Meta (Facebook) founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg said in an interview last weekend, "I find that it's hard to spend a lot of time on Twitter without getting too upset." On the other hand he said of Instagram, which Meta owns, "Instagram is a super positive space."
This is a controversial statement when you bear in mind that Instagram has become a social media platform that allows simultaneous live posts from millions of followers - without adequate supervision - creating an opportunity to stream obscene content.
An investigation by "Globes" has found that users are abusing the product's features and lack of supervision of live broadcasts, in the public video call interface (Live Rooms), in order to stream obscene and offensive content on the platform, including live broadcasts of pornographic content. This takes place, virtually completely unhindered, and those same accounts from which such content is aired, continue to broadcast every day.
In this way, Instagram serves as a platform for viewing explicit content. Viewers receive a notification about the start of a live broadcast, each of the "broadcasters" collects hundreds of viewers moving from one virtual viewing room to another, and with the exception of short breaks, Instagram users get live porn whenever they want.
Flaws are built into the platform
The broadcasters exploit two inherent flaws in Instagram and its parent company Meta. The first is related to the product's characteristics - Meta itself supervises the content broadcast by the hosts in the video chat conversations, but has left the supervision of the other participants in the conversation up to the hosts themselves. The second flaw is built into Meta as a whole, and it repeats itself in all its products and with its full knowledge: the existing ability to supervise violent, offensive and pornographic content on Meta's platforms is insufficient, with an emphasis on a severe lack of supervision of content in languages other than English. The pornographic content is broadcast in a variety of languages: Italian, Persian, Hindi and various Indian languages.
In order to evade supervision by Meta, pornographic content is broadcast without sound, with only video content. The hosts themselves hardly ever broadcast obscene content, but leave it in the hands of other participants in the conversation, over whom, there is very little supervision. Meta claims that reports of live broadcasts with obscene content are given priority treatment, but there are two contradictions in this claim. Firstly, viewers who are looking for such content have no interest in reporting offensive content. Secondly, in practice the number of accounts involved in broadcasting obscene content continue to operate unhindered and gain a large following.
For example, one of the active users "Globes" followed broadcast almost non-stop pornographic content through the chat rooms, and he has already built up 240,000 followers. Other users "Globes" followed gained between 12,000 and 700,000 followers and frequently host "porn rooms" live.
In order to present an innocent appearance, these accounts upload innocent-looking pictures onto the profile page, like women in swimwear, hardly explicit content. However, the main popularity of these accounts comes from the live broadcasts, which in no way resemble the profile page. On the day "Globes" looked into the Live Room, for example, a young girl frolicked in front of the camera. To amass hundreds and even thousands of viewers, you don't need too many followers, because a live broadcast alert is sent to the followers of each of the four participants in the video chat room. This way the broadcasters achieve a much wider network effect.
Not a new phenomenon or unique to Instagram
Use of pornography in live content is by no means an innovation of Instagram or Meta's group of products. Live streaming platforms have been exploited over the years by users to broadcast offensive content. Chatroulette, launched in 2009 to engage two webcam owners in a random conversation, quickly became a site filled with pornographic content. According to a survey conducted among its users, one out of every eight conversations contained a participant who presented obscene content.
Two internal documents previously shared on Facebook and leaked by former employee Frances Haugen to "The Wall Street Journal" shed light on the problematic nature of content control. According to one of the documents, Instagram is aware of the negative effects on the body image of girls. After the publication of the report, Senator Richard Blumenthal, chairman of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection in the US Senate, claimed, "The problems were not created by the social networks, but the social networks fuel them." He emphasized that the time has come for external involvement in monitoring the content on the networks. "I think we have passed the time for internal regulation and enforcement (by the companies themselves). This is built on trust, and there is no trust," said Blumenthal.
Another internal document from Facebook's offices leaked by Haugen, showed the ability to supervise content published on the company's platforms in foreign languages in a very problematic light. According to the document, Facebook knows how to monitor discourse in 50 popular languages on Facebook and Instagram, but in all the other languages in which the social network operates, it has difficulty enforcing its policy regarding obscenity, incitement, violence, and offensive discourse.
With inadequate supervisory capacity, it is difficult to see how Meta can effectively regulate obscene and offensive content in the Metaverse, the three-dimensional virtual space it is building in order to bring its users to it through the virtual reality headsets it is developing.
Attempt to compete with Clubhouse and TikTok
The Live Rooms interface was launched in March as a response to the rise of live group broadcasting apps, the most popular of which is Clubhouse. The launch expanded options for Instagram users to initiate group conversation with up to three other users and broadcast it live to all their followers. "We expect that the live broadcasts will lead to more creative opportunities - to allow users to initiate a talk show, host improvisational musical performances, create together with other artists, conduct a discussion that includes questions and answers, deliver tutorials, or just hang out with more friends," Meta announced.
The launch of Live Rooms has been another attempt by Meta to compete with TikTok, with a range of products on Instagram like Live Stories and Reels. The company also intended to present in its main feed, full vertical screen videos, but after a barrage of criticism, it canceled its plans.
Apart from the motivation to encourage productive dialogue between users, Meta is mainly targeting opinion leaders and influencers who bring with them new audiences, produce content for them on platforms such as Instagram and Tiktok, and become business partners of huge brands. Instagram's Live Rooms interface also tempts influencers to use it through an additional financial incentive - allowing users to support artists by purchasing "Badges", a kind of virtual medallion intended for fans, or donating to them in the Live Fundraising interface.
Meta: "Any potential policy violation will be brought to account"
Meta said in response, "Anyone can anonymously report a live broadcast on Instagram - whether it's a live broadcast hosted by one person, a shared broadcast between two people, or a room - and Instagram reviews the reports as quickly as possible. Our systems prioritize reports on live broadcasts, as the company understands the need to review them and take action against any potentially harmful content in real time. When a report is received about a live broadcast, any potential policy violation will be brought to account - whether committed by the host of the broadcast, or by participants in the room - and the live broadcast will be stopped and removed, if any violation is found.
"In addition, the company's proactive detection systems also operate during live broadcasts, and check broadcasts that may violate the platform's community rules. In the last quarter, Instagram removed 10.3 million content items that violated policy regarding adult nudity and sexual activity, with more than 94% of them discovered by the artificial intelligence technologies of the platform and before any report."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 1, 2022.
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