Meta has received more than 1.1 million reports of users under the age of 13 on its Instagram platform since early 2019 yet it “disabled only a fraction” of those accounts, according to a newly unsealed legal complaint against the company brought by the attorneys general of 33 states.
Instead, the social media giant “routinely continued to collect” children’s personal information, like their locations and email addresses, without parental permission, in violation of a federal children’s privacy law, according to the court filing. Meta could face hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, in civil penalties should the states prove the allegations.
How did they think this would turn out?
Loads more data and inflated legitimate userbase numbers would bring more ad revenue to the platform. And I bet it has. And whatever they get fined for this, will be paltry in comparison to the amount they made from this.