“Meta’s voluntary child protection code doesn’t seem to be working. Now Mark Zuckerberg has to explain himself and act immediately,” EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said on his official Twitter account.
Breton will indeed meet with Zuckerberg on June 23 at Meta’s headquarters in Merlo Park, California, USA, before the European Union’s Digital Services Act soon comes into force.
“This regulation will force major digital platforms to quickly remove illegal content and to be transparent about the design of their algorithms that determine what users see on the internet and social networks.” After August 25, Meta must comply with the Digital Services Act show that it is taking action or facing severe sanctions,” Breton recalls.
The rules allow the European Commission to fine large tech companies that do not comply with the requirements by up to 6% of global sales.
According to a joint study by the Wall Street Journal and Stanford and Massachusetts Amherst Universities, the Instagram algorithm helps connect and nurture a vast network of accounts dedicated to pedophilia and the purchase of underage sexual content.
Investigators found that Instagram — which has more than 1.3 billion users — allowed people to search for explicit hashtags and sometimes even emoticons, linking them to accounts that used the terms to sell sexual material to promote children and “meetings” with minors.
Meta acknowledged the issues within its compliance operations and informed the WSJ that it had set up an internal working group to address the issues raised.