Two stories about Instagram caught my attention this week, and while they were reported as separate, together they tell you quite a bit about the state of America (and the Anglosphere, really) in 2023.

The first was a Wall Street Journal bunker-buster bomb that didn’t explode, and the second was about Instagram banning Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s Instagram account the day it was created, and before a single post was uploaded.

The Journal story should have been shocking to most Americans, and one would have expected it to create a firestorm. Yet, apparently, nobody cared.

In a multi-month investigation carried out with Stanford University researchers, The Wall Street Journal found that Instagram is a hub for the creation and distribution of child pornography. Not only do child pornographers use the service to sell their wares, but you can also even order custom videos taped solely for you. Bespoke porn with children. There are also accounts that purport to be run by children that basically advertise an OnlyFans-type service where pedophiles can chat with children for sexual purposes.

With blatant hashtags, a pedophile network has flourished on Instagram. The platform doesn’t merely host these activities. Its algorithms have actively promoted them. https://t.co/3JIsDgOOMm

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) June 7, 2023

To be sure, there is nothing surprising about pedophiles using technology to satisfy their lusts. What was shocking is the fact that Instagram actively promotes the activity by pushing child sexual exploitation content to users based on their particular interests.

Instagram, the popular social-media site owned by Meta Platforms, helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage-sex content, according to investigations by The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Pedophiles have long used the internet, but unlike the forums and file-transfer services that cater to people who have interest in illicit content, Instagram doesn’t merely host these activities. Its algorithms promote them. Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests, the Journal and the academic researchers found.

Though out of sight for most on the platform, the sexualized accounts on Instagram are brazen about their interest. The researchers found that Instagram enabled people to search explicit hashtags such as #pedowhore and #preteensex and connected them to accounts that used the terms to advertise child-sex material for sale. Such accounts often claim to be run by the children themselves and use overtly sexual handles incorporating words such as “little slut for you.”

No matter what Instagram does, some child sexual exploitation material will leak through, at least temporarily. But the research shows that in fact Instagram does essentially nothing to prevent this activity, and has algorithms that actually facilitate it.

Instagram made weak noises about this being unfortunate, but in fact, their defenses ring hollow. It is impossible to argue that an algorithm couldn’t flag within a nanosecond a hashtag #pedowhore or #preteensex. These are not obscure “codewords” invented by some clever pedophile. They are explicit and obvious. A simple algorithm looking for the word “pedo” could have been written a decade ago to root out the obvious, and any company with such an extensive “trust and safety” department, as Meta/Facebook/Instagram could easily employ a couple of people to keep up with the current codewords.

How do I know this? Because the efforts to root out “misinformation” are extensive and unfortunately very effective. When Meta wants something gone, it is gone. People get banned for the most anodyne expressions, but pedophiles freely share their smut and sell their wares without much interference. Pretty much the only time it gets restricted is when there is a story about it.

Anybody with the most modest understanding of the censorship regime that now exists in the West knows how scarily effective it is. Advertising algorithms seemingly can predict your thoughts before they arise in your consciousness. One must be lobotomized to believe that technology this effective at rooting out “disinformation” (often true claims that are inconvenient) is somehow disarmed when it comes to finding the term “#pedowhore.”

Instagram accounts offering to sell illicit sex material generally don’t publish it openly, instead posting “menus” of content. Certain accounts invite buyers to commission specific acts. Some menus include prices for videos of children harming themselves and “imagery of the minor performing sexual acts with animals,” researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory found. At the right price, children are available for in-person “meet ups.

None of this is effectively hidden. It is not some corner of the Dark Web. It is Instagram, and the algorithm the company devised pushes it at people who want to see it. It actually aggregates it and suggests it to potential customers.

What does this have to do with RFK Jr.?

Isn’t it obvious? Instagram can silence anybody it wants to within moments. It’s not like RFK Jr. was blasting all over the Internet exactly what his Instagram account was before he created it. And he hadn’t posted a single image for Instagram to complain about.

Interesting… when we use our TeamKennedy email address to set up @instagram accounts we get an automatic 180-day ban. Can anyone guess why that’s happening? pic.twitter.com/0G8oRnoXTv

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 2, 2023

Instagram obviously had set up an algorithm to detect when Kennedy set up an account and to automatically ban it. No violations of terms of service. He was banned for opposing Joe Biden.

Instagram can find things when it wants to. It is owned by one of the most sophisticated software companies in the world and one which is a master at squashing anything it disapproves of.

So what is the point? Well, obviously the first one is that Meta is just fine with kiddie porn, which is on brand for the Elite these days. It will even assist in its spread.

But the larger point is this: almost nobody seems to care. On the same day that the WSJ story came out the pinned tweet of an Instagram executive was an explanation of how sophisticated the Instagram algorithm is–pretty much bragging that the company can push or censor anything it likes. Yet there was no uproar. Chances are that 99% of Americans have no idea because most of those who learned this fact shrugged.

No Congressional investigations. Nobody gets fired. No press uproar. Nothing.

It is business as usual. Because the taboo against pedophilia has eroded so much that most people shrug.

The US government itself is facilitating the trafficking of children into and around the country. Unaccompanied minors flow into the country and the Department of Homeland Security quickly loses track of them. They have even stopped the practice of doing DNA testing to ensure that people claiming to be parents of children are in fact their relatives. They don’t want to know. ORR is the Office of Refugee Resettlement:

• The ORR director couldn’t answer questions about reports that show HHS has lost contact with more than 85,000 migrant children in the past two years.
• Two-thirds of all UAC that leave HHS’s care work illegal, full time jobs, often in factories and in hazardous conditions.
• Caseworkers within ORR claim that HHS regularly ignored obvious signs of labor exploitation, such as single sponsors sponsoring multiple UAC, “hot spots” in the country where many UAC sponsors are not the children’s parents, UAC with significant debts, and direct reports of trafficking.
• “We’ve heard stories – I’ve been to the border seven or eight times – and heard the stories directly from people who are federal agents and others who’ve said it is very routine that a person was put with an older person, and then they found out that that was not even their family,” Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) said during the hearing.
• During the hearing, ORR director admitted that only slightly more than a third of UAC’s end up with a parent. “In this fiscal year, I believe 37 percent of children end up with their parent.”

Nobody cares. The press ignores it, just as they ignore the revelation that one of the most popular social networks in the world–run by a massive US corporation–is a hub of child sex trafficking and exploitation.

I would call that outrageous, but apparently it is not, since there appears to be no outrage. In fact, many of our best and brightest seem just fine with it.

We keep being told to trust that our Elite are looking out for us and have the best interests of everybody at heart. If so, explain this.