A New York Times investigation reveals how Instagram promotes posts that include young girls to male users, including sexual predators.
Aside from reaching a surprisingly large proportion of men, the ads got direct responses from dozens of Instagram users, including phone calls from two accused sex offenders, offers to pay the child for sexual acts and professions of love.
The results suggest that the platform’s algorithms play an important role in directing men to photos of children. And they echo concerns about the prevalence of men who use Instagram to follow and contact minors, including those who have been arrested for using social media to solicit children for sex.
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… though The Times chose topics that the company estimated were dominated by women, the ads were shown, on average, to men about 80 percent of the time, according to a Times analysis of Instagram’s audience data. In one group of tests, photos showing the child went to men 95 percent of the time, on average, while photos of the items alone went to men 64 percent of the time.
These findings are deeply disturbing to say the absolute least.
Excited Pixels 