(Source: IANS)
The
European Union (EU) has warned Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to
take immediate action on protecting kids on Instagram or face "heavy
sanctions".
The warning came after reports emailed that
Instagram's recommendation algorithms are allegedly promoting networks
of pedophiles who commission and sell child sexual abuse content on the
popular image sharing platform.
The Wall Street Journal worked
with researchers at Stanford University and the University of
Massachusetts Amherst to go undercover and expose such a network of
Instagram accounts.
In
a tweet, the EU's internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, said
the company's "voluntary code on child protection seems not to work".
"Mark
Zuckerberg must now explain and take immediate action. I will discuss
with him at Meta's HQ in Menlo Park on June 23," he said in the tweet.
After
August 25, under the Digital Services Act (DSA), "Meta has to
demonstrate measures to us or face heavy sanctions," he added.
The
penalty for non-compliance with the DSA, regarding the failure to curb
the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), can scale up to 6 per
cent of the social media company's global annual turnover.
According to the WSJ report, Instagram "helps connect and promote a vast
network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of
underage-sex content".
The investigators found "128 accounts
offering to sell child-sex-abuse material on Twitter, less than a third
the number they found on Instagram".
Meta told the Journal that it had failed to act on these reports and that "it was reviewing its internal processes".
