[BenchRouter]

I actually agree with you that this is "drug dealer" tactics but for totally different reasons. I think this is a classic "the first hit is free" move.

It's a long-term play. I believe FB when they say they won't show ads to kids, or use their chats for ad scraping. What they really want is for those kids to become so familiar and dependent on the system (FB), that they naturally transition to being active FB users as adults.

It's not a secret that FB has a perceived "uncool with kids" problem - hence the rise of things like Snapchat. If you hook them when they're really young, though, then FB just becomes an unquestioned part of life.

As far as the tool itself, i dunno - I mean messenger tools have been a fact of life for quite some time now. AIM, ICQ, etc. I don't think FB messenger is particularly different other than the fact that it's attached to, well, FB.

[monkeyprojects]

Watching my children I would argue its a desperate attempt to get children under the age of 16 using Facebook as they just don't.

Both children attend a Music group which has used a facebook group for years. The older children (17-18) all have active facebook profiles - the younger children don't they use Instagram and Snapchat...

[mlevental]

>I believe FB when they say they won't show ads to kids, or use their chats for ad scraping.

why do you believe this? i have no reason to believe it (since their entire business model is targeted ads) except the "first hit is free" alternate hypothesis.

does fb have a single "loss leader" feature?

[BenchRouter]

> why do you believe this?

Because why say it otherwise? Facebook could've easily left all of that out and just said "Introducing messenger for kids! We're making sure it's carefully curated and safe for your children" etc. etc.

People would've speculated that it was being used for ads, sure, but it wouldn't have caused a major outrage. I'd bet significant sums of money that most (not all, obviously) parents don't really care about their children being advertised to or used for market research - I mean hell, TV was doing that way before FB was a thing. Most parents probably worry about more obvious things w.r.t. children chatting online: Bullying, talking to strangers, etc.

Saying "we're not scraping childrens' messages" and then turning around and doing exactly that would be such a monumental PR disaster if it ever came out. I don't think FB is quite that stupid. They're clearly focused on the long-term.

Another possibility is that they're actually just legally barred from scraping messages sent by children, and this is them putting a PR spin on "we're complying with the law!"

So basically, I just don't see a lot of benefit to promising not to scrape messages if they really want to do that.

[JorgeGT]

> If you hook them when they're really young, though, then FB just becomes an unquestioned part of life.

Exactly like religion. Facebook is learning from the best!