Instagram’s problems with minors are already well knownand that it will still annoy the Meta even if it takes more and better measures to protect them on the platform. So much so that in my opinion and currently the most sensible thing to do would be to make the service something exclusive for adults (something that on the other hand should be extrapolated to the rest of social networks) , but I’m very afraid that will never happen.

As you surely remember, last year we learned that Instagram was in the works a specific version for childrens, something that began to generate rejection from day one, and which became something even darker and more disturbing when it was published that those responsible were aware of the disastrous effects of Instagram on the mental health of the youngest. Two reports that together tell us that the moral character of the people responsible for Instagram is measured in negative numbers.

Fortunately, due to the huge scandal and open investigation in the wake of these revelations, Meta has announced that it is putting its plans for a minors Instagram on hold. The decent thing, at least the ethical thing, would be to cancel it once and for all, but asking for pears from an elm is usually a bad idea. However, and although all this “noise” was happening between 2021 and 2022, in fact the “relationship” between Instagram and minors was already under the microscope (actually under several microscopes) and today we have a report on one of them research.

I am referring specifically to the investigation launched in 2020 by the Irish regulator, which was submitted to the European Data Protection Board, the body responsible for ensuring uniform application of the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union. A few weeks ago we already told you that the European institution was going to announce and as we can read on Yahoo! Finance, the wait is over Instagram fined 405 million euros for not protecting children’s privacy.

As we told you then, that’s the problem minors could change their account settings from private to professionalwhich by default modified their privacy settings and made their data available to the public, which, if we are talking about minors, is completely prohibited by the European Data Protection Regulation.

In the said publication, we can read that Meta will present allegations of this sanction after arguing that the service protects the privacy of minors and makes all accounts of minors private. However, the facts investigated by the Irish regulator were more than provenso I seriously doubt that the recall can do anything, other than try to clean up a bit his image, quite degraded today.