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Meta has reportedly received 1.1 million reports of users under the age of 13 using Instagram since 2019; however, the company has opted to disable only a small fraction of those accounts, The New York Times reports.
A newly unsealed legal complaint brought against the company by the attorneys general of 33 states shows that not only did Meta not delete the accounts, but the company “routinely continued to collect” the children’s personal information, including their email addresses and phone numbers, without their parent’s permission, a violation of federal children’s privacy laws.
The complaint was filed last month in the US District Court for the Northern District of California by California, Colorado, and 31 other states.
According to the complaint, “Within the company, Meta’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, and zealously protected from disclosure to the public.”
The group alleges that Meta “coveted and pursued” underage users, evidenced through employee chats, company presentations, and internal emails. Rather than create safeguards to keep underage users off the platform, the complaint says that Meta instead used approaches that made it easy for underage individuals to lie about their age.
The complaint also says that Meta has lied about the effectiveness of its age-checking process and has failed to remove underage users when it has learned of them.
In a statement Saturday to the Times, Meta said the complaint “mischaracterizes our work using selective quotes and cherry-picked documents.”
The company has also suggested that the burden of age verification should be put on the App Store itself and that it would like to see federal legislation requiring parents’ approval for each app a child downloads.