{"id":20687,"date":"2023-11-27T02:43:42","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T08:43:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=20687"},"modified":"2023-11-27T02:43:49","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T08:43:49","slug":"33-states-accuse-meta-of-having-a-big-open-secret-millions-of-underage-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=20687","title":{"rendered":"33 states accuse Meta of having a big &#8216;open secret&#8217; \u2014 millions of underage users"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Meta knowingly has millions of users under the age of 13 on Instagram and &#8220;zealously&#8221; protects that information from being disclosed to the public, newly unredacted court documents show, per&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2023\/11\/25\/technology\/instagram-meta-children-privacy.html\"><u>The New York Times<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">An initial, redacted version of the complaint, which was filed in October, accused Meta of &#8220;intentionally&#8221; designing &#8220;its flagship social media platforms, especially Instagram, to be addictive to youth.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">An unredacted version that was filed earlier this week by 33 states also accuses Meta of knowing about millions of under-13-year-olds using Instagram, in violation of its general age policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The complaint alleges that &#8220;Meta&#8217;s actual knowledge that millions of Instagram users are under the age of 13 is an open secret that is routinely documented, rigorously analyzed and confirmed,&#8221; The NYT reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The company had reportedly closed &#8220;only a fraction&#8221; of those accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">The complaint also claims that Instagram actively &#8220;coveted and pursued&#8221; underage users and that Meta &#8220;routinely continued to collect&#8221; children&#8217;s personal information, including their email addresses and locations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Under US law, it is illegal for companies to collect data on children under the age of 13, and each individual violation is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/business-guidance\/resources\/complying-coppa-frequently-asked-questions\"><u>subject to fines<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;of up to $50,120.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">If proven that Meta knew about millions of underage accounts and did not take action to close them, they could be facing unprecedented fines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In a statement, Meta said the states&#8217; complaint &#8220;mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents,&#8221; per The NYT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Its statement noted that users under the age of 13 were not allowed to have Instagram accounts and that it had &#8220;measures in place to remove these accounts when we identify them.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Meta did not immediately reply to Business Insider&#8217;s request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/meta-millions-underage-users-open-secret-states-say-2023-11\">businessinsider<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meta knowingly has millions of users under the age of 13 on Instagram and &#8220;zealously&#8221; protects that information from being disclosed to the public, newly unredacted court documents show, per&nbsp;The New York Times. An initial, redacted version of the complaint, which was filed in October, accused Meta of &#8220;intentionally&#8221; designing &#8220;its flagship social media platforms, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":20688,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1154],"tags":[24532,5571,2175,995,3157,6140,6138],"class_list":["post-20687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-33-states","tag-blame","tag-leaks","tag-meta","tag-minors","tag-privacy","tag-users"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20689,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20687\/revisions\/20689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}