Since October, Meta, a technology giant with services such as Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp, has suffered a joint action of 33 states in the United States for privacy violations of its users.

A recent complaint reveals that the company is not only aware that children under the age of 13 use their platforms, which goes against their own terms of services in many countries, but also "bought" and "persecuted" this demographic group for years on Instagram.

The report is from The New York Times, and says the Meta has long been dishonest in the way it handles accounts of children under 13 when they are discovered, often communicating that they will disable them, but continue to collect their data.

The complaint lodged last Wednesday also reveals the arguments initially drawn up by the prosecutors in the original case, when they filed the same in the Federal Court of California in the last month. Accounts of children under 13 are an "open secret" in the company. While the policies of your services make clear the requirements to sign up, children can easily lie to your idiocy, something that says the process that "Meta does little to prevent".

According to the information still contained in the process, between 2019 and 2023 Meta received more than 1.1 million complaints from users under the age of 13 on Instagram, but disabled only a fraction of this number, and continued to collect data from these minors without the consent of their parents.

In addition, the complaint also discusses ongoing violations of the privacy laws of children on the internet, manipulating young people to stay longer using the apps, promoting body dysmorphia and exposing potentially harmful content.

It is worth noting that the Meta published, earlier this month, an appeal so that U.S. legislators assign more responsibility to parents when it comes to downloads of applications by minors. Antigone Davis, Global Chief of Security at Meta, has proposed the requirement that parents have approval over apps downloads for children under the age of 16.