A recent court document reveals that Meta, Instagram's parent company, has repeatedly neglected to deactivate the accounts of underage users on Instagram despite the reports. This practice conflicts with federal children's privacy laws and raises serious questions about the company's approach to keeping young people safe online. A problem that we feel very close to, also given the recent news about the parental control.
Meta and the (mis)management of underage users on Instagram
According to a legal complaint recently made public by the New York Times, Meta has received over 1,1 million reports from users under the age of 13 on its Instagram platform since 2019, but has deactivated only a portion of these accounts. Instead of protecting the privacy of younger people, Meta continued to collect personal information such as location and email without parental consent.
This practice violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (here is the official documentation), a federal law on children's privacy. Meta could face sanctions for hundreds of millions of dollars if the accusations were proven: in short, underage users on Instagram are not safe.
The complaint states that Meta's awareness that millions of Instagram users were under the age of 13 was a “Pulcinella's secret” within the company, documented, analyzed and protected from public disclosure. Furthermore, the legal document reveals that Meta has consistently failed to implement effective age verification systems, allowing users to lie about their age to create accounts on Instagram.
Meta responded to the allegations by saying that it has been working for years to make kids' online experiences safe and age-appropriate, and that the states' complaint "distorts our work by using selective citations and selected documents“. Also, the company pointed out that Instagram's terms of use prohibit users under 13 in the United States. Meta also highlighted the complexity of online age verification, especially for young people who may not have identification documents.
The lawsuit focuses on violations of the law requiring online services aimed at children to obtain verifiable permission from a parent before collecting personal details from users under 13. Fines for violating this law can exceed $50.000 for each violation.
This is not the first case where Meta has been accused of privacy violations. In 2019, the company agreed to pay a record $5 billion fine to resolve Federal Trade Commission charges of deceiving users about their ability to control privacy.
