Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, other AGs demand Instagram stop ‘monetizing child exploitation’
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LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin is leading 26 other attorneys general in protesting an Instagram policy the group says is exploiting children.
The lawmakers are pushing back against parent-managed minor accounts on the platform. In a letter sent to parent company Meta, the attorneys general claimed these accounts are being used to provide pin-up style photos of children to viewers who were “often overt about sexual interest” in children.
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The attorneys general cited a Feb. 22 report by the Wall Street Journal that claimed the staff of Meta first raised alarms about these accounts only for the company not to act and instead promote subscriptions to this sort of content to likely pedophiles.
The letter goes on to cite a New York Times report that men in online chatrooms frequently praised “the advent of Instagram as a golden age for child exploitation.”
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Griffin demanded Meta shut down parent-managed minor accounts right away.
“Meta has turned Instagram into a source for content that is banned even by [adult content provider] OnlyFans,” Griffin said in the letter. “It has refused to implement even the basic child-safety protections that its own employees recommended.”
The letter continued that the platform should “immediately cease monetizing child exploitation” and “immediately prohibit child-modeling accounts altogether.”
“Anything less endangers children,” the letter concluded.
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Joining Griffin in signing the letter were the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
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