The Grim Reality for Some Young Influencers on Instagram

WSJ Tech News Briefing

The Wall Street Journal

News, Tech News

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For young influencers on Instagram, their followers can include large numbers of men who take a sexual interest in children. WSJ reporter Katherine Blunt joins host Zoe Thomas with the story of one family that came to accept this grim reality. Plus, people are turning to Reddit over Google. We'll tell you how the platforms stack up when asking the internet for answers. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	O. C.I. is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs.
0:06.0	Do more and spend less like Uber 8 by 8 and Databrics Mosaic.
0:11.0	Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com
0:14.4	slash Wall Street.
0:19.4	Welcome to Tech News briefing. It's Friday, June 21st. I'm Zoe Thomas for the Wall Street Journal.
0:26.2	A mother and daughter ran an Instagram account together, posting pictures and videos of the
0:31.1	young teen modeling and dancing. But as the account grew and
0:33.0	but as the account grew in popularity, the mom began to notice a disturbing trend.
0:38.6	Most of the girls followers were adult men.
0:42.4	A spokesman for Meta Instagram's owner said the company enables
0:45.8	parents who run accounts for their children to control who is able to message them or
0:50.0	comment on their accounts. Later in the show, our reporter, Catherine Blunt,
0:54.3	brings us the story of this mother and daughter
0:56.2	and tells us why adult men make up so much
0:59.4	of the follower base for this account and others.
1:14.0	But first, Reddit is a social network with over 82 million daily active users. Posting in groups called Sub- Reddits they can up-vote or down-vote what others contribute,
1:19.0	surfacing what are considered to be the best responses.
1:22.0	What Reddit isn't is a search engine, and yet many people
1:26.4	are using it that way to find information on the internet. Earlier this month, that included
1:31.6	our personal tech reporter and Maria Al-Kantera.
1:35.0	And she is with us now to talk about how that went.
1:38.0	Anne-Marie, a lot of people are looking for answers on Reddit by searching Google and putting
	...

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