Ireland hits Instagram with $400m fine over mishandling of teenage data

Instagram will have to pony up a whopping $400 million in fines after the Irish government determined that it mishandled private data from multiple teenage users, a decision the social media company has said it will protest. 

The Irish Data Protection Commission this week slapped the fine on Meta, Instagram's parent company, handing down the second-largest privacy fine in European Union History behind a gargantuan near-$740 million fine Amazon had to pay earlier this year in Luxembourg. 

The Irish government has a notable level of authority over many U.S. tech companies, which have set up shop to varying degrees in the tax-friendly climate of Ireland. 

The government's investigations into Instagram's handling of teen data came about because some users under the age of 18 were found to have switched to business accounts in order to access the posting metric data available to only those types of accounts. 

The business accounts reportedly displayed the personal information of the users who activated them, including some non-adults.