Many users have always been suspicious of Meta and how they handle user data. Some say that the social media giant uses this information for their own gain, like targeted ads. In a legal complaint, however, Meta was accused of ignoring user data, especially from underaged users.
Minors on Instagram
In case you don't know, there is a certain age you have to reach before you can join the photo-centric app, and that's above 13 years of age. Despite that measure, there are still a lot of minors who lie about their age so they can create an account.
In a legal complaint from the attorneys general of 33 states, Meta is well aware of the situation and has only disabled "a fraction" of these users, even though there have been 1.1 million reports of underaged users, as reported by The New York Times.
The complaint states that Meta continues to draw young users into Instagram, as well as failing to disclose the harms that come with the use of the platform. The complaint aims to urge Meta to drop certain features that have already done harm to certain users.
What's worse is that the company still "routinely continued to collect" data from the mentioned users, including their email addresses and locations. All of these have been done without parental permission which violates a federal law.
Instagram Head Adam Mosseri himself through an internal email said that "tweens want access to Instagram, and they lie about their age to get it now." The problem also lies in the process that verifies the age of users who sign up.
Younger users tend to lack official IDs that would verify their date of birth, therefore making it hard for social media platforms to ask for verification. Instead, Meta proposed that there should be a federal law that requires parents' approval when users below 16 years old download apps.
Despite Meta's push for such measures, the lawsuit claims that the company itself is not building systems that can detect minors signing up since they are an important demographic. This could show that the company is not complying with children's privacy laws.
With the mentioned alleged violations, Meta could end up paying hundreds of millions if proven to be guilty. It also might not end well for the company if the complaint is accurate about Meta tracking the percentage of 11 to 12-year-olds on the platform daily and does nothing about it.
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Meta's Privacy Issues
The news about Meta not handling user data properly and with caution is old news. In fact, just this late May, Meta was slapped with a $1.3 billion fine over transferring data of EU citizens to the US, EU courts claim.
These mentioned data are important for Meta since they use them for ad-targeting. The company even went as far as saying that it would shut down Instagram and Facebook operations in the EU the data transfers were restricted.
As per The Verge, EU lawmaker Axel Voss responded by saying that Meta "cannot just blackmail the EU into giving up its data protection standards," adding that Meta leaving the EU would be more of a loss to them than the users.
