At Meta, millions of underage users were an 'open secret,' show court filing
At Meta, millions of underage users were an 'open secret,' show court filing
The social media giant "routinely continued to collect" children's personal information, including their locations and email addresses, without parental permission, in violation of a federal children's privacy law, according to the court filing
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Okay there's a story to all of this. In 1983 when Ronald Reagan saw Wargames he was so terrified he readily signed the CFAA which made it super illegal (like 25 years in prison -- same as murder one in some states) to do hacker stuff.
Until, very recently, hacker stuff banned by the CFAA included violating the TOS of websites and social media platforms.
So if you lied about your age to make a Snapchat account, you could be in serious trouble... if a prosecutor wanted to ruin the life of a ten-year-old girl. Most prosecutors don't want to ruin the lives of ten-year-old girls.
In fact, we Americans typically commit three felonies a day, a large number of which are violations of the CFAA. They're convenient to the DoJ if you're an enemy of the state, or some official has interest in your land or your spouse, or it wants to dispose of your population demographic.
Recently a judge admitted no-one reads TOS disclosures anyway, and disobeying one shouldn't count as a crime. At the same time, if you're a hactivist or a whistle-blower you can expect no mercy from the courts. Better to flee to Russia.
That said, there was no way Zuckerberg was going to snitch on kids who wanted to social media about on his turf, and it's not his fault they're disclosing all their vitals while pretending to be a grown up.
The moral of the story is when laws serve scared presidents and big corporations instead of the public, the internet routes around it like damage, and kids get caught up in the mix.
Since we won't even give our kids medical care and school lunches, I say the US and states care less about children as they do the bad look when children get visibly hurt or killed, so the mess is way bigger than the CFAA and kids roaming the darkweb.
That was a fun read with some interesting facts I never knew... But I think you put some weird spins into it.
Like I don't think Americans are commiting 3 felonies a day, and I'd really be curious about the explanation of that.
And I dont think lying about your age is applicable to the CFAA without some wild lawyering to consider it impersonating someone else to gain unauthorized access to protected data.
But maybe I suck at understanding legal writing
https://www.justice.gov/jm/jm-9-48000-computer-fraud
Thus, embellishing an online dating profile contrary to the terms of service of the dating website; creating fictional accounts on hiring, housing, or rental websites; or using a pseudonym on a social networking site that prohibits them, might all violate a user’s contract with the owner of the protected computer, but the Department will not take the position that a mere contractual violation caused the user’s previous authorization to be automatically withdrawn and that the user was from that point onward acting in violation of the CFAA
I think this is a decent defense of CFAA not worrying about lying about age
My source is a lot of reading on Techdirt, and their source is the explanation in Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent by Harvey Silverglate, but please, if you have doubts, I encourage you to dive deep.
Eh I would rather have had a discussion, summary or explanation than read a 400 page book for a random interesting claim
Here's the book if anyone's curious
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229
I couldn't find any Techdirt articles with substance in the claim, but I'm not going to listen to podcasts so maybe thats where any details of the claim are hidden
[...blah...blah...] so the mess is way bigger than the CFAA and kids roaming the darkweb.
That may be, but still your kids need protection from toxic social media.
Real, functioning protection. Terms of service don't achieve that. Laws don't achieve that either. Practical measures are needed,and they need to be strong.
If all of Facebook is toxic, then no kids should ever be able to get there.