![]() The app doesn’t give kids separate Facebook or Messenger accounts. The Menlo Park, California company added that it will “vigorously fight” the FTC’s action and expects to prevail.įacebook launched Messenger Kids in 2017, pitching it as a way for children to chat with family members and friends approved by their parents. Let’s be clear about what the FTC is trying to do: usurp the authority of Congress to set industry-wide standards and instead single out one American company while allowing Chinese companies, like TikTok, to operate without constraint on American soil,” Meta said in a prepared statement. “Despite three years of continual engagement with the FTC around our agreement, they provided no opportunity to discuss this new, totally unprecedented theory. Meta called the announcement a “political stunt.” ![]() “The company’s recklessness has put young users at risk, and Facebook needs to answer for its failures.” “ Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Meta would also be subject to other limitations, including with its use of face-recognition technology and be required to provide additional privacy protections for its users. The FTC said the company has failed to fully comply with the 2020 order. This would include data collected through its virtual-reality products. regulators say Facebook misled parents and failed to protect the privacy of children using its Messenger Kids app, including misrepresenting the access it provided to app developers to private user data.Īs a result, The Federal Trade Commision on Wednesday proposed sweeping changes to a 2020 privacy order with Facebook - now called Meta - that would prohibit it from profiting from data it collects on users under 18. The company says an Android and Kindle version of the app are coming next year. Messenger Kids is available on iOS in the U.S. ![]() Parents will only be able to see Messenger Kids accounts connected to their own Facebook friends. There will not be a searchable database of Messenger Kids users.They can communicate with Messenger Kids users through their existing Messenger app. Parents won’t need to download a separate app.Messenger Kids won’t include any advertisements.Messenger Kids accounts are not automatically converted into Facebook accounts when children turn 13.Facebook only requires a first and last name for a Messenger Kids account, and any other data collected from the account is kept separately from Facebook’s other user data, the company claims. Creating a Messenger Kids account is not the same as creating a Facebook account.Doing that for children will certainly put Messenger under a new microscope.Ī few other things to know about the new app: Ensuring that adults who use Facebook are safe from abuse or contact from unwanted strangers can be difficult. Still, Facebook’s decision to build products specifically for preteens puts the company in an interesting new sphere of responsibility. “This is what we’re going to address and fix.” “It’s really hard to keep the control over who communicate with, how they communicate, what tools are at their disposal,” said David Marcus, head of Facebook Messenger. The company claims that it spent the past six months talking with hundreds of parents in focus groups to understand the kinds of concerns and needs they have when it comes to letting their young children communicate online. The hope is this will help parents monitor for issues related to bullying or abuse. (All reports are handled by humans, the company said.) In addition to needing a parent to create an account and add new contacts, kids cannot delete any messages, and parents are notified any time a kid reports a message. Instead, the company stressed that it is taking security for Messenger Kids very seriously. In a press briefing with reporters to unveil the new product, Facebook didn’t talk much about that benefit. It’s easy to imagine how a 10-year-old who uses Messenger Kids and creates a network of contacts on the service will eventually graduate to regular Messenger, and likely Facebook. Facebook is losing some of its teen users to other apps, like Snapchat or Instagram - luckily, Facebook owns Instagram - which is one reason Facebook must like the idea of Messenger Kids. ![]() Of course, getting preteens onto Messenger has one other major benefit: It offers Facebook a chance to get in front of the youngest generation of internet users before potential competitors. The point is to give kids a messaging app that isn’t tied to a phone number, and that won’t lead to messages from people the child doesn’t know. If a kid wants to chat with a friend from school, for example, her parent would need to be Facebook friends with a parent of the other child, and the two parents would need to agree to a connection request.
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