Facebook and Instagram will suspend accounts for children under 13 | Social networks

Facebook and Instagram will be more stringent in monitoring the accounts of children and adolescents under the age of 13. According to the policy of the service, although people under that age are not allowed to be part of social networks, a profile was only excluded if it was reported.

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Mark Zuckerberg's company announced this week that it has instructed its reviewers to investigate photos and videos of a whistleblower, if for some other reason. If they suspect that the user is younger than allowed, the account will be suspended. The owner of the profile cannot access the network until he can prove the year of his birth.

Facebook reinforces policy to remove minors under 13 years old Photo: DivulgaoFacebook reinforces policy to remove minors under 13 years old Photo: Divulgao

Facebook reinforces policy to remove minors under 13 years old Photo: Divulgao

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The change came after a complaint by the British TV channel Channel 4, in the document Inside Facebook: Secrets of a Social Network. In the film, a broadcaster journalist disguised himself as a content reviewer for the platform, through an outsourced company based in Ireland, and disclosed that the guidance received by employees was to ignore users who appeared to be minors.

In an official statement, Monika Bickert, Facebook's vice president of global policy management, said an investigation was underway to prevent a repeat of what happened. For example, we immediately demanded that all coaches in Dublin take a retraining session – and are preparing to do the same globally. We also analyzed the policy issues and the enforcement actions that the reporter raised and corrected the errors we found, he explained.

Among the measures taken, in addition to suspending the children's account, is doubling the number of employees of the security and protection team to 20 thousand people, of whom 7,500 will be auditors. Facebook has also promised to invest heavily in new technologies that help deal with problematic content on the network. This is a complex task and we have more work to do. But we are committed to doing everything right so that Facebook is a safe place for people and their friends, concluded Bickert.