Meta keeps breaking the law, but the authorities do nothing about it. How come?
A New York Times investigation based on Meta documents presented in connection with the company’s ongoing litigation with 33 US states reveals that it consistently collected data and served advertising to users younger than 13, who by law were not allowed to have a profile on its platforms. This was an open secret in the company, but nobody ever acted.
We know that minors lie about their age so as to use social networks. But Meta has reliable evidence of the practice on its social networks, and in many cases children’s parents have asked the company to remove their children’s profiles, which means that it is in breach of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA, which in the United States is punishable by fines of up to $50,000 for each instance.
Given that the company is known to have received reports of more than 1.1 million users under the age of 13 on Instagram and Facebook since 2019, but has disabled only a small fraction of them, Meta could face colossal fines. But will it?
All this is further aggravated when we know that the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, assured the US Senate that children aged under 13 are not allowed to have a profile on the platform, while in internal memos and emails just a month earlier he said that…
