The European Commission this Thursday demanded “immediate action” from Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg regarding the protection of minors on Instagram following an investigation that shows the social network promotes pedophile networks.
The study was conducted by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Universities of Stanford and Massachusetts Amherst.
“The Meta Voluntary Child Protection Code does not seem to be working. Now Mark Zuckerberg must explain himself and act immediately,” European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton tweeted.
Breton will meet with Zuckerberg on June 23 at the Meta headquarters in Merlo Park, California (USA), and this meeting will take place before the entry into force of the European Union’s digital services law.
The ruling will force major digital platforms to quickly remove illegal content and be transparent about the development of algorithms that determine what users see online and on social media.
“After August 25, under the Digital Services Act, Meta will have to demonstrate that it is taking action or face severe sanctions,” Breton said.
The rules allow the European Commission to impose fines of up to 6% of global turnover on large technology companies that do not comply. According to a joint study by The Wall Street Journal and the Universities of Stanford and Massachusetts Amherst, the Instagram algorithm helps link and promote a network of accounts dedicated to pedophilia and the purchase of sexual content from minors.
Investigators have found that Instagram allows people to search for explicit “hashtags” that link them to accounts that advertise the sale of child sexual material and “dating” minors.
Meta has already acknowledged that it has issues with some operations and told the WSJ that it has formed an internal working group to address the issues raised.
Meta, the owner of the Instagram platform, said it had eliminated 27 pedophile networks and that after receiving the findings of this study, it blocked “thousands of ‘hashtags’ that sexualize children, some of them with millions of posts.”
The company also restricted recommender systems that feature sexually oriented videos and images of teenagers and children.
Instagram is not the only social network accused of distributing sexually oriented content involving minors, as the Stanford University Internet Observatory found that Twitter had been labeling pedophile content as banned for months.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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