Meta Is Not Child Safe — Yet

After the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, FaceBook agreed to independent assessments of its privacy program. As part of that assessment, the FTC has decided that FB (now Meta) is violating user privacy by sharing people’s private information with third-party apps.

The next violation is more serious — that of violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule by misrepresenting parental controls on its Messenger Kids app, letting kids not get parental consent for some chats and calls.

So, the FTC is proposing a blanket ban for all Meta’s services (like FB, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc.) on monetizing any data from users under 18. That means any data collected from these users could only be used for security reasons and any data collected while users are underage could not be later monetized once they turn 18.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/05/03/ftc-proposes-barring-meta-from-monetizing-kids-data.html

While I welcome this move, my question is why not bring it as a law across all the social media platforms. Wouldn’t that be better? Because if you restrict kids on one platform, they will simply move on to a different platform that would allow it.

Social media platforms are the evil of our times, arguably a necessary evil. Ironically, I am sharing this on a social media platform myself.

So, shouldn’t entities like FTC look at a broader implementation of security & privacy measures than targeting only one company?