Letter Text (PDF)

Washington (December 5, 2023) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding the company stop intentionally evading the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). As alleged in a recent complaint filed by 33 states, Meta appears to have known for years that millions of children under age 13 use its services, but the company has not even attempted to comply with COPPA’s privacy requirements for those young users.  

COPPA was enacted in 1998 to protect the privacy of children under age 13 by requiring websites and online services to obtain parental consent before collecting personal information on the child. According to the states’ complaint, in 2015, an internal Meta report estimated that four million users on Instagram were under age 13, making up 30 percent of all children between 10 and 12 years old in the United States. Meta also allegedly continued to collect data on underage users, even after receiving reports that the users were children. In no circumstance did Meta attempt to comply with COPPA by obtaining parental consent to continue collecting the kids’ data.

In their letter to Mr. Zuckerberg, Senators Markey and Cassidy wrote, “This callous disregard for COPPA’s commonsense and practical privacy requirements must end. If the allegations are true, Meta appears to have both violated current law by pretending it did not have actual knowledge that users on its platform were under age 13 and demonstrated the need to update the knowledge standard. We have introduced legislation, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), to do that, ensuring that social media platforms like Meta can no longer pretend their services do not have millions of child users. Given the sheer audacity of Meta’s apparent COPPA evasion, Congress must move expeditiously to pass COPPA 2.0 and strengthen children’s online privacy protections.”

To fully determine Meta’s compliance with COPPA, Senators Markey and Cassidy request answers by January 8, 2024, for questions that include:

1. How many Meta and Instagram accounts did Meta disable or remove because the user was under the age of 13? 
2. For all accounts that were not disabled or removed, did Meta take any additional action to confirm that the user was at least 13 years old?
3. When Meta receives a report of an underage user on Facebook or Instagram, what immediate steps does Meta take in response to the report, and what is the time frame for taking those steps?
4. Does Meta currently have a backlog of user accounts reported as underage? If so, for each of the past five years, please provide the size of the backlog for Instagram and Facebook accounts.
5. Does Meta use an algorithm to estimate a “modified” age for users on Instagram and Facebook?

As author of the landmark 1998?Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, Senator Markey has long championed protections for children and teens online. In May, Senators Markey and Cassidy reintroduced?the?Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act?(COPPA 2.0), legislation to update online data privacy rules for the 21st century to ensure children and teenagers are protected online. In July, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee unanimously?passed?COPPA 2.0.

###