The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sharply criticised Meta for alleged safety breaches in its Messenger Kids app and more general privacy issues related to children’s private data.
The Messenger Kids issue refers to a bug uncovered in 2019 that broke the app’s core premise: that children would be able to chat with only approved friends.
The flaw allowed children to communicate with non-approved contacts if they were part of a group chat where said contact had been approved for another participant. According to Sophos’ Naked Security blog, this bug went unfixed for 10 months.
The FTC, an independent US government responsible for protecting consumers from anti-competitive or deceptive business practices, also says that Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa). This dictates that “operators of websites or online services that are directed to children under 13 must notify parents and obtain their verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information from children.”
On top of this, the FTC says that Meta continued to grant app developers access to users’ private data. It said this followed Meta’s promise to cut off access to those who hadn’t used said apps in the previous 90 days in a previous settlement. “In certain circumstances, Facebook continued to allow third-party app developers to access that user data until mid-2020,” claims the FTC, which has the power to bring legal action against companies that violate consumer protection laws and regulations.
“Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” said the FTC’s Samuel Levine in a press release. “The company’s recklessness has put young users at risk, and Facebook needs to answer for its failures.”
The FTC proposed several changes, including banning Meta, Facebook, Instagram and Oculus from monetising data of users under the age of 18. It also proposed blocking Meta from launching new products or services without the approval of an independent privacy assessor and insisting on user consent for new users of facial recognition technology.
Meta, as you might imagine, plans to fight this — and isn’t shy about expressing itself bluntly.
“This is a political stunt,” reads a statement shared on Twitter by Meta’s Policy Communications Director, Andy Stone. “Despite three years of continual engagement with the FTC around our agreement, they provided no opportunity to discuss this new, totally unprecedented theory.
“Let’s be clear about what the FTC is trying to do: usurp the authority of Congress to set industry-wide standards and instead single out one American company while allowing Chinese companies, like TikTok, to operate without constraint on American soil,” the statement continued. “We will vigorously fight this action and expect to prevail.”
While the Messenger Kids bug was fixed nearly four years ago, concerns about data privacy are harder to set to one side. As the old adage says, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”, and Meta’s software from WhatsApp and Messenger to Facebook and Instagram is free to use.
Adults can make an informed decision over whether free software offers a fair trade-off in terms of user data and privacy, even if the specifics are hidden away in impenetrable terms of use. Children cannot, and parents may ultimately decide it’s in their best interest to avoid using such platforms altogether.
