At Meta, millions of underage users were an 'open secret,' show court filing
At Meta, millions of underage users were an 'open secret,' show court filing
The social media giant "routinely continued to collect" children's personal information, including their locations and email addresses, without parental permission, in violation of a federal children's privacy law, according to the court filing
I wish there were actual consequences that matter for this type of appalling greedy behavior.
76That's how you know we're all living in oligarchies masquerading as democracies. Many actions that most people agree should be crimes are not, and the crimes that are broken aren't enforced. I mean, the rich and powerful in "democracies" get away with literal mass murder and ecocide, and the worst they face from the state 99% of the time is a slap on the wrist that's 1/1000th the profit of their crimes.
The only time oligarchs fall is if they fuck with other oligarchs, or to protect other oligarchs. How many hundreds/thousands of pedo's were ignored with Epstein and Maxwell taking the fall?
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I’m not trying to imply that Meta isn’t in the wrong here…but for real, where are the parents?
Like…we’re nearly at the point now where parents of kids under 13 really can’t claim ignorance. My kid is in elementary school and I was chatting with other parents at the bus stop the other day as to how amazing it is that Pokemon is still around and reminiscing of Pogs and Slammers.
I had AIM and ICQ and IRC in middle school. Phpbb2 and vBulletin in high school. Livejournal, MySpace, and Facebook came shortly after. Hell, my reddit account is old enough to drive, let alone sign up for Facebook.
Parents of preteens today, IMO, have to hold at least some of the blame. We are first-generation internet immigrants, and our kids are native-born.
34I share this sentiment and whole heartedly agree. Parents of the current generation need to take steps to make sure their kids are browsing safely and understand the consequences if they don't. Also this comment makes me feel old lol.
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Okay there's a story to all of this. In 1983 when Ronald Reagan saw Wargames he was so terrified he readily signed the CFAA which made it super illegal (like 25 years in prison -- same as murder one in some states) to do hacker stuff.
Until, very recently, hacker stuff banned by the CFAA included violating the TOS of websites and social media platforms.
So if you lied about your age to make a Snapchat account, you could be in serious trouble... if a prosecutor wanted to ruin the life of a ten-year-old girl. Most prosecutors don't want to ruin the lives of ten-year-old girls.
In fact, we Americans typically commit three felonies a day, a large number of which are violations of the CFAA. They're convenient to the DoJ if you're an enemy of the state, or some official has interest in your land or your spouse, or it wants to dispose of your population demographic.
Recently a judge admitted no-one reads TOS disclosures anyway, and disobeying one shouldn't count as a crime. At the same time, if you're a hactivist or a whistle-blower you can expect no mercy from the courts. Better to flee to Russia.
That said, there was no way Zuckerberg was going to snitch on kids who wanted to social media about on his turf, and it's not his fault they're disclosing all their vitals while pretending to be a grown up.
The moral of the story is when laws serve scared presidents and big corporations instead of the public, the internet routes around it like damage, and kids get caught up in the mix.
Since we won't even give our kids medical care and school lunches, I say the US and states care less about children as they do the bad look when children get visibly hurt or killed, so the mess is way bigger than the CFAA and kids roaming the darkweb.
28That was a fun read with some interesting facts I never knew... But I think you put some weird spins into it.
Like I don't think Americans are commiting 3 felonies a day, and I'd really be curious about the explanation of that.
And I dont think lying about your age is applicable to the CFAA without some wild lawyering to consider it impersonating someone else to gain unauthorized access to protected data.
But maybe I suck at understanding legal writing
https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-9-48000-computer-fraud
Thus, embellishing an online dating profile contrary to the terms of service of the dating website; creating fictional accounts on hiring, housing, or rental websites; or using a pseudonym on a social networking site that prohibits them, might all violate a user’s contract with the owner of the protected computer, but the Department will not take the position that a mere contractual violation caused the user’s previous authorization to be automatically withdrawn and that the user was from that point onward acting in violation of the CFAA
I think this is a decent defense of CFAA not worrying about lying about age
10[...blah...blah...] so the mess is way bigger than the CFAA and kids roaming the darkweb.
That may be, but still your kids need protection from toxic social media.
Real, functioning protection. Terms of service don't achieve that. Laws don't achieve that either. Practical measures are needed,and they need to be strong.
If all of Facebook is toxic, then no kids should ever be able to get there.
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Yawn - everyone knew it, so why shouldn't they know it.
27An internal company chart... showed how Meta tracked the percentage of 11- and 12-year-olds who used Instagram daily
Well that's damning and ought to lead to penalties. On the other hand,
"complaints from the girl's mother stating her daughter was 12"... Meta representatives "couldn't tell for sure the user was underage"
People make false reports about social media content and accounts all the time. I could mail the admins of sopuli.xyz and tell them that I'm @misk@sopuli.xyz's mother and they're too young to be using Lemmy. Said admins should ignore me like the crazy person I am unless I can prove it.
19I could mail the admins of sopuli.xyz and tell them that I'm @misk@sopuli.xyz's mother and they're too young to be using Lemmy. Said admins should ignore me like the crazy person I am unless I can prove it.
When in doubt, the default should be asking for proof. You can't sell alcohol to a kid and then say you didn't check for ID because it's too much of a hassle.
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What’s the proposed consequence in the court ruling?
12a warning that they better stop or else they may receive a strongly worded letter
143 of those and they may receive a citation
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