Meta platforms has spent months trying to fix child-safety problems on Instagram and Facebook, but it is struggling to prevent its own systems from enabling and even promoting a vast network of pedophile accounts. The social-media giant set up a child-safety task force in June after The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed that Instagram’s algorithms connected a web of accounts devoted to the creation, purchasing and trading of underage-sex content. 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.
You would think with all the advances in artificial intelligence that Facebook and Instagram would be able to identify pedophiles in real-time. What needs to be done to beef up enforcement?
Nic McKinley, an expert on human trafficking; a former military special operator and ex-CIA operative, and CEO of DeliverFund, an organization that disrupts human trafficking, joins Jeff to address the issue. Hear the conversation below starting at the 8 minute mark: