Several governmental bodies have deemed Instagram a dangerous platform for children. Because of this, the company’s plans to make a kid-only version of the app were shot down. Since then, the platform has been under close scrutiny for how it deals with children’s and teens’ data.
Now, Instagram was hit with a fine for apparent child data misuse
The latest bit of Insta-drama comes from the European government. The Data Protection Commission (DPC) did an investigation into the company and found that it possibly violated the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Thus, the company could face a €405 million fine for this (roughly $405 million). When the DPC looked into Instagram, it found that some of the data belonging to children was accessible to the public. This is data such as email addresses and, worse, phone numbers. That’s definitely not the kind of information you want to have just lying around. Also, the DPC also found that some accounts belonging to teens were not set to private. Instagram implemented a policy where teens’ profiles are automatically set to private when they set up their accounts.
But, Meta is disputing this
A Meta spokesperson told Politico that this might not be a valid case. “This inquiry focused on old settings that we updated over a year ago, and we’ve since released many new features to help keep teens safe and their information private.” That’s a fair argument, but we don’t know just how the DPC did the investigation. There’s no way of telling if it was able to find any current evidence of misuse. This is a developing case, as both sides are working their way through this case. The Meta spokesperson also stated that “We engaged fully with the DPC throughout their inquiry, and we’re carefully reviewing their final decision.” You should expect to see more on this story in the coming weeks.
