‘CP’: How a Small Acronym Belies a Big, Dirty, and Poorly Kept Secret on Instagram.

Social media is a big part of my job, so I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me. But when I am being fed poison, I reel back.

Instagram is a festering pit of flagrant predation. The more I discover, the more I am sickened.

I’ve vented relentlessly in blogs and articles about my indignation that Instagram never removed the fake account pretending to be me. I’ve reached a reluctant acceptance that my privacy is not something Instagram is interested in protecting.

But I will not acquiesce to this newfound realisation. I will not accept that the privacy of children can be violated so conspicuously.

Traffickers, pimps, and paedophiles are having a field day on social media.

I was alerted to this issue when a friend shared some accounts that blatantly distributed child pornography. I, like my friend, shared my disgust at Instagram, on Instagram, hoping to reach my followers and amplify the number of reports these accounts received.

I sought out the tagged accounts and entered into a repulsive wormhole of discovery, finding account after account linking back to them. ‘Selling young content’ and ‘13–17 hardcore content’ were brandished proudly in bios and in stories.

I followed the usual procedure, reporting the accounts for sexual content involving a child. However, knowing the negligence that Instagram practices towards its users, I decided to take the next step. I contacted the child protection agency to alert them of these distributors of child pornography.

One account, called @trongotsauce, advertised on its story the cost for OnlyFans bundles. I scanned the small print, quickly uncovering that these bundles flaunted ‘various content from solo, webcam, hardcore, leaked, forced, young with young, young with old and more’. If the mention of forced and leaked sex was not repellent enough, the description then mentioned flippantly that the ages involved in this euphemistically named ‘content’ ranged from ‘3–18, average around 12’.

For 50 Canadian dollars, I could access the rape and abuse of a three-year-old.

For 35 dollars, I could see a child with the ‘average age’ of 12 pillaged. Their life ruined and their future decimated for the hungry eyes of anonymous Instagram followers.

The multiple accounts linked to ‘tron’ who supposedly sells ‘young content’ all boasted a ‘menu’ of ‘ages’ — as if underage girls are commodities and foodstuff. This choice of word, though, might be scarily apt — the people greedily consuming these images and videos treat young girls like confectionary, drooling over them, objectifying them, trading them.

Should Instagram care enough, they would find a whole catalogue of easily accessible nefarious paedophiles. Just by looking at the followers of these accounts, they could unveil a whole list of criminals.

But of course, they do not care.

In response to the attempted reports of these accounts disseminating prepubescent pornography, we were answered with bureaucratic disinterest. An automatic message notified us that ‘we aren’t deleting the photo of ‘baby.ashlee_ndes’. We determine it is likely the photo does not breach our community rules.’

So-called Baby Ashlee has numerous accounts. She is a 13-year-old girl who posts explicit images. TikTok has previously banned her content, but her profiles, profiles that advertise her ‘content’, and fan accounts litter Instagram. If you type her name into Instagram, you will be rewarded with 35 accounts related to her — most of which are ‘fan pages’.

Yet, when reported, Instagram deems photos of her — a thirteen-year-old in underwear — to not breach guidelines.

Instagram’s total lack of customer support effectively silences anyone who finds fault in the site. With no community feedback channel or access to a human helpline, if reporting and blocking an account proves ineffectual — as it endlessly does — you’re left alone with your problem.

When I contacted the police about my stalker’s harassment of me via social media, they admitted to me that Instagram and Facebook are notoriously difficult to contact. They told me that getting information from these social media giants is near impossible.

Despite the genius of the algorithms, and despite Facebook and Instagram knowing more about its users than they do about themselves, they refuse to use that information to tackle crime. A bank of information sits passively in their hands.

A wealth of licentious and depraved individuals prosper in that passivity.