A recent investigation conducted by The Wall Street Journal has uncovered alarming findings regarding the presence of child pornography on Instagram. The study revealed that Instagram has become a platform where pedophiles can easily find and access explicit material involving minors, as well as arrange meetups with children.
Researchers found that users could search hashtags like ‘#pedowhore’ and ‘#preeteensex,’ which led them to accounts selling child pornography. Disturbingly, many of these accounts masqueraded as children themselves, utilizing handles such as “little slut for you.”
Instead of directly publishing illicit content, these accounts would post “menus” of their offerings, allowing buyers to choose specific content they desired. Shockingly, some of these accounts even offered the option to pay for in-person meetings with the exploited children.
The researchers conducted a test by setting up accounts to gauge Instagram’s “suggested for you” feature’s recommendations. They were disturbed to find that Instagram’s algorithm swiftly flooded these test accounts with sexualized content involving minors, with some content linking to off-platform sites for content trading.
Using hashtags alone, the researchers discovered 405 sellers of self-generated child sexual material, with some of the accounts purporting to be operated by children as young as 12 years old.
Instagram’s search functionality permitted users to find illegal material despite having a pop-up warning that the content could contain child sexual abuse. The pop-up offered users the option to either “get resources” or “see results anyway.”
Pedophiles on Instagram devised an emoji code system to discuss illicit content discreetly. For example, a map emoji (?️) symbolized a “Minor-attracted person,” while a cheese pizza emoji (?) represented “Child Porn.” Accounts would often identify themselves as “seller” or “s3ller” and use coded language to denote the ages of the exploited children.
Despite multiple reports of explicit content, not all posts were taken down by Instagram. The platform often responded by claiming that the reported content did not violate their community guidelines, instead recommending users to hide the account to avoid seeing it.
Instagram attempted to ban specific hashtags associated with child pornography; however, their AI-driven hashtag suggestions found ways to circumvent these restrictions. By recommending alternative variations of searches and suggesting adding words like “boys” or “CP” to the search, Instagram’s algorithm inadvertently facilitated access to illegal content.
In a comparison with Twitter, the study found that although Twitter also had accounts offering child sexual abuse, Twitter’s algorithm recommended such accounts to a lesser extent than Instagram. Additionally, Twitter acted more promptly in removing such accounts from their platform.
These distressing findings highlight the urgent need for social media platforms to improve their content monitoring systems, as well as implement stricter policies to combat the proliferation of child pornography. The increasing number of reported cases, including the 47% rise in reports of child pornography received by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the U.S. in 2022, emphasizes the severity of this issue that requires immediate attention.
