HISPI Project Cerebellum
AI Incidents

Instagram Algorithms Allegedly Promote Accounts Facilitating Child Sex Abuse Content

June 7, 2023

An investigation disclosed that Instagram's recommendation algorithms are promoting accounts that facilitate and sell child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The study, conducted by The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, indicates that Instagram's algorithms not only allow for the discovery of such accounts through keyword searches but also actively recommend them to users within the network. The issue is especially concerning given Instagram's popularity among teenagers.
Alleged deployer
meta, instagram
Alleged developer
meta, instagram
Alleged harmed parties
children, general-public, minors, teenagers

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/583

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.