One million reports. That’s how many times Instagram users flagged accounts belonging to children under 13 between early 2019 and mid-2023, according to a multistate lawsuit. Meta builds allegedly kept the majority of those accounts running — and kept collecting data. COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, prohibits any company from harvesting personal information from kids under 13 without verified parental consent. The question now consuming Senate hearings, courtrooms, and the FTC is whether Meta treated that law as optional.
Former safety researchers told Congress that Meta’s legal team actively steered them away from documenting harms to children.
Two ex-Meta researchers, Jason Sattizahn and Cayce Savage, testified before the Senate that the company suppressed evidence of child safety risks on its VR platforms. Sattizahn told lawmakers Meta “opted to overlook the issues they created and suppress evidence of users’ adverse experiences,” according to BBC reporting. Savage described company lawyers instructing researchers not to put Meta “at risk” with their findings.
Watchdog group Fairplay‘s nine-month investigation found children under 13 present in 24 of 26 visits to Meta’s Horizon Worlds platform — accessing it through adult accounts, like a teenager using a parent’s streaming login, except the stakes involve data collection on minors. The Tech Oversight Project, citing Washington Post reporting, alleges Meta’s...
To display this content from YouTube, you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. 2 min After a monthlong lull in hostilities, the United States launched fresh airstrikes on I...