Senators are demanding answers from Meta regarding its alleged failure to protect minors who use its platforms.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), along with Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO), sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday after the company did not “fully and completely respond” to a letter Grassley sent in April.
The Iowa senator’s letter requested information about the alleged “use of targeted advertisements to children based on their emotional state.”
Despite Meta not totally responding to Grassley, he released a draft PowerPoint from Facebook in 2014 that did a study on the “emotional behavior of 1,000 respondents aged 13 to 24 years old.”
This study looked at how these individuals would respond to “social media, whether they share branded material with peers, and what emotional triggers drive the spread of brand-based content.”
According to the PowerPoint, the audience of the study was “influencers, agencies, brands, sales, other industry, and customers.” The senators noted in their letter that this rebutted Facebook’s 2017 statement saying its tools don’t “target people based on their emotional state.”
In the letter, the senators reviewed previous reports about how the Big Tech company also fails to protect teenagers from other issues beyond targeted advertisements. Last month, Reuters reported that Meta’s artificial intelligence was flirting and participating in sexual role play with teenage users.
In April, the company had a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint filed against it over allegedly letting children under 13 years old “register with adult accounts for the Horizon Worlds VR platform and failed to take appropriate measures to ensure compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act [COPPA].” This act imposes regulations on companies that collect personal information on children under 13 years old.
Furthermore, the FTC complaint alleged Meta gathered data of these individuals without parental consent. Additionally, the complaint alleged the company has expanded its virtual reality platform to children as young as 10 years old without implementing proper safety measures.
To conclude their letter, the senators asked Meta to provide answers to all the questions from Grassley’s April letter. Moreover, they seek information on how the company is complying with COPPA and relevant rules and regulations regarding its virtual reality and AI platforms.
Meta has until September 16 to respond to the letter.
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Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network. Email tips to Zachery at [email protected].
