Deemed To Have Failed To Comply With Regulations, Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner Issues Record Fines For Instagram

Instagram was fined for violating children's data protection rules. (photo: doc. pixabay)

JAKARTA - Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) imposed a record fine of 405 million euros (Rp5.9 trillion) against social network Instagram this week. According to a spokesman for the agency, this fine was given following an investigation into violations of handling children's data.

The investigation, which began in 2020, focused on child users between the ages of 13 and 17 who were authorized to operate business accounts, which facilitated the publication of users' phone numbers and/or email addresses.

"We made our final decision last Friday and it was a fine of 405 million euros," a DPC spokesman said, as quoted by Reuters. The fine went to Instagram's parent company, Meta Platforms Inc.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Meta Platforms Inc., the parent of Instagram, plans to appeal the fine.

According to a Meta spokesperson, Instagram argued that it had updated its settings on the protection of children and youth data more than a year ago. Since then they have released new features to keep teens safe and their information private.

The spokesperson said Instagram did not agree with the imposition of the fine and was carefully reviewing the decision.

The DPC itself has already fined Facebook, Apple, Google, and other technology giants because the headquarters for the European Union is located in Ireland. DPC has also conducted more than a dozen investigations into Meta's subsidiaries, including Facebook and WhatsApp.

WhatsApp was fined 225 million euros last year for failing to comply with EU data rules in 2018.

Irish regulators finalized a draft decision in the Instagram probe in December and shared it with other EU regulators under the bloc's "one stop shop" system that regulates large multinational companies.

Data protection for children and adolescents who are still considered minors, is of great concern in the European Union or Ireland. If there is a violation, the regulator will not hesitate to give a fairly large fine.

Things like this in fact have not been done in Indonesia, because it is still so easy for social media to use their data for business purposes such as advertising targeted for them.