Attorney General Miyares demanded that Instagram stop monetizing child exploitation content and prohibit child-modeling accounts altogether. Miyares stated, "Meta’s negligence and lack of proper safeguards only aids and abets child exploitation. Even after Meta employees alerted leadership that its algorithms promoted images of minors to users who had demonstrated pedophilic or predatory interests on its platforms, the company failed to take any real action or ban the monetization of underage accounts."
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal revealed that Meta's staff had informed leadership that new paid subscription features on Facebook and Instagram were being misused by '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. Furthermore, Meta actively promoted child-modeling subscriptions to 'likely pedophiles.' The New York Times also reported that men in online chatrooms frequently praised 'the advent of Instagram as a golden age for child exploitation.'
In addition to Attorney General Miyares, 26 other state attorneys general joined in the letter to Meta demanding action against child exploitation on Instagram. States such as Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Texas, and others signed on to the letter.
The coalition's efforts aim to push Meta to take concrete actions to prevent the monetization of child exploitation on its platforms and to protect vulnerable minors from being exploited online.