Instagram is used to sex traffic children

As I stated in my stories(if you haven’t seen it I will reiterate it here). I had an account where I sold handmade childrens clothing for little girls. I used to share photos of my daughter and a friend of mines whom both modeled the dresses I made. There was an account (I can’t remember the name), that would monitor my followers. They would DM me to block accounts that seemed suspect. Accounts of weirdos that followed a lot of accounts that featured children, or accounts that were clearly sex traffic accounts (sharing obscene photos of children).

A lot of the sex traffic accounts seemed like they were overseas. We’d constantly report these accounts with no avail. Instead of Instagram (now Meta) shutting down the child trafficking accounts they would delete the account of the people that were sounding the alarm on these accounts! Eventually the account that combated the pedophilic accounts was permanently shut down along with their backup accounts.

After experiencing this it really rubbed me the wrong way concerning Instagram/Meta. Are they protecting the pedophiles? It seemed that way to me.

What you can do to protect your children online

As a result of this experience, I stopped sharing photos of children modeling my clothing. I invested in a mannequin or took flat-lay photos of the clothing instead. Even still you have to be careful when you share photos of your children online. Pedophiles will take innocent photos of a baby in a bathtub or children playing in a pool or running through a sprinkler in swim trunks and use them in nefarious ways. I can recall an account that was actually stealing innocent photos from parent’s accounts and posting them. Although the photo by itself was innocent having a collage of children on one page not wearing much or in certain poses was very unsettling. So please, please be careful what you post concerning your children and be aware of who follows your account.

Below are some links that share more information on how Instagram has been used by child sex traffickers. This is exactly why I can no longer support the platform going forward.

Instagram has a long history of doing nothing to protect children:

Instagram most recorded platform used in child grooming crimes during lockdown

Mark Zuckerberg Is Getting Sued for a Very Disturbing Reason

How Facebook and Instagram became marketplaces for child sex trafficking

Zuckerberg asked to testify on Meta’s role in human trafficking in Florida