08-10-202409:07 AM - last edited on 08-11-202410:48 AM by NolaBaby
I got this email from Meta last night:
Hi Ryan,
We wanted to let you know that we’ve made updates to the Supplemental Meta Platforms Technologies Privacy Policy and the Parent Privacy Disclosure that apply to your or your child’s use of Meta Platforms Technologies Products, such as Meta Quest. These updates provide information on new features that allow you to add approved contacts for your child, manage who they follow, and manage their privacy settings.
Here are some of the key updates we’re making: Your child will now be able to follow others and have followers. Your child’s Meta Horizon profile is set to private by default, which means all follow requests have to be accepted by your child or you. Now, you can choose to manage who your child follows and who follows your child in Family Center. You can add users as approved contacts that your child can call and chat with. Approved contacts can also send or receive invites from your child to join them in an app or experience. You or your child can remove approved contacts anytime in Family Center. You can control who can see your child’s activity in virtual reality with privacy settings in Family Center. Your child’s Active Status and current app usage will be defaulted to “off” or hidden from others unless you change these default privacy settings in Family Center. By default, your child’s activity will only be visible to your child. People you add as approved contacts, your child’s followers, and those they follow may appear higher in your child’s search results. We may collect information about how your child is connected to others, such as who they follow and who you have added as an approved contact. To use some of these new features, you’ll need to accept the updates to our Parent Privacy Disclosure.
View Parent Privacy Disclosure
- The Meta Team
When I login to meta family center I cannot see any child accounts. I have no idea what account this is even referring to. Also I find the changes in this update to be intrusive and creepy. No I do not want my 5 year old being contacted by adult strangers in VR or having his usage and data tracked by Meta.
After reading this email and trying to dig further with no success, I have decided our quest headset is now off limits to our three young kids. I was able to login to our 9 year old's meta account using his email address and his birthday is wrong (says he is older than he actually is and I can't update it). I decided to delete the account associated with him and Meta is saying it takes 30 days to delete his data, but won't even say if the actual account is going to be deleted.
We don't want this product if it is trying to expose them to adults on the internet. I am thoroughly creeped out now by Meta. Leave the kids alone @Zucks
if you don't have child accounts in your family center, you probably haven't created a child account (10-12 yrs old).
These accounts had restrictions in social features, such as they can't follow people, people cant follow them, they can't use calls and so on.
Many parents asked for the possibility that they can allow certain persons - for example siblings, parents, real life friends - to follow child accounts to play multiplayer games.
That's what the mail about.......seems Meta made this possible now. I can imagine that many parents - and the kids even more - are happy about that.
That’s actually something I want and was glad when I got email… but I have tried clicking to accept the parent privacy disclosure last night and all day today so far and keeps giving error on iPhone, iPad and laptop. Were you able to accept it?
I received this email yesterday. I've tried on both PC and phone (app installed and logged in) to confirm the changes. On both it says "Something went wrong. Try again later."
So i did create an account for him when he first got the VR headset, but it is somehow not linked to my meta account. I think when I created his account I had to put he was 2 years older than he is to use the headset at all which is why the birthday is wrong (i.e. I put in the wrong year, so thanks for reminding me).
I was able to login as my kid and it was weird because he had no family ties either.
So I wanted to read it and see how it applies to my kid but when I went to family center link the first time all I could do was accept the discosure or close it so I closed it that first time to see what child accounts it even applied too. Now when I go back to family center via the email link there is no disclosure to read and I still don't see any child accounts.
I'm really tired of dealing with this stuff and our kids. It should be very simple to provide a child account to use VR apps without access to chatting with internet strangers. I don't understand why that is so hard for Meta and other companies to accomplish. So far we have had to ditch twitch, youtube kids and roblox because older kids/teenagers/adults were showing sexual/grooming behavior in the chat/IM, My wife and I try to let them get access to everything but we watch what is going on closely and it has been really disturbing and eye opening experience to see how many creeps are on these services directed at younger kids. Now it looks like this meta oculous device is getting added to the list.
I suspect meta's approach is really driven by monetization goals and trying to setup for when these kids turn 18 so they can really crank up the targeted ad campaigns and productize these young consumers. Like I said in my first post... Creepy.
I assume you created an account for your son when Meta accounts required a minimum age of 13. Last year Meta introduced child accounts(10-12), managed by parents.
Maybe you want have a look about at that, I'll put in some links.
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