On top of the political optics, the risks of increased regulatory pressure and the limits Facebook would have to put on data use to enable the type of ad targeting advertisers have come to expect from the company — already a hurdle for YouTube Kids advertisers — may have been enough for Facebook to fight its ad revenue instincts.

“The legal requirements for advertising [to kids under 13] is the precise opposite of Facebook’s business model, and so I think that that [would have been] an interesting cultural dynamic to manage if they [had planned] to sell advertising,” said Dylan Collins, CEO of kid tech firm SuperAwesome.

“We will not show ads in any Instagram experience we develop for people under the age of 13,” Stephanie Otway, a Facebook company spokesperson, told Digiday. A key reason Facebook said it wants to build a separate place in the Instagram universe for kids is the company wants to “find practical solutions to the ongoing industry problem of kids lying about their age to access apps,” she said.

“We’re working on new age verification methods to keep under-13s off Instagram and we’re exploring an Instagram experience for kids that is age-appropriate and managed by parents,” said Otway. Facebook requires people to be at least 13 years old to use Instagram and said in a March blog post it has “asked new users to provide their age when they sign up for an account for some time.”

With strict privacy rules guiding kids’ data use, such as the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) here in the U.S. and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, wading into the kiddie pool is risky for Facebook with or without ad targeting, said Charles Gabriel, head of advertising in the U.S. for kid-focused media company WildBrain Spark, which has an ads service and licensed content studio. The move will help Instagram “get ahead of” regulatory action that could come Facebook’s way, he said, noting it’s not feasible for the company to assume that only age-appropriate users are on Instagram. “You cannot stand behind the statement that ‘our platform is 13-plus,’” he said.

While Google’s YouTube for Kids offers advertising with strict targeting limitations, Facebook won’t be alone in launching a platform without ads aimed at kids. TikTok for Younger Users does that, too. It also does not permit sharing of personal information and prevents kids from sharing their videos, commenting on videos others post, messaging other users or even maintaining a profile or followers.

Dominant data tracking genes

A 2019 …read more

Source:: Digiday

Author: Aaron