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.
I was surprised this was about Instagram and not their VR platform where children are regularly experiencing wildly inappropriate situations and straight up pedophiles.
I don’t know about Instagram, but you can get on their VR platform officially at age 13 (when you can also get a Facebook account) and you can easily get a parent to hook it up to their Facebook account instead.
13 is way too young for Facebook. Sure, savvy kids will still find a way to get on, but we are not doing enough to protect kids. And I don’t mean in a bullshit, dangerous KOSA way.