EU, 'Facebook and Instagram age control systems ineffective'

BRUSSELS - The European Commission announced today, Wednesday 29 April, that Instagram and Facebook, two companies of the US Meta group, are not doing enough to mitigate the risks of under-13s accessing their services. Both apps, according to the EU executive, are in violation of the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European law that regulates the greater digital space. It is now up to Meta to respond to Brussels' findings.

"The DSA requires platforms to enforce their own rules," recalled European Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen in a statement. Meta's own terms and conditions indicate that its services are not intended for children under the age of 13. However, our preliminary results show that Instagram and Facebook are doing very little to prevent children under this age from accessing their services'.

According to the EU executive, the measures taken by Meta 'do not adequately prevent minors under the age of 13 from accessing their services, nor allow them to be detected and removed in a timely manner if they have already gained access'. Among other things, when creating an account, minors under the age of 13 can enter a false date of birth, without there being effective checks to verify the correctness of the date of birth.

At this stage, Brussels considers that Instagram and Facebook must modify their 'risk assessment methodology' in order to identify which dangers occur on the two platforms in the EU and how they manifest themselves. Moreover, again according to the Commission, Instagram and Facebook must strengthen measures to prevent, detect and exclude minors under the age of 13 from their service.

The decision on Meta came after the European Commission presented a few days ago a new application that is to allow European citizens to prove their age online, in order to have access to sites prohibited to minors. The new application, which should be available soon, will respect privacy rules, be on the open source principle, and easy to use - available on both computers and mobile phones.

"We do not agree with these preliminary findings," commented a Meta spokesperson. "We are clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people 13 years of age or older, and we have measures in place to detect and remove the accounts of anyone under that age (...) Age verification is an industry-wide challenge that requires an industry-wide solution, and we will continue to work constructively with the European Commission on this important issue.