The jolting story by the Journal describes what happened when its reporters set up test accounts on Instagram Reels that followed teen cheerleaders and young gymnasts who have accounts there. Instagram, owned by Meta, formerly known as Facebook, introduced Instagram Reels in 2020 to compete with the popular Tik Tok app.
The result? “Instagram’s system served jarring doses of salacious content to those test accounts, including risqué footage of children as well as overtly sexual adult videos — and ads for some of the biggest U.S. brands,” the Journal reported in a Nov. 27 story.
Lina Nealon, of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, tells AFN she was not surprised to read the Journal’s first-hand account of what its newsroom discovered on the popular video service.
“There is a lot of sexual exploitation on the platforms,” Nealon says. “Not only that but the algorithms themselves, which is what happens in Instagram, is pushing this content to predators and pedophiles."
In fact, the Journal’s story said the algorithm is delivering what it called a “toxic video mix” to adults who are following children. When the Journal reporters followed those adult men who are following children, the reporters went down a sickening online rabbit hole in which the content became more X-rated and included underage sexual themes that are known to attract pedophiles.
In a response to the Journal’s story, a Meta spokesman said the newspaper’s investigation had unfairly created a “manufactured experience” that most Instagram users do not experience. But a Canadian-based watchdog group performed a similar test and reported a similar experience first exposed by the Journal.
After the Journal story, now published three weeks ago, major advertisers such as Disney and Walmart have pulled their advertising after learning their ads were appearing next to sexually explicit content.
