Notorious for shadow banning and deleting accounts of users who even mildly criticize Israel or show support for Palestine ‘the parent company of Facebook and Instagram continues to struggle in vain with its algorithms enabling child molesters on its platforms,’ the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. 

Earlier this year, the Journal and researchers at two US universities revealed that Instagram algorithms were helping connect accounts devoted to the creation, purchasing and trading of underage sex content. Meta claimed to respond by setting up software tools to deal with the issue. 

However, five months later, the company is struggling to prevent its systems from enabling and even promoting a vast network of paedophile accounts,’ the Journal noted.

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Earlier this week, the Journal cited research by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, showing that Instagram algorithms still recommended paedophile content. While some paedophilia-related hashtags have been banned, the system just spits out new ones with minor variations, they said.

A network of Instagram accounts that had up to 10 million followers apiece has continued to livestream videos of child sex abuse months after it was reported to the company. Another group, the Stanford Internet Observatory, flagged several groups popular with Instagram’s child sexualization community to Meta back in June – and said that some of them are still operating. 

Moreover, the problem also affects Facebook Groups, a key feature of the platform that has more than three billion monthly users worldwide. In one instance, when investigators flagged a group named ‘Incest,’ they received a response that it ‘doesn’t go against our Community Standards.’ The group was removed only after the outlet brought this to the attention of Meta’s public relations department.

While Meta’s algorithms can connect users with illicit interests and tailor content to appeal to them, restricting or removing features that connect people with acceptable content would not be reasonable, a company spokeswoman told the Journal. You can share this story on social media:

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