This week, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is cracking down on Big Tech, specifically setting his sights on Meta Platforms, Inc., purportedly in the interests of child safety and consumer protection. It seems that guarding Tennessee's youngest occupants from the digital boogeyman has climbed to the top of Skrmetti's to-do list.
Recent reports have Meta's own employees up in arms after revelations that the photo-sharing app, Instagram, under the guise of "parent-managed minor accounts," enabled the money-making scheme of chic tots to a customer base of men, often overt about sexual interests. According to allegations, Meta even tipped off "likely pedophiles" about child-modeling subscriptions. And scammers have hijacked accounts, locking out the very individuals who created them in the first place.
On March 4, the AG joined a squad of 27 state attorneys general in sending a letter to Meta, slamming Instagram for these child exploitation practices. Hailing from a diverse coalition, these AGs are not here to play. In their beseeched letter, as Skrmetti's office reported, they espouse the troubling fact that Instagram appeared to be a haven for those with nefarious motives directed at children.
Shifting gears without dropping momentum, Skrmetti put his John Hancock on another letter the following day. This time he was shoulder-to-shoulder with a 41-strong bipartisan group of attorneys general aiming at ending the scourge of Facebook and Instagram account takeovers. Users, after all the painstaking efforts to establish their social media presence, found themselves ousted from their own digital kingdoms by some lowly scammers. The AGs demanded that Meta better review its data security practices with a fine-tooth comb and safeguard user accounts against such invasions, the Tennessee AG's office reported.
These aren't the first arrows Skrmetti has shot in Meta's direction. Let's not forget that back in October 2023, he launched a lawsuit against the tech giant. His claim was that Instagram was doling out mental health issues to young users like they were candy on Halloween.
