ScamVille, Facebook And The Poor Little Indian Farmer
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(By Prateek Waghmare)
Over the last 10 days the internet is abuzz with stories of Scam Ads found in popular games from companies like Zynga (Farmville ring a bell?)
For those that are unaware of how such games are monetized. Users are allowed to spend real world money to buy in game currency to level up and have a better gaming experience that someone who wouldn’t.
This is where Plan B for pulling in those dollars comes in. A little bit of genius and some knavery is responsible for an estimated 1/3rd of Zynga’s revenue through what are known as ‘lead gen scams.’
How these ‘scams’ work is deceptively simple. Using one of the oldest tricks in the book, a lie of omission. A user takes a simple quiz which promises them in game currency. After completion however, the user is asked for a valid cellular phone number and a PIN (which is texted to the given number). What the user does not know is that he/she may have been slapped a 10$ per month recurring subscription to a service they do not want.
For more examples see : ScamVille.
Companies at the Profit making end of this (Offerpal) initially denied any such practice. An act that cost a certain Ms.Anu Shukla of Offerpal her job. Following this flare up Zynga CEO Mark Pincus assured the social gaming community that their games would be free of these scams. However, Fishville, one of their games was taken down from Facebook for ad violations, as recently as November 8th. Even more shocking is what may be the discovery that Zynga has resorted to selective blocking of these ads on profiles of some well known bloggers and journalists.
Amidst all this, Facebook appears to be too soft on these Scams.
While the Facebook developer community blog clearly states that ‘Facebook will enforce against developers and applications that include policy-violating ads — such as by imposing a temporary restriction on functionality or permanently disabling the application — as we do for other instances of policy violation.’
It seems to have done precious little about enforcing this. Perhaps that has something to do with economics of the situation. The profit companies like Zynga make, is invested back into Facebook as ad spending (Zynga’s ad spend on Facebook is estimated to be $50 million a year). Until the hue and cry, they were quite happy to turn a blind eye to it.
What does all this mean for India’s estimated 3 million farmers?
The lack of attention to such a serious issue in the Indian blogosphere is quite astounding, with many leading Tech Blogs choosing not to run stories on this. Well, the next time you feel the need of racking up some in game currency to splurge. Think before you Click. Caring for that poor little pink cow may not be so harmless after all.
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