Senators ask Meta why it waited so long to make teen accounts private by default

A group of senators has written a letter

to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking why his company delayed launching key protections for users under 18. The letter, signed by Brian Schatz (D-HI), Katie Britt (R-AL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), James Lankford (R-OK), and Christopher Coons (D-DE), cites court documents unsealed late last year that revealed claims that Meta may have downplayed its platforms’ harm in favor of increasing user engagement.

Meta started automatically putting teens on Instagram into private and more restrictive accounts in September 2024, before extending the protections to Facebook and Messenger last year. But an unredacted cou …

Read the full story at The Verge.