EU Warns Meta to Fix Child Protection Issues on Instagram or Face ‘Heavy Sanctions’

The European Union has issued a stern warning to Meta, stating that failure to promptly improve its child protection practises will result in “heavy sanctions.”

The EU’s internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, claimed the business’s “voluntary code on child protection seems not to work” in a tweet he sent on Thursday morning.

The alert comes in response to a Wall Street Journal piece from yesterday.

In order to uncover and expose a network of Instagram accounts created to link paedophiles to vendors of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on the popular social networking site, The Wall Street Journal collaborated with researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Later this month, Breton said he will bring up child safety during a meeting with Zuckerberg at Meta’s headquarters in the US.

He also confirmed that the EU will impose a strict deadline on the matter, saying it expects Meta to show that effective safeguards are in place by August 25, when the business must formally comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).

The DSA, which outlines guidelines for how platforms must address illicit content like CSAM, carries fines that can reach up to 6% of the global annual turnover which could run to billions.