Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta faces a new investigation from the European Union over non-compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) in protection of minors.
The new formal proceedings against Meta follow a risk assessment report that the company sent in September 2023 and the European Commission’s analysis. In particular, the Commission is concerned that both Facebook and Instagram may not protect minors against behavioural addiction and the so-called ‘rabbit-hole effects’, plus the Commission wants to check Meta’s age-assurance and verification methods to ensure minors don’t have access before they are legally allowed, as the regulator suspects that the system currently in place is not adequate.
Commenting on the investigation, Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market said that “we will now investigate in-depth the potential addictive and “rabbit hole” effects of the platforms, the effectiveness of their age verification tools, and the level of privacy afforded to minors in the functioning of recommender systems,” while Executive Vice-President of the Commission Margrethe Vestager underlined the main object of the investigation, “we want to protect young people’s mental and physical health.”
Meta and its social media apps fall under the DSA and its provisions and as such it must comply with its regulations. In this case, Facebook and Instagram need to be assessed on their interfaces in order to control whether they may exploit the well-being of minors and if the default privacy settings are enough to ensure safety and security. Finally, the investigation wants to clarify whether Meta’s age verification tools are effective.
In this preliminary phase, the Commission will ask for Meta’s collaboration for access of information and can accept commitments from the company to offer solutions to possible findings of the investigation.
The new proceeding officially started on May 16 and it is unrelated to another proceeding against Meta over false advertising and political content related with the upcoming European Parliament election.
