[imagesource: Kirill Kudryavtsev / Getty Images]

After whistleblower Frances Haugen came out with some damning revelations that Facebook (now Meta) was willfully ignoring warning signs from their own research, the social media company has been under intense scrutiny.

Meta’s research told them long ago that Instagram was especially harmful to teens, and teenage girls in particular

Now a report has come out suggesting that teens are in more danger on Instagram than we think as the platform makes it fairly easy and trivial for them to find drugs.

The report revealed that teens as young as 13 are able to find and buy drugs like MDMA and Xanax by way of hashtags and suggested profiles.

The report, published by Tech Transparency Project (TTP), was published yesterday, with Instagram chief Adam Mosseri set to testify before Congress today regarding Instagram’s impact on young users.

Instagram’s algorithmic blindspots were brought to the fore after TTP created seven fake accounts for teen users aged 13, 14, 15, and 17, reported The Verge:

Instagram did not stop those accounts from searching for drug-related content. In one case, the platform auto-filled results when a user started typing “buyxanax” into the search bar.

One suggested account was a Xanax dealer.After following the account of a Xanax dealer, a fake minor user got a direct message “with a menu of products, prices, and shipping options,” the report found.

A fake minor account that followed an Instagram dealer got suggestions to follow an account selling Adderall.

What’s more, while the platform has banned overt drug-related content, including hashtags like #mdma, it skips over those guardrails by suggesting alternates, like #mollymdma to minor users.

The autocomplete feature pointing researchers in the right direction, as well as Instagram’s recommendation algorithm suggesting similar profiles to follow, pretty much throws Instagram’s Community Guidelines out the window.

Clearly, even though the platform prohibits “buying or selling non-medical or pharmaceutical drugs”, there are many drug dealers operating openly on the platform, notes Engadget:

Separately, TTP says Instagram did not take decisive action against the content it found on the platform. The organization claims it submitted 50 posts to the company for review. Of those, Instagram said 36 (or 72 percent) did not violate its Community Guidelines, despite what TTP says were “clear signs” of drug dealing activity.

At the time of publishing, the company had only banned one account flagged by TTP. However, when the organization went to check on that profile, it was still up on Instagram along with all of its violating content.

Stephanie Otway, a spokesperson for Meta, said the company will “continue to improve in this area in our ongoing efforts to keep Instagram safe, particularly for our youngest community members”.

There’s quite a lot of work ahead for her and her colleagues.

[sources:verge&engadget]