Instagram’s Pedophile Problem
Pedophiles are flooding the accounts of child influencers on Instagram. Who is to blame—and who can make them stop?
Listen & Subscribe
Choose your preferred player:
Get Your Slate Plus Podcast
If you can't access your feeds, please contact customer support.
Listen on your computer:
Apple Podcasts will only work on MacOS operating systems since Catalina. We do not support Android apps on desktop at this time.
Listen on your device:RECOMMENDED
These links will only work if you're on the device you listen to podcasts on.
Set up manually:
Episode Notes
As the debate around child safety online rages on, an investigation by The New York Times found a seedy world of pedophiles interacting with child influencer accounts, often run by their parents, on Instagram.
Meta sent a statement that said, in part:
“Child exploitation is a horrific crime and online predators are determined criminals. We use sophisticated technology, hire child safety experts, report content to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and share information and tools with other companies and law enforcement, to help root out predators. We’ve developed sophisticated technology to identify potentially suspicious adults and prevent them from finding, following or interacting with teens - and each other. We use a range of signals to help identify these accounts, and accounts that show enough signals are automatically sent to our content reviewers, or removed from Instagram completely.”
Guest: Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, investigative reporter at the New York Times.
Want more What Next TBD? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen.