Meta Asked by Senators to Detail Efforts to Prevent Sharing of Child Sexual-Abuse Material

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Meta Platforms on Wednesday, asking the company to explain child-safety enforcement shortfalls and how the company’s algorithmic recommendation systems connected pedophilic users, citing a report this month by The Wall Street Journal.

On June 7, the Journal reported that Instagram, the popular social-media site owned by Meta, helps connect a network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage-sex content.

“We are gravely concerned that lnstagram’s failure to prevent this perverse use of its algorithms is not due to a lack of ability, but instead a lack of initiative and motivation,” the senators wrote. The letter was signed by a bipartisan group of 10, including Richard Durbin, a Democrat and chairman of the committee, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican and ranking member.

The senators also asked why Instagram didn’t detect the issue, what steps Instagram has taken to ensure such failures don’t happen again, and how Instagram will respond to reported child sexual exploitation.

They asked Meta to respond by July 12.

A Meta spokesman declined to comment on the letter, pointing to the company’s response in the Journal report.

In response to questions from the Journal for that article, Meta acknowledged problems within its enforcement operations and said it has set up an internal task force to address the issues raised. “Child exploitation is a horrific crime,” the company said, adding, “We’re continuously investigating ways to actively defend against this behavior.”

The senators asked for more information on the task force convened in response to the Journal article, “including the areas of expertise of the participants, supervisory structure, measures of improvement, and implementation plans and timelines.”

The senators also said it is alarming that online child sexual exploitation wasn’t among Meta’s highest priorities, “especially when its platform directly facilitates and bolsters the black market for child sexual abuse material.”

The Journal’s investigation this month, along with researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found that Instagram not only hosted illicit activity, but its algorithms helped connect pedophiles with content sellers through recommendation systems that work to link those with shared niche interests, creating a vast network of accounts devoted to selling and purchasing underage-sex material.

Instagram enabled people to search for explicit hashtags, connecting them to accounts using the hashtags to sell child-sex materials. Accounts offering the sale of illicit sex material would post “menus” of content, and certain accounts would allow buyers to commission specific acts.

Earlier this month, Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D., N.J.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.) issued a joint statement on the same issue, stating that they were “appalled to read the sickening reports of child sex abuse material on Instagram,” and that they were in the process of scheduling briefings with Meta and Instagram to address the issue.

Write to Lindsey Choo at [email protected]