(San Francisco) Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, deliberately designed its social platforms to attract children and was aware of millions of complaints about underage users on Instagram, according to an unsealed legal complaint outlined in Wall Street articles Journal and the New York Times.
The complaint, initially made public in redacted form, was the first salvo in a lawsuit filed in late October by the attorneys general of 33 U.S. states.
According to reports, Meta said in a statement that the complaint misrepresents its work, undertaken over the past decade, aimed at making the online experience safe for teenagers. The web giant has said it does not design its products to be addictive among young users.
Meta did not immediately comment on the unredacted complaint following a request from The Associated Press.
Others acknowledged that Facebook and Instagram were also popular with children under 13 who, under company policy, were not allowed to use the service.
A Facebook security official hinted at the possibility that the crackdown on young users could harm the company’s business in a 2019 email, according to the Wall Street Journal report.
But a year later, the same executive expressed frustration that while Facebook was willing to explore the use of underage users for commercial purposes, it was not showing the same enthusiasm for ways to identify underage users. younger people and remove them from its platforms.
The complaint says Meta sometimes has a backlog of up to 2.5 million young children’s accounts awaiting action, according to reports.
