Children's Safety fines

Fifty-one state and territory attorneys general settled claims that Meta designed Instagram and Facebook to be addictive for minors, knowingly exposed young users to mental-health harm, and misled the public about how safe its platforms were. Meta will pay a guaranteed $12.1B over ten years, rising to $17.1B if other major social platforms agree to adopt the same safeguards.

Texas reached its own settlement with Meta over the safety of children on its platforms, separate from the 51 attorneys general deal announced the same day. The Attorney General's release says Meta will pay over $1 billion to the state and adopt new safeguards for young users.

New Mexico became the first US state to beat a major technology company at trial over harm to young people. A Santa Fe jury found that Meta made false or misleading statements about platform safety and engaged in unconscionable trade practices that exploited the inexperience of children, and the court then added a $567M remedial award on top of the $375M in civil penalties.

The DPC found that Instagram business accounts publicly exposed children's phone numbers and email addresses by default.

The Irish DPC found that TikTok set children's accounts to public by default and had weak age-assurance safeguards, exposing young users' content.

The FTC and the New York Attorney General alleged that YouTube collected personal data from viewers of child-directed channels through cookies, without parental consent, and used it for targeted advertising. It was a record COPPA penalty at the time.

Alabama settled claims that TikTok Inc. built its platform with addictive features, knowingly exposed young users to serious mental harm, and misled the public about its safety. The case was set for trial the following week and would have been the first state case against TikTok to reach trial.

Brazil's data-protection authority fined ByteDance for processing the personal data of children and adolescents without a valid legal basis, across both logged-in accounts and guest browsing, and for failing to stop minors from registering in the first place.

The FTC settled claims that Amazon kept children's Alexa voice recordings indefinitely, against COPPA and parents' deletion requests.

The UK Information Commissioner found that Reddit processed the personal data of children under 13 without a lawful basis, because it had no robust age assurance in place, although its own terms barred them. It also found that Reddit had not carried out a data protection impact assessment on the risks its processing posed to children.

The UK Information Commissioner found that TikTok processed the data of children under 13 without parental consent, did not carry out adequate checks to identify and remove underage users, and did not clearly explain how it collected, used and shared data. The ICO estimated that up to 1.4 million UK children under 13 used the platform in 2020, although its own rules barred them.