Parents who lost their children due to the online damage harm to protest outside the dead office in New York City

Meta has been able to Kill the draft law of the two parties To protect children online, but parents of children who have experienced online damage are still pressing on social media companies to advance.

On Thursday, 45 families who lost children were held due to online damage – from flying to electronic bullying – an economic pause outside a Meta offices in Manhattan to honor the memory of their children, demand and accountability from the company.

Many wear white clothes, carry roses, signs of reading “profits of definition, children pay the price”, and framed pictures of their dead children – a scene that starkly contradicts the sunny spring day in New York City.

Although the story of each different family, the thread that brings them together is that “they were all ignored by technology companies when they tried to communicate with them and alert them to what happened to their child.”

One of the mother, Perla Mendoza, said that her son died by poisoning fentanel after using the drugs he bought from a Snapchat dealer. It is one of the many parents who have similar stories A lawsuit against SnapOn the pretext that the company did not do much to prevent illegal drug sales on the platform before the death of its son. She found her son’s merchant publishing pictures that announce hundreds of grains and informed that she was Snap, but she says that the company took eight months to refer to his account.

“His drug dealer was selling on Facebook as well,” Mendoza told Techcrunch. “Everything is connected. He was doing the same thing in all these applications, (including) Instagram. He had multiple accounts.”

The vigil follows the last certificate of the violations of Sarah Wayne Williams, which reveals how Meta targeted from 13 to 17 years With ads when they were depressed or depressed. It also comes four years after the publication of the Wall Street Journal Facebook files, What shows that the company knew that Instagram was toxic to teenage mental health, despite reducing the issue in public places.

On Thursday, who also included and designed by Parentstogether Action, the events organizers included and designed for us. Open message Poorized to Zuckerberg with more than 10,000 signatures. The message requires that the definition stop promoting the dangerous content of children (including sexual content, racism, hate speech, reinforcement of content that enhances turbulent eating, and more); Preventing sexual predators and other bad actors from using identification platforms to reach children; Providing transparent and rapid decisions for children’s reports on the content or problematic interactions.

Gardner put the message on a pile of bouquets of roses that were placed outside the dead office in a place and a poem while the demonstrators chanted, “building a future in which children enjoy.”

Over the past year, Meta has implemented new guarantees for children and adolescents via Facebook and Instagram, including work with law and other technology platforms to prevent children’s exploitation. Meta was recently presented Adolescent accounts To Instagram, Facebook, and MessengerWhich limits those who can contact a teenager to the application and restrict the type of content that the account holder can see. Recently, Instagram has started Using artificial intelligence to find teenagers lying About their age to overcome guarantees.

“We know that parents are concerned about the presence of unsafe or inappropriate experiences online,” Meta, Sophie Vogel, Meta, told Techcrunch. “This is the reason why we have changed the Instagram experience significantly for teenagers who have adolescent accounts, which are designed to address the most important parents’ concerns. Teenagers have built -in protection that limits adolescents and the content they see, and 94 % of parents say. Schools recognize potentially online harm and know where they go to help.”

Gardner says that dead behavior does not do enough to connect the gaps in safety.

For example, Gardner said, though dead Special correspondence policies are more strict For teenagers, adults can still deal with children who are not in their network through the comments after that and ask them to agree to a friend request.

Gardner said: “We had researchers and communicated with the passage of 12 or 13 years, and within a few minutes, they became truly extremists, violent or sexual content,” Gardner said. “So it is clear that it does not work, and it is almost not enough.”

Gardner also indicated that the recent changes in Meta are on Fact to verify facts and moderate content In favor of societal observations is an indication that the company “gives up more responsibility, not mill.”

Meta and the pressure of pressure groups also led the online safety law, which failed to reach Congress at the end of 2024. The draft law was expected to pass widely in the House of Representatives after sailing through the Senate’s vote, and would have imposed social media rules to prevent addiction and mental health on the damage that the sites are widely approved.

“I think what (Mark Zuckerberg) needs, and what is the goal of today, is to show that parents are really distressed than this, and not only those who have lost their children, but other Americans who wake up on this reality and thinking,” I do not want Mark Zuckerberg decisions about the safety of my child via the Internet. ”