Instagram Recommends Sexual Videos to Accounts for 13-Year-Olds, Tests Show
wsj.com
wsj.com
Our governments aren't going to do anything about it. We all know it. In part because not enough constituents are complaining loudly enough (or, you know; at all) about these companies.
Speaking of; there is a very quick solution to these companies misbehaving: us. We don't even need to cancel our accounts (wouldn't matter anyway, they won't really delete them). Just stop using the services and let the companies know why. Let them know that when they truly take responsibility for their actions and behave then maybe we'll come back. Until then, we're refusing to be good products for them to sell.
But, let's face it, there are too many people out there that foolishly think they can't have a social life without social media despite the overwhelming evidence to prove that's not true. Too many people thinking they can't do without Amazon, Apple, Netflix, or Google, or Microsoft among many others. So, nobody will do or say anything and these companies will continue abusing us.
I mean, damn. If we can't get fired up enough to do something about one of them blatantly showing sexual material to minors then we haven't hit rock bottom from this particular drug.
I agree it is hard to not feel defeatist.
If we wanted to really undermine such efforts, we'd be teaching children about the history of such propaganda tactics and methods from a quite young age. This has been tried before in the USA, but it got shut down quickly at the beginning of WWII:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy...
The downsides have been well-documented. [1] Can we all collectively get together and say "no" to that stuff until like 18?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/us/instagram-child-influe...
This is why a lot of parents start with smart watches or restricted phones. They try to get the communication / coordination benefits without the online social risks. But that only lasts so long.
I'm not sure how I'll navigate it. Probably not by saying "no to that stuff until 18".
I am not going to address the broad set of questions here but I want to point out that two items exist:
1) No-data SIM cards ... they call and text only ...
2) imessage only access point - fairly trivial to set up.
So ... a child can be given a phone - even a smartphone - and it can't be used as a social media device when the family wifi turns off. Further, you can heavily restrict family wifi without curtailing normal phone talking if you have an imessage/facetime only access point.
Again, no magic bullets here but some tools that you might find useful.
There is a finite amount of control that you can have, there's always a friend with another phone where they can watch everything.
Communication is the key, we talk a lot with our 11 yo about the danger and pitfalls of social media, electronic games etc. Yes, he has a simple smartwatch (bare minimum: call, location), yet I think we managed to develop a healthy digital hygiene. I wish you best luck!
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Zuckerberg_Senate_Transcript_...
When are we gonna hold these companies accountable and stop accepting excuses?
1. Search “TikTok dance”
2. Scroll until one is at the beach thus bikini
3. Let it loop a couple times
4. Exit the app and comeback - that’s your new feed
When it comes encryption and privacy the legislators just can't wait to jump in an "save the children", let's see how vigorous they are going to be investigating and prosecuting Meta for showing inappropriate things to children.
> On TikTok [...] new teen test accounts that behaved identically virtually never saw such material—even when a test minor account actively searched for, followed and liked videos of adult sex-content creators.
Well, isn't that embarrassing? The evil TikTok they are trying hard to ban, and for good reasons I think, is doing a better job "protecting our children" than Meta.
Makes sense though. When you have a product produced in an authoritarian state, they probably spend a lot more time on censoring for better and worse.
> Despite their systems’ similar mechanics, neither TikTok nor Snapchat recommended the sex-heavy video feeds to freshly created teen accounts that Meta did, tests by the Journal and Edelson found.
This imo proves that Meta isn't even trying:
> In some instances, Instagram recommended that teen accounts watch videos that the platform had already labeled as “disturbing.”
This could be a very simple toggle, it's disingenuous to blame everything on the "black box" of the "algorithm."
The reason is that it is a massive geopolitical risk.
People often conflate these two.
I'm not so sure. People are putting up with a lot of bullshit. Not saying that is due to social media though.
Honestly this whole thing reeks of the satanic panic type moral scares of the 80’s or the anti communist rhetoric of the 60’s repackaged in new form. Moral panic over something or other is an American tradition; right now it’s tiktok but god knows why.
Set yourself a reminder to come back to this comment in 10 years once the fervor has died down and you will read your own comments with bafflement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica
"Using what it called "behavioral microtargeting" the company indicated that it could predict "needs" of subjects and how these needs may change over time. Services then could be individually targeted for the benefit of its clients from the political arena, governments and companies, providing "a better and more actionable view of their key audiences."
Imo, the way that some have instrumentalized Western social media for disinformation is a bigger threat than allowing a competitor
TikTok is a bit different though, I think they were able to capture the audience and put them in correct bubbles, so if you want to just watch your funny memes, you won't see anything else. But looking at my friend's feeds, they see the opposite - extremely polarizing political content from all the possible sides of the spectrum. It looks like IG Reels has started to eat their lunch, but time will show.
There is no good side in this debate.
It can't look like obvious propaganda; people wouldn't use it. It doesn't have to convince people of any one thing to work anyway. Just shortening the average attention span would be enough to weaken a society a little. How about increasing polarization? People produce plenty of polarizing content on their own; just favor that a little more than an algorithm merely trying to be addictive does. Antisocial and self-destructive behaviors should also get a subtle algorithmic boost. Aggrandizing the platform itself is harmful as well - if someone chooses to be an influencer instead of a scientist, damage is done.
If those all sound like things most social media does, that's the point. It's like popularizing a junk food that's just a little higher in sugar, fat, and salt than the rest. Harmful elements of social media are harder to measure than that though.
The attacker in the 2015 OPM hack acquired biometric data on every federal government employee. Cross referencing against biometrics collected at ports-of-entry unmasked covert US operations, undermined US interested and put the lives of Americans abroad at risk. This information is valuable to every adversary equipped to use it.
The scandal of Tiktok is that rather than breaching OPM, a foreign entity has simply requested this information directly from future federal employees. Beyond mere facial biometrics, tiktok knows the childhood street address of ~every future spy -- and everyone near and dear to them. Tiktok can generate a psychological profile on ~every future diplomat and international businessman. And the biometrics they can access includes things like sleeping habits, gait, vocal chord structure, vocabulary, and accent -- much more than the OPM hackers got.
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2020/11/02/tiktok...
** https://www.mmguardian.com/blog/tiktok-predators
https://cseinstitute.org/tiktok-and-the-growing-media-exploi...
There's also an assumption that users are 100% honest with their age. Simply confirming you are 18 gives you an easy end around the filtering of content. Even at 8-10 I had friends who were quite ambitious about getting their hands on porn and other material we weren't supposed to have. If the bar is simply lying about your age, I would say that's not a very good way to try and filter content from underage users.
Like, we had a channel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTV_Palma) publicly broadcasting porn after midnight (I don't remember watching that) and all the older (~15YO) kids around the neighborhood were collecting porn magazines from who knows where and hiding them around in "caches".
I remember all the older kids being really excited about it, and us younglings being curious but grossed out. There was some pressure to pretend you were interested, kids love pretending they're more grown up than they are. Funnily enough, I remember having the same feeling about football world cup, like not getting the whole fuss about it, but being expected to be interested.
Couple years later, I naturally found out what they were excited about... For football I never did, though.
It's really a matter of degree and scale.
There were two stages of my life, too young to understand or have any desire for sexual content, and old enough to want and seek out sexual content. At 13 I was well into the second stage and it's super weird how we pretend that tweens and teens aren't horny as hell despite all of us having lived through the hormonal onslaught.
Looking back having access to stuff beyond extremely sanitized softcore porn was extremely healthy. I learned from a young age that sex was a thing people did for fun, it wasn't super serious, and desires I had and were ashamed of were completely normal and honestly kind of vanilla.
I'm not who I was and it's been an insane hard task to change myself. I understand why people don't. That's what I have to remind myself every morning.
During my twenties I was easily wanking 5-8 times a day, I couldn't get enough. I existed within a fandom, the hint is in my username, which is now a thing of the past and I have nothing good to say about such fandom! But, still feels like my horny switch is glued to on. I've even been mulling over the idea of castration just to ensure I have no libido.
God forbid, I was a creep and my mind, psyche was an horrorshow. It was only when I accidentally took a heroic dose of an psychedelic I saw who I was. During the psychosis the devil on my shoulder and where I was to stay in the after life. I hit rock bottom, one step away to the point of no return.
My parents tried, I beat their system. I moved out after college and then had my own place with no restrictions.
Porn is no joke.
In true crazy, I even documented the episode somewhat. old site, so no ssl et cetera, exists for legacy.. /face palm
The problem did originate from porn. I didn't know what was right and what was wrong, I was naive. And unfiltered internet access, I was a rogue. I could talk all day about warez, CC gens, botnets. I'm just luckily I've had a solid family environment. The internet was my social outlet then.
My maturity age was a lot lower than to how old I was. And because the internet was not a commodity in 2000 and really the wild west, what could folk do? I was just a cowboy who took all the wrong paths. Kept taking the left rather than right and hid it well. No one knew the dangers of the internet back then, nor knew how to navigate the dark side. As well not having the maturity required.
Prior to this, I was kicked out an school subject for "hacking" and discovering a Windows 98 DCOM exploit. I wasn't allowed to touch any computer apart from one. It may of been that I also got pissed off with another student and sabotaged his coursework under the school's news paper account. A true uprising of an menace.
I bought a BB gun at school, started showing it off till someone reported me. I had no intention to do anything with it. This is in Europe, I just thought it was cool. Already having the rep of "hacker boy" some older year student reported me, I got in trouble and then someone randomly pulled me aside handed me a CD-R copy of Quake 3 Arena.
It kept me occupied but sadly never saved my soul as after college went to university, had my own dorm room, when I got my own place I was too hooked to porn and in other area's. The twenties was all mistakes but, made through it just.
And here I am now mid-thirties, job, mortgage and someone who even surprises myself. Still working stuff out, most at work don't understand me. I have near to zero friends, but regardless, myself is making great progress.
I was dealt the wrong set of cards and took all the wrong paths. And I've flipped them, both physically and mentally.
Pornography definitely caused issues for me. It isn't an accurate representation of a healthy sexual relationship.
I agree with your sentiment though. Removing access to pornographic material isn't the answer. But these days unfiltered access comes with a different set of issues that likely have negative consequences on development of a healthy attitude to sex.
I knew what I wanted, I figured out how to get it, I never had a moment’s hesitance at the time, and I’ve never had a moment’s regret now as an adult. I sought out sexual material when I became interested in it, the same way I sought out sex when I became interested in it. I can’t even imagine what the adults in my life could have possibly done to stop me.
Nowadays you have OnlyFans models or similar basically all over every social media platform, businesses trying to sell it as a legit lifestyle, etc. It's completely different, because it's becoming much more bidirectional and open now.
Riley Reid/agency models go from job to job as an IC and gets a check from the company via simps dedicated to a certain website.
The former is a much easier sell/explain and a bit easier to justify to puritans. It’s all very samey but different.
Sure, it is advertised as something one does as "a lifestyle", but when the model works for a professional studio with metrics to reach and gig workers chatting with customers while pretending to be her [1], how is that not a job? And more important, how do you know that the model on screen is doing what (s)he's doing because of their "lifestyle" and not because they are behind on their weekly numbers and may otherwise lose their spot in the agency's rotation?
They're both still porn and they're both definitely a lifestyle. One does not merely "do porn".
Now it's seeking you... open instagram, and you get porn ads, even if you're 13.
On the other hand, boobs in shower gel ads were pretty normal back then, and noone really got excited by them. Also asses in thongs for suntan location ( https://svetkapitala.delo.si/media/images/20200217/322547.wi... )
You clearly haven't seen early Internet. Giant flashy banners with semi-porn content everywhere
If you visited whatever site agreggator was popular locally, and opened any of the sites in the first two pages of any category, you didn't get to see a single boob.
I didn't get exposed to porn after that until a couple of high school trips where we got to stay in hotel rooms and of course figured out how to access the pay-per-view porn. But that was it. The "inspiration" for my teenaged solo sexual activities came from catalogs with models in lingerie, relatively tame TV, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues, tennis magazines, and my imagination. The closest thing I had to porn when I lived with my parents was pausing a rented VHS tape of an R-rated movie, on one of the rare occasions when I had the house to myself.
But also, 1980s porn magazines or whatever are very different from today's porn content. A brief visit to any of the free "tube" sites exposes you immediately to a level of intensity that you wouldn't get from Playboy or Penthouse in the 80s. Right on the front page you'll find choking, incest ("stepdaughter"), BSDM, etc.
I don't particularly want my teenage son traipsing into that before the context and patterns of healthy mature sexual relationships have been established.
But more than anything, I don't want it pushed on him.
Congress won’t do anything; it’s too mired in infighting and lobbyists. And these companies’s better angels won’t do anything about this.
It's not the Internet's or Society's job to raise your child.
If you're a parent and you dont want your teen to look at adult instagram its your job to give them some rules and enforcement.
It actually is, children are more raised by society than parents in general. Overall the environment has much more influence on children than the parents, that is societies job to make good environments for children, that is way too much for parents to handle.
It should be a hard rule that people under a certain age CAN NOT have this kind of content recommended, there should be precisely 0 ways for the algorithm to promote sexual material to children.
You can add as much other information to the picture as you want, but that’s the black and white issue.
Besides, how often do 13yo’s have their own wifi and IP address?
IMO the real "problem" here isn't technological, political, or corporate - it's just a slide of social norms toward hyper-permissibility of immodest or bad behavior. The resolution will likely be social as well, and people realizing that kids are getting exposed to smut will likely hasten that. Laws might get passed, corporations might change their policies, but only after the pendulum swings back socially.