groups sent a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) calling for an investigation as to whether Facebook has engaged in unfair or deceptive practices in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Advocates filed the complaint in response to unsealed documents from a 2012 class action lawsuit against Facebook, in which the technology giant was accused of targeting children to expand revenue for online games. Though the class action settled in 2016, advocates believe more needs to be done, especially to ensure that Facebook doesn’t take advantage of children and their parents in the future.

Internal Facebook memos, secret strategies, and employee emails were among the 135 pages of documents unsealed from the 2012 lawsuit. They allegedly revealed that the company knowingly deceived children into making in-game purchases and crafted an endless maze for seeking refunds, making it nearly impossible to get money back from such purchases.

According to the complaint, the internal documents show that Facebook admitted engaging in “friendly fraud” by encouraging game developers to allow children to make purchases without their parents’ permission. The company also allegedly called children “whales” for spending exorbitant sums of money on games—even though most of the children did not know that their parents’ credit cards were connected to the accounts or that they were spending “real money” in the games.

For further reading, see Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s press release about the complaint and Nathan Halverson’s article investigating the unsealed documents when they were initially released.

20 Years Young: The History and Maturing of COPPA in a Privacy-Conscious Age

1998: A Concern for Children’s Privacy Was Born From the moment home computers had the capacity to connect to the Internet, children had the ability to use these technologies to access online websites and services. In the 1990s, concerns about children’s privacy and safety online arose amid fears of marketing practices around selling children’s personal information and exposing children’s information to predators. The Children’s Advertising Review Unit (CARU), founded in 1974, has always been on the forefront of safeguarding children’s privacy. CARU is the self-regulatory arm of the children’s advertising industry, tasked with promoting truth in children’s advertising by reviewing and evaluating child-directed ads in all media to ensure they are truthful, accurate and appropriate. CARU also monitors online privacy practices as they affect children. Before there was any legislation on the matter, CARU monitored a burgeoning Internet and observed how children’s privacy and sa...

After Review, CARU Finds Snapchat Compliant with COPPA

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Kids Internet Design and Safety Act Seeks to Protect Children from Harmful Online Content

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