"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a statement this week allowing social media companies to collect children's personal data without parental consent in the name of age verification, carving out an exception to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA), which decisively names children under 13 as untouchable for data collection, until now. Considering that COPPA was designed to protect sensitive data, the FTC is all but giving social media companies carte blanche to collect any information it deems necessary in the name of age verification."
"In an internet where you're more likely to interact with bots than actual humans online, while children become more technologically savvy everyday and can navigate phones better than they can bikes, social media platforms are looking for ways to balance keeping people's privacy top of mind while ensuring the safety of their underage users. Unfortunately, these two parameters often come in contradiction with one another, and the lack of government oversight means there's little incentive for these companies to pursue anything more than keeping the status quo."
Social media platforms face conflicting demands to protect children's privacy while ensuring their safety online. Bots dominate internet interactions while children grow increasingly tech-savvy, yet platforms lack government incentive to prioritize privacy. Recent data breaches and litigation prompted companies to develop age verification methods. The FTC recently issued a statement allowing social media companies to collect children's personal data without parental consent specifically for age verification purposes, creating an exception to COPPA protections for children under 13. This regulatory carve-out enables platforms to collect sensitive information under the guise of safety, despite COPPA's original intent to restrict such data collection from minors.
Read at Fortune
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]