Baby influencers, parents who support pedophiles to sell their children's exclusive content: investigations by the New York Times and the WSJ

Exclusive photos, private chat sessions, clothes worn. These are the contents put on sale, or to be won, by the parents of baby influencers on social networks. Girls and boys aged 13 and under have hundreds of thousands of followers on the platforms, even though they may not even have a profile at that age. So, mom and dad take care of opening and managing their accounts. The idea is to launch their daughters' careers as models and influencers, the objective always the same: increase the number of followers, attract brands for collaborations. But what they discovered New York Times and the Wall Street Journal It's more worrying. Because to achieve this, many parents use their minor children as bait for pedophiles. By opening hidden subscriptions to circumvent social platforms' rules on sexually explicit content and sending provocative photos to subscribers.

In addition to photos, moms and dads encourage children, especially girls, to spend time chatting with their subscribers or offering worn bodysuits and swimsuits for sale. It is often adults themselves who leave suggestive comments under photos of their children, to involve other subscribers. THE New York Times reported that, according to an analytics company, the approximately 5,000 profiles reported by the newspaper revealed more than 30 million connections to profiles of adult men, and the posts with the most interactions are those with photos the most explicit. The algorithm then “rewards” this content, which is offered to other potentially interested profiles. THE Wsj gave the example of other platforms like Onlyfans and TikTok that prevented subscriptions and monetization of accounts with images of minors, highlighting how Meta preferred to rely on an automatic and inefficient system. And which is always defended by management: “We launched creator monetization tools with a robust set of security measures and multiple controls over creators and their content,” said spokesperson Andy Stone, asserting that the company is seriously committed to fight against the spread of pedophilia on their platforms.

Read also: