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DannyB [soylentnews.org] writes:

As teens left Facebook, company planned to lure 6-year-olds, documents show [arstechnica.com]

Internal posts and job listings show plans were moving forward.

[...] Even before investigations [arstechnica.com] revealed that the company’s products were destroying teens’ mental health, interest in its flagship product was dropping off a cliff. [arstechnica.com] Since 2019, teen usage of the app has declined by 13 percent, and over the next two years, it’s expected to drop another 45 percent.

“Aging up is a real issue” a researcher wrote in an internal memo revealed last week. Perhaps that’s why Facebook was considering [nbcnews.com] new products targeted at children as young as six years old, according to a new document [documentcloud.org] handed over to Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen.

[....] “For many of our products, we historically haven’t designed for under 13 (with the exception of Messenger Kids) and the experiences built for those over 13 didn’t recognize distinctive maturity levels across the age spectrum.”

[....] Two years ago, though, a bug in the Messenger for Kids app allowed users to create group chats with unauthorized users. It took Facebook nearly a year to discover the bug, and it patched it the next day. Parents weren’t notified for another month, though.

In the wake of the disclosure, Senators Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) pressed Facebook on whether the company was violating COPPA. Kevin Martin, Facebook’s vice president of public policy, replied saying that it takes children’s privacy seriously and that the company thinks the app complies with COPPA.

Yet the senators weren’t entirely convinced by Martin’s letter. [...]

Long ago the biggest complaint about corporations and kids was the ads on Saturday morning cartoons.

Original Submission