Meta has launched an investigation into reports that Instagram is promoting child sexual abuse material through its algorithm. Facebook’s parent company set up a taskforce to investigate the claims after the Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) said it found “large-scale communities” sharing paedophilia content on the platform. The SIO said it discovered the child sexual abuse material (CSAM) following a tip from the Wall Street Journal, whose report on Wednesday detailed how Instagram’s recommendation algorithm helped connect a “vast pedophile network” of sellers and buyers of illegal material. Instagram’s ‘suggested for you’ feature also linked users to off-platform content sites, according to the report, with the SIO describing the site as “currently the most important platform” for these networks. “Instagram has emerged as the primary platform for such networks, providing features that facilitate connections between buyers and sellers,” Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center wrote in a blog post. “Instagram’s popularity and user-friendly interface make it a preferred option for these activities.” Instagram users were able to find child abuse content through explicit hashtags like #pedowhore, which have since been blocked by Instagram. “Child exploitation is a horrific crime,” a Meta spokesperson said. “We’re continuously investigating ways to actively defend against this behaviour, and we set up an internal task force to investigate these claims and immediately address them.” Meta said that it had already destroyed 27 paedophile networks over the past two years on Instagram, as well as removed 490,000 accounts violating child safety policies in January alone. Other social media platforms hosting this type of content were also identified by the SIO, though to a much lesser extent. The SIO called for an industry-wide initiative to limit production, discovery and distribution of CSAM, while also urging companies to devote more resources to proactively identifying and stopping abuse. “Given the multi-platform nature of the problem, addressing it will require better information sharing about production networks, countermeasures, and methods for identifying buyers,” the organisation said. “SIO hopes that this research aids industry and non-profits in their efforts to remove child sexual abuse material from the internet.” Read More Instagram plans ChatGPT-style AI chatbot with multiple personalities Mark Zuckerberg reveals new VR headset ahead of Apple ‘Robot taxi’ with ‘ghost driver’ interacts with pedestrians in new experiment Earth hit directly by brightest explosion ever seen, scientists say

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Scientists are trying to work out the source of dark matter. A group want to house a giant international particle detector that would be built 3,000ft underground in a working mine in Boulby, North Yorkshire to find the cause of the mysterious space matter. “We are entering the last-chance saloon to show that these particles are the cause of dark matter, and we want to make sure Britain is at the heart of that work by building the final generation of these detectors,” physicist Professor Chamkaur Ghag of University College London told the Observer. Scientists know the universe contains more matter than can be seen directly because they can see galaxies held together in clusters when they should be flying apart. Extra mass must be generating more gravity and holding these galaxies together, Most researchers think particles called weakly interacting massive particles – Wimps - are the source of dark matter. But these Wimps are hard to detect so scientists are trying to have a proper stab at it by combining resources and working in one Yorkshire site. “And what we are striving to do in Britain is to get it built at Boulby. Essentially, we want the last-chance saloon for Wimps to be built in the UK,” said Ghag. Dark matter accounts for around 85 per cent of the universe’s mass.There are also mines in South Dakota, and near Rome in Italy that are also hunting for Wimps which could provide answers. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.