SALT LAKE CITY — Attorney General Sean Reyes has joined Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and a coalition of 25 other state attorneys general in a letter to Meta demanding that Instagram stop monetizing child exploitation content.
Reyes said, “New information has emerged about Instagram’s blatant disregard for child safety, even after Meta has claimed to have implemented safeguards to stop child sex abuse material or CSAM on its sites.
According to recent reports by both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, Meta’s own staff raised alarms after Instagram enabled those running ‘parent-managed minor accounts’ to profit by providing ‘pin-up style photos of children’ to male subscribers who were ‘often overt about sexual interest’ in children. Worse, Meta actively promoted child-modeling subscriptions to ‘likely pedophiles.’ Reporters noted that men in online chatrooms frequently praised ‘the advent of Instagram as a golden age for child exploitation.’
Reyes said, “We can no longer trust that Meta is listening to its own internal watchdogs or following through on its touted safety systems to protect children from predators.”
Missy Larsen, Utah’s Statewide Coordinator for Child and Family Safety said that over the past decade, Reyes has led the fight against human trafficking and child exploitation.
Arkansas Attorney General Griffin sent the letter to Meta. In addition to Attorney General Reyes, the attorneys general of the following states also signed on to the letter: Arkansas, Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.