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The sale of abusive material is done in a very organized and open way on Instagram. In a short time, NRK has mapped 150 accounts with nude photos and highly sexualized material of children as young as 5 years old. Accounts are just one part of a market that appears to be much larger, on a platform with almost a billion users around the world.
Organized sales
Abusers’ accounts are often marked with a pizza icon, to indicate what they are spreading, selling, or trading. The piece of pizza or “cheesepizza” is the code language for “child pornography” or abusive images as it really is.
The 150 accounts that NRK has mapped contain photographs of half-naked or lightly dressed children who often pose in commercial studios, where the abusive material is produced. Other photos that are shared frequently are those of children who have been secretly photographed, for example, on the beach. Another large proportion of the photos on the profiles of online abusers appear to be lost private family photos.
– That NRK discovered so many accounts in such a short time is shocking. Instagram must have better control, so that harmful content cannot be freely shared in this way, demands the Minister of Children and Families, Kjell Ingolf Ropstad (KrF).
The Minister of Children and Families does not trust that Instagram will do everything possible to remove abusive material from the platform.
– very worrying
Many of the accounts have thousands of followers and a number of sexualized comments and icons in the comment field next to the photos.
In recent days, a group of private activists has found and reported more than 200 accounts of this type on Instagram, to close them. The group has received many auto-generated responses, but only some of the accounts have been deleted after the alerts.
– It is very worrying that the reported accounts are not closed immediately. When Norwegian activists can discover this so easily, the companies behind the major social media platforms should be able to prevent child abuse from being sold, says Ropstad.
Requires intensification
Instagram, which by its own guidelines prohibits photographs, videos, illustrations or texts that sexually exploit children, told NRK yesterday that they are doing everything possible to remove such content. The company also noted that they are working to prepare technology to find and eliminate the sexual abuse of minors.
But the Minister for Children is not reassuring and is now calling Facebook, owner of Instagram, to the carpet as soon as possible.
– This is not acceptable. The company cannot detect this material early enough and must therefore step up the fight against child abuse online, says Ropstad.
Instagram tells NRK tonight that they are looking forward to the meeting, but they think they already have a good dialogue with the Ministry of Children’s and Family Affairs about why it is so difficult to discover content that exploits children.
– Technology is not perfect, especially when it comes to content in the gray zone, and then we can’t just rely on technology. That is why we encourage users who view content that exploits children to report it to us. These types of reports will be prioritized, promises Marianne Neraal, head of guidelines at Facebook Norway.
Ropstad has also raised the matter with the Minister of Justice, as the police play an important role in the fight against Internet-related child abuse. In the new year, the government will present a new national strategy to prevent and deter Internet-related child abuse.
