Meta & Minors: Facebook/Instagram’s “Vast Elite Pedophile Network”
Social Media: The New Sexual Media
Faithful readers will recall that I am no stranger to addressing the consequences posed to culture by way of social media technology.
My intent here is to show another way in which the medium of social media can offend.
And though unearthing suitable examples of this are not difficult to uncover, I wish to demonstrate social media’s aptitude for hyper-sexualizing those who might choose to use it, no small matter in a culture that sanctions its juvenile members to embrace the technology early in life.
For it is no secret that technology’s results can be especially pronounced for children and teenagers.
Our focus here will be on Meta’s Instagram and Facebook.
In June, startling revelations were brought to light through a collaborative investigation between The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
As detailed by a June 7, 2023 article from The Wall Street Journal, “Instagram helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the Commission and purchase of underage sex content…Pedophiles have long used the internet, but unlike the forums and file transfer services that cater to people who have an interest in illicit content, Instagram doesn’t merely host these activities. Instagram’s algorithms promote them. Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share these interests, the journal and academic researchers found.”
It was reported that Instagram makes it facile for users to search using hashtags that can help them pinpoint such illicit material, including videos, images and even meetings in person.
As reported by entertainment magazine Variety, “Researchers found that Instagram enabled people to search ‘explicit hashtags such as #pedowhore and #preteensex’ and then connected them to accounts that used the terms to advertise child-sex material for sale, according to the report. Per the Journal, test accounts set up by researchers that viewed a single such account ‘were immediately hit with ‘suggested for you’ recommendations of purported child-sex-content sellers and buyers, as well as accounts linking to off-platform content trading sites. Following just a handful of these recommendations was enough to flood a test account with content that sexualizes children.’”
As put by the Journal, “At the right price, children are available for in-person ‘meet ups.’”
The researchers found more than 400 sellers of “self-generated child sex material,” which means accounts claimed to be operated by the children involved. Some say they are as young as age twelve, while many are said to use overtly sexual handles, in doing so making no secret of their aim. Some of these accounts had thousands of unique followers, while many of the associated users also spoke of ways to access minors.
According to the Journal: “Current and former Meta employees who have worked on Instagram child-safety initiatives estimate the number of accounts that exist primarily to follow such content is in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions.”
Following the disclosures, Meta was moved to establish a child-safety task force.
Late last month, Senator Josh Hawley took it upon himself to expose what many technological chieftains seem unwilling to accost: the presence of a “vast elite pedophile network” in apparent operation on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law congressional hearing, Hawley spoke with Meta whistleblower Arturo Béjar.
Béjar, a former Meta employee who worked on well-being for Instagram from 2019 to 2021 as well as a director of engineering for Facebook’s Protect and Care team, first noticed the problem after witnessing his fourteen-year-old being subjected to such content on Instagram.
“In that memo, you disclosed to them that according to your own research, one in eight children, children now, had experienced unwanted sexual advances within the last seven days,” remarked Hawley. “And about one in three—I think it was 27%—had experienced unwanted sexual advances outside of the seven day window.”
According to Béjar, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Meta CEO Sheryl Sandberg ignored his email addressing the problem.
“This is a stunning, stunning report, Mr. Béjar, that more than buttresses bears out what you were telling, trying to tell the executives who ignored you,” the Senator said.
Interestingly, Hawley asserted that Facebook, while declining to take action on the matter of their platforms helping to sexualize the youth, coordinated with the Biden administration to “Censor First Amendment protected speech.”
“There’s one example of a parent in my home state of Missouri who wanted to post something about a school board meeting,” added Hawley. “Facebook used human moderators to go and take down that post. That was important. That has to come down. We can’t have them posting about school board meetings, for heaven’s sake. But the things that your daughter experienced, this ring of pedophiles, rings plural, that Facebook just can’t find the time for. They just don’t have the resources for it.”
Video of the exchange can be viewed here.
In written remarks made available before the hearing, Bejar said he was testifying because the parents and public must "understand the true level of harm posed by these 'products.'"
Naturally, one could have reasonably expected the average well-meaning American parent to make quick work of shielding their children from such astonishing threats to their psyches, but they took no notice of what was happening.
We are further told, in a follow-up article published yesterday from The Wall Street Journal, that, “Five months later, tests conducted by the Journal as well as by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection show that Meta’s recommendation systems still promote such content. The company has taken down hashtags related to pedophilia, but its systems sometimes recommend new ones with minor variations…The tests show that the problem extends beyond Instagram to encompass the much broader universe of Facebook Groups, including large groups explicitly centered on sexualizing children.”
The article goes on to say, “The Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a nonprofit that builds automated screening tools meant to protect children, said a network of Instagram accounts with as many as 10 million followers each has continued to livestream videos of child sex abuse months after it was reported to the company…During the past five months, for Journal test accounts that viewed public Facebook groups containing disturbing discussions about children, Facebook’s algorithms recommended other groups with names such as ‘Little Girls,’ ‘Beautiful Boys’ and ‘Young Teens Only.’ Users in those groups discuss children in a sexual context, post links to content purported to be about abuse and organize private chats, often via Meta’s own Messenger and WhatsApp platforms. Journal reporters didn’t comment, click on any of the links or join any chats.”
The Journal further noted that, “In one public group celebrating incest, 200,000 users discussed topics such as whether a man’s niece was ‘ready’ at the age of 9, and they arranged to swap purported sex content featuring their own children. In another user group numbering 800,000, administrators shared images of schoolgirls…When a Journal research account flagged many such groups via user reports, the company often declared them to be acceptable. ‘We’ve taken a look and found that the group doesn’t go against our Community Standards,’ Facebook replied to a report about a large Facebook group named ‘Incest.’”
The article also states: “In May, an outside researcher in the U.S. documented that a network of Instagram accounts, some with millions of followers, was livestreaming videos of child sex abuse…The Stanford group provided Meta with an analysis of groups popular with Instagram’s child sexualization community. Five months later, some of the groups it flagged are still operating.”
The Journal continues: “Recently, Facebook’s ‘Groups You Should Join’ feature has suggested topics such as kidnapping, ‘dating’ children as young as 11 and even chloroforming women. After the Journal reported the chloroform groups to Meta, the company took them down. Within two weeks, however, a 1,800 member group specifically devoted to chloroforming children was back in Facebook’s ‘Groups You Should Join’ recommendations. In it, users posted pictures of girls with rags held over their faces. One member posted a picture of a smiling young girl with the caption of ‘is it suitable for kidnapping?’ Fellow group members agreed that the girl was.”
Nonetheless, in the face of these disclosures, it is still accurate to say that social media’s penchant for facilitating physical, mental and sexual injury has been well-established.
But for the many around the world who have fallen short in foreseeing social media’s drawbacks to culture and its users, it can still be useful to recognize technology’s internal framework.
The thing to remember here is that technology always poses consequences to those who use it.
As put by Postman: “…because of its lengthy, intimate, and inevitable relationship with culture, technology does not invite a close examination of its own consequences. It is the kind of friend that asks for trust and obedience, which most people are inclined to give because its gifts are truly bountiful. But, of course, there is a dark side to this friend. Its gifts are not without a heavy cost. Stated in the most dramatic terms, the accusation can be made that the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make human life worth living.”1
And it is clear to see that social media, or what some might reasonably assign to it the moniker “sexual media,” is not exempt from this truth.
And nor, as we can also see, are our culture’s youth exempt from its potentially devastating aftermaths.
Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Introduction