(LifeSite) Instagram is facilitating large pedophile and child-trafficking networks, according to a bombshell report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published June 7.
Researchers from Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst together with the WSJ investigated pedophile activities on Instagram and found that “Instagram doesn’t merely host these activities. Its algorithms promote them.”
“Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests, the Journal and the academic researchers found,” the WSJ report states.
Instagram allows users to search for hashtags used by pedophiles to connect with accounts that advertise and sell child-sex material, including images, videos, and in-person “meetings.”
Alex Stamos, who was Meta’s (Instagram’s parent company) chief security officer until 2018 and is now the director of the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO), noted, “That a team of three academics with limited access could find such a huge network should set off alarms at Meta.”
“I hope the company reinvests in human investigators,” Stamos added.
According to the WSJ, the researcher set up test accounts that, after viewing a single account from a pedophile network, instantly received recommendations from buyers and sellers of “child-sex-content.”
“Following just a handful of these recommendations was enough to flood a test account with content that sexualizes children,” the report stated.
The SIO researchers found 405 sellers of what they described as “self-generated child-sex material,” meaning accounts that are allegedly run by the children themselves, some claiming to be as young as 12.
The WSJ wrote that many of these accounts “show users with cutting scars on the inside of their arms or thighs, and a number of them cite past sexual abuse.”
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“According to data gathered via Maltego, a network mapping software, 112 of those seller accounts collectively had 22,000 unique followers,” the WSJ reported.
Next to the accounts that actively buy and sell child sex content, many users in the “pedophile community” share pro-pedophilia memes or talk about possibilities to get access to minors.
