The documents obtained by the court include Meta’s internal emails, briefings, and employee chat records. Meta was accused of failing to make "creating an age verification system" a company priority and allowing children under 13 to sign up for accounts by lying about their age.
Instagram only allows users over the age of 13 to register their own accounts. Children under the age of 13 must indicate that their accounts are managed by their parents. However, according to a newly disclosed court document in the United States, Meta has known since 2019 that Instagram There are 110 million users under the age of 13 on the platform, but the platform has only disabled a small number of accounts. Instagram has also been collecting personal information from these children's accounts, including location, email, etc., without the consent of the children's parents, which violates federal child privacy laws. Currently, the states in the United States that are suing Meta hope to fine the platform between $1 and $5 for each infringement case. The documents obtained by the court include Meta's internal emails, presentations, and employee chat records. Meta was accused of failing to make "building an age review system" a company priority, and allowing children under the age of 13 to register accounts by lying about their age.
The US judicial authorities believe that although Meta's senior management knew that children were using the platform, they still publicly lied that the age review mechanism was effective. At the end of 2021, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in company communication records that "children want to use Instagram, and they will lie about their age to achieve their goals." However, Mosseri declared at a hearing the following month that as long as children are under 13, they will not be on the platform.
In addition, Meta's chart content shows that the company is analyzing the proportion of users aged 11 and 12 years old, but as long as these accounts do not contain photos of the users, the platform will choose to ignore and not remove the accounts.
The allegations are part of a federal lawsuit filed by 33 U.S. states that accuses Meta of luring children to use Facebook and Instagram and hiding internal company documents that showed the platforms were having a negative impact on users.
Meta responded to these accusations by saying that it is complicated for digital services to verify the age of users, especially when some children do not have school IDs or driver's licenses to prove their age. Meta further said that there should be legislation to regulate App stores so that children under 16 years old are not allowed to download Apps without parental permission.
It is easier to accuse tech giants of violating privacy rights than to prove that these platforms deliberately make users addicted. Since 2019, the FTC has successfully sued companies such as YouTube, Amazon and Microsoft for violating children's privacy.
:Chris
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