EU Commission Nears Fine for Meta Over Digital Services Act Violations

The European Commission is inching closer to fining Meta for violating the Digital Services Act based on the preliminary findings of an EU investigation, The Financial Times reports.

According to the Commission, Instagram and Facebook may have breached the DSA by failing to adequately prevent minors from using their respective platforms.

Meta's terms and conditions require users to be at least 13 years of age to access Facebook and Instagram, but the EU's investigation found multiple issues with Meta's current approach to getting underage users out. Those include how easy it is to lie about your age when you set up an account, and how complex it is to actually report to Meta that a user is under 13.

The EU also claims that Meta uses "an incomplete and arbitrary risk assessment" when it considers the danger of minors using Instagram and Facebook.

"Meta's assessment contradicts large bodies of evidence from all over the European Union indicating that roughly 10-12 percent of children under 13 are accessing Instagram and/or Facebook," the Commission says." Moreover, Meta seems to have disregarded readily available scientific evidence indicating that younger children are more vulnerable to potential harms caused by services like Facebook and Instagram."

The European Commission is calling on Instagram and Facebook to both strengthen their tools for detecting and removing minors and change their approach to risk assessment. If changes aren't made, Meta could face a fine equivalent to six percent of its worldwide annual revenue. Before any of that can happen, though, Meta can view the documents for the Commission's investigation, reply to the preliminary finding and take measures to remedy some of the issues identified by the investigation.

"We're clear that Instagram and Facebook are intended for people aged 13 and older and we have measures in place to detect and remove accounts from anyone under that age," Meta said in a statement to The Financial Times. "We continue to invest in technologies to find and remove underage users and will have more to share next week about additional measures rolling out soon."