Meta pays pro-Meta influencers when countries look into teen safety on Instagram

mikelgan

Tech Transparency Project’s report shows whenever governments mull platform regulations, company recruits influencers to promote its safety features

Georgelemental

The DC metro is full of ads for Instagram's teen "safety" features.

ablob

I don't find it particularly surprising that a company tries to influence legislation influencing their business. What the headline is missing is that, according to the article, Meta is paying influencers to advertise for existing parental controls. If the issue is not that there are no controls, but that parents don't use them because they don't know about it, then I see hardly any evidence to support such a pretentious title. Parents are supposed to care about what their kids do. The government can only mildly reduce this burden. To be honest, I think that there might not be enough information on how to effectively parent on the internet and this seems like a low hanging fruit to try. In the end a ban might be the best option, but exhausting other options first seems worth a shot. One of the main arguments pro-Meta is that they at least try, even though a strong argument can be made that they don't try hard enough. I find it difficult to believe that preventing children from interacting online via social networks is achievable. As long as adults demonstrate the availability of these things kids might want to imitate/have the same interactions. I'm glad I don't have any stakes in this topic at the moment - foreseeing evasive behavior from either side is going to be a nightmare.