BRUSSELS, Belgium- Facebook and Instagram are under formal investigation in the European Union over child protection concerns.
The EU Commission opened formal proceedings to assess whether Meta, the provider of Facebook and Instagram, may have breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) in areas linked to the protection of minors.
The proceedings follow a raft of requests for information to parent entity Meta since the bloc’s online governance regime, the Digital Services Act (DSA), started applying last August.
“The current proceedings address the following areas Meta’s compliance with DSA obligations on assessment and mitigation of risks caused by the design of Facebook’s and Instagram’s online interfaces, which may exploit the weaknesses and inexperience of minors and cause addictive behaviour, and/or reinforce so-called ‘rabbit hole’ effect,” the Commission said in a statement.
The Commission further explained that, “such an assessment is required to counter potential risks for the exercise of the fundamental right to the physical and mental well-being of children as well as to the respect of their rights. “
The investigations will also seek to establish whether Meta’s has complied with DSA requirements in relation to the mitigation measures to prevent access by minors to inappropriate content, notably age-verification tools used by Meta, which may not be reasonable, proportionate and effective.
Also, the Commission will monitor Meta’s compliance with DSA obligations to put in place appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety and security for minors, “particularly with regard to default privacy settings for minors as part of the design and functioning of their recommender systems.”
The EU opened a similar probe into addictive design concerns on video sharing social network TikTok last month.
