Meta's Prior Predator Problem
And the Lessons of Jurassic Park
I love movies. This summer is packed with blockbusters… Thunderbolts*, Mission Impossible, Superman, and even a new Jurassic World where Black Widow is taking on dinosaurs with a rifle. I hope this new island treats her better than Vormir.
I remember seeing the original Jurassic Park in a theater with my parents. The T-Rex scene where the lawyer takes refuge on a toilet is a memory forever burned in my brain because that’s when my flabbergasted father warned the guy on the screen, “No! Don’t go in the bathroom. Why would you go in there?” If only Donald Gennaro heeded Dad’s advice.
Jurassic Park is a perfect Meta analogy. With every new revelation it becomes more apparent that Mark Zuckerberg and company create things too big to control.
If you’ve been following along since we launched Know Curtains, you know I try to be objective. You also know I fail miserably when it comes to Meta. In Driver’s Training for Social Media, we profile the biggest social media platforms and Meta stands apart. Remember Cambridge Analytica? Frances Haugen? The Metaverse? Instagram Kids? The company is consistently in the news for all the wrong reasons.
We’ve recently reported that Meta is in the middle of an antitrust trial. The FTC is alleging Meta is a monopoly with their acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. Two weeks ago the trial followed a rabbit trail that led to testimony about Instagram’s troubles in 2019 containing real-life predators from minors on their platform.
You probably didn’t hear about it, because this diversion was only covered nationally by Bloomberg and on Substack by Big Tech on Trial. I only came across the story via Racket News last weekend. Regarding an internal document in 2019 that came up just last week in the trial, Bloomberg reports:
The Meta Platforms Inc. report noted that minors made up 27% of the follow recommendations that the social media app surfaced to “groomers,” a term the company used to refer to accounts they identified as exhibiting predatory behavior toward children.
At the time Instagram executives recognized the problem and sought more funding to address the issue. But Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, claimed (in earlier testimony in the antitrust trial) Mark Zuckerberg saw Instagram as a “threat” and allegedly withheld funding so it wouldn’t overshadow Facebook.
Regardless of the funding accusations, it’s true that Instagram has made great strides since 2019 investing in safety on their platform. Teen accounts are more restrictive than ever before. They recently announced they’re using AI tech to identify teens users with adult birth dates and will automatically put them in a Teen Account.
Yet Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, and according to Bloomberg, Meta “began work to restrict recommendations for potentially suspicious adults” in 2018… the same year Instagram surpassed one billion monthly active users. That’s possibly six years of growth with an unchecked algorithm that matched minors with adults with predatory tendencies.
Meta’s pattern? Unleash the beast and try to contain it while cleaning up its mess.
And just when you thought Meta’s social-media-Jurassic-Park lessons had been learned… along comes the Jurassic World reboot called Meta AI.
The Wall Street Journal recently posted an investigative report on “romantic role-play” from Meta AI conversations that had sexual overtones even on minor accounts. We’re stuck in an endless cycle of sequels as Meta pushes us toward AI companions.
Don’t get me wrong. Like the herbivorous giants of Jurassic Park, there’s a lot of goodness on Meta’s platforms that brings joy, wonder, and connection. But we’re stuck digging through triceratops poop just to find it.
Is this a company we want leading us into the AI era?
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