Last Update: May 03, 2023, 23:46 IST
Facebook launched Messenger Kids in 2017, pitching it as a way for kids to chat with family members and their parent-approved friends.
Meta will also be subject to other limitations, including its use of face-recognition technology.
US regulators say Facebook misled parents and failed to protect the privacy of children using its Messenger Kids app, including by misrepresenting access to private user data to app developers Is.
As a result, the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to a 2020 privacy order with Facebook — now called META — that would ban it from profiting from data collected on users under the age of 18. This will include data collected through its virtual-reality. products. The FTC said the company failed to fully comply with the 2020 order.
Meta will also be subject to other limitations, including its use of facial recognition technology and the need to provide additional privacy protections for its users.
“Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The company’s negligence put young users at risk, and Facebook needs to answer for its failures.”
Meta called the announcement a “political stunt”.
“Despite three years of constant engagement with the FTC around our settlement, they have never had any opportunity to discuss this new, completely 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 leave one American company alone, while allowing Chinese companies like TikTok to operate unhindered on American soil, ”Meta said in a Prepared statement. “We have spent vast resources building and implementing an industry-leading privacy program under the terms of our FTC agreement. We will vigorously contest this action and expect to prevail.”
Facebook launched Messenger Kids in 2017, pitching it as a way for kids to chat with family members and their parent-approved friends. The app does not provide separate Facebook or Messenger accounts for the children. Rather, it works as an extension of the parent’s account, and parents get controls, such as the ability to decide who their kids can chat with.
At the time, Facebook said Messenger Kids would not show ads or collect data for marketing, although it would collect some data that was necessary to run the service.
But child-development experts raised immediate concerns.
In early 2018, a group of 100 experts, advocates and parent organizations opposed Facebook’s claims that the app was meeting children’s need for a messaging service. The group consisted of non-profits, psychiatrists, pediatricians, teachers, and children’s music singer Rafi Cavukian.
“Messenger Kids is not responding to a need – it is creating one,” the letter said. “It mainly appeals to kids who don’t have their own social media accounts.” Another passage criticized Facebook for “targeting young children with a new product”.
Facebook, in response to the letter, said at the time that the app “helps parents and children chat safely” and stressed that parents were “always in control” of their children’s activity. Are.
The FTC now says it isn’t. The 2020 privacy order, which required Facebook to pay a $5 billion fine, required an independent evaluator to evaluate the company’s privacy practices. The FTC said the evaluator “identified a number of deficiencies and weaknesses in Facebook’s privacy program.”
The FTC also said that Facebook, from late 2017 to 2019, “falsely represented that parents could control who their children communicated with through the Messenger Kids product.”
The FTC said, “Despite the company’s promise that children using Messenger Kids will only be able to communicate with contacts approved by their parents, in some circumstances children may engage in group text chats and group video calls with non-approved contacts.” Was able to communicate with.”
As part of the proposed changes to the FTC’s 2020 order, Meta would also be required to stop launching new products and services without “written confirmation from an assessor that its privacy program is in full compliance” with the order.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)
