Imagine a company is able to find out the moments of greatest vulnerability of teenagers. For example, when they feel insecure about a part of their body, if one is worried about acne or another about that incipient cellulite… Imagine that this company sells that personal data to cosmetic brands to deliver to each kid the product that supposedly will solve their problem. Facebook (now Meta) profited from these practices, and worse ones. These days, Mark Zuckerberg’s company is being tried in the U.S. for exploiting minors for its business.
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It was known that Facebook executives, including Zuckerberg himself, were aware of the abusive use of teenagers’ data. There are many books that explain these and other misdeeds. Sarah Wynn-Williams narrates it very well towards the end of her work The Irresponsible. She explains how she found out about these practices when she worked at Facebook from the questions of an Australian journalist. She verified how when a teenager (especially girls) posted a selfie and immediately deleted it, that information was provided to beauty product brands, which in turn could bombard the young girl with advertising. The author recounts how, when these types of complaints were revealed, Facebook always resorted to the same statement: “We take this issue very seriously and are putting all our effort into remedying the situation.”
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TikTok will pay 400 million dollars to settle a lawsuit accusing the platform of violating U.S. laws on children’s online privacy. The lawsuit was filed by the Biden administration for collecting and retaining data from minors without notifying parents or obtaining their consent. For TikTok, 400 million is a scratch, but it opens a path. The important thing about this step and the trial against Meta is that attempts to regulate these corporations from Europe or Australia will not be effective if the U.S. does not get involved. Prosecutors prosecuting Meta argue that these platforms were designed to be addictive and that this causes emotional harm to minors. They compare it to the process that ended up condemning tobacco companies in the nineties. Maybe they are understating it.
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