Photo Credit: Vanessa Bumbeers
Meta and TikTok are facing hot water in Brazil for failing to protect minors on their platform. The Brazilian consumer rights group The Collective Defense Institute has launched two lawsuits against Meta, TikTok, and Kwai—another Chinese owned short-video platform. The lawsuit seeks three billion Brazilian reals ($525.8M).
The lawsuits allege that all three social media platforms failed to create mechanisms to prevent “indiscriminate use” of the platforms by minors. The suits also demand that each of these companies create clear data protection mechanisms and issue warnings about the risks to children’s and teenager’s mental health due to addiction.
“It is urgent that the measures be adopted in order to change the way the algorithms work, the processing of data from users under 18, and the way in which teenagers aged 13 and over are supervised and their accounts created, in order to ensure a safer, healthier experience… as is already the case in developed countries,” Plaintiff lawyer Lillian Salgado told Reuters.
Both TikTok and Meta have found themselves in hot water in several jurisdictions over minor safety on their platforms. New Mexico sued Meta and Snap Inc. for not protecting children on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat in 2023. During discovery in that case, a memo from 2021 revealed that Meta had discovered more than 100,000 instances of harassment faced by children on the platform. Despite the discovery, Meta executives have rejected efforts to redesign the algorithm.
Meanwhile, 15 state attorneys general have sued TikTok for “falsely claiming its platform is safe for young people.” TikTok owner ByteDance introduced child protection controls for accounts under 13, but that feature was more intended to reduce regulatory pressure than to actually protect kids. Meta has announced a new ‘Teen Account’ feature on Instagram, which automatically limits the accounts teenagers see and who can contact them. TikTok told Reuters it had not been notified of the pending lawsuit by Brazil.