In a ruling issued late Thursday afternoon, Judge Bryan Biedscheid stated that the majority of the $420 million grant will go toward treatment services for young people. The remainder of the amount will be used for awareness and prevention actions, screening services and other costs over the next five years.
Facebook owner receives fine of 492 million for damages caused to young people
In a ruling issued late Thursday afternoon, Judge Bryan Biedscheid stated that the majority of the $420 million grant will go toward treatment services for young people. The remainder of the amount will be used for...
This is the second phase of a historic trial that the social media giant lost in March. In the first stage, a jury had awarded US$375 million (325.5 million euros) in civil sanctions against Meta, concluding that the company knowingly harmed the mental health of children and hid what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its platforms.
In the second phase, prosecutors asked the judge to impose fundamental changes on Meta to prevent addictive features of its social networks, improve age verification and prevent child sexual exploitation through default privacy settings and stricter oversight.
The decision means that the operation of Meta's platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, may change. The judge ruled that the two networks must create notices and informational screens to clearly explain their protection features, tools to deal with inappropriate comments, for example, and display them regularly. These changes and an education campaign in New Mexico will be subject to state review.
“We disagree with the decision and will appeal,” said a Meta spokesperson in a statement released late Thursday afternoon.
"We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and have been transparent about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors and harmful content. We remain confident in our track record of protecting teens online and will continue to defend ourselves against allegations that distort the facts," he added.
The court stated that federal children's privacy laws prevent Meta from applying age verification tools to children under 13. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) means that a court cannot order Meta to require children to provide personal data or be passively tracked online, even for age verification purposes.
The court also highlighted that determining that Meta verify the age of children only for the company itself, and not for other social networks, would be “unfair and unduly harmful” to the company.
Alternatively, the court ordered Meta to continue improving its age verification tools in New Mexico, which include using artificial intelligence to estimate users' ages based on signals like their friends list and the types of content they post and consume.
Meta will also have to try to develop, over the next two years, a specific “under 13 age prediction model” for this purpose.
Additionally, Meta must request proof of age from Instagram and Facebook users in New Mexico who it estimates are under the age of 13. If it determines that a user is under 13, or under 18 without being able to estimate a specific age, Meta must treat them as under 13 or under 18, respectively, until they prove their age.
The company will also have to partner with schools or a child safety organization to create a reporting portal through which employees at educational institutions can flag users who may be under the age of 13. Meta must also delete personal information it has collected about minor users.
The court further ordered Meta to report on its progress twice a year, reporting on compliance with these mitigation measures.
Source: Noticias ao Minuto
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