We must keep calling out the lies!

March 2026

After years of advocacy and participation in Senate hearings, I continue to see the truth about social media harms obscured by misleading claims from Big Tech.

Big Tech and Social Media companies are now so deep into their lies, the truth is impossible to observe, let alone verbalise. People at the helm who state, "I am a parent, I get it!" have lowered their morals so far, they are willing to use their own children as a punch-line for how caring they are. It is disgusting, and reflects exactly how unethical they truly are.

Since 2009, both as a Cyber Safety advocate and Tech Crime Police Officer, I have been working undercover and covertly on Social Media and chat environments, pretending to be children. So often this had to be done, because the networks would refuse to provide usable evidence to law enforcement.

When Omegle (as an example) was up and running, I worked for a number of years to catch predators grooming children on the site. There was nothing better than seeing my mates jump out of an unmarked police vehicle to nab a sex offender at a local park, who was there to meet someone they thought was a 12 year old. I was very proud to be a contributor to the closure of the site and the successful lawsuit against its owner.

A 'positive' (for want of a better word) of working so exclusively in this field, was I got to know very early in my career how negative, risky and brutal certain online environments were for children. I have used hundreds of child accounts, and the content I have observed via Social Media in particular was shocking! I found it very concerning, and I am an adult!

The experience and the skill I have built over many years gives me an added advantage over many in this field. I can get right into the experiences of our children via Social Media and tell it exactly how it is. I know exactly what they are seeing and being exposed to.

I know what the truth really is!

I therefore present direct data obtained as a result of one of my most recent Social Media experiments. This reflects perfectly, without doubt how blatantly Big Tech are lying to the public, Senators and authorities.

In June of 2024, at a Senate Hearing in Australia. Meta Vice President & Head of Global Safety, Antigone Davis made the following statement to Senator Sarah Henderson, during the Joint Select Committee on Social Media and Australian Society; "There is no pornography on our site (Meta: Facebook & Instagram)"

Participating in this hearing live, I knew this statement from Ms Davis was not factual. I was infuriated and could not sleep for days! I did a few hours of scrolling through Reels that following weekend, to get some numbers together and appease my anger. And what do you know? I saw pornography!

With the rhetoric and angst surrounding the Australian Social Media Restriction legislation and the denial of harm being further touted by Big Tech CEO's, I decided to dig into Instagram to totally obliterate the statement made by Davis.

From December 15 of 2025 to February 15 of 2026, I spent 120hrs across 62 days navigating the video feed of Instagram called "Reels". I was using 20 juvenile accounts all purporting to be 14 or 15 years of age (15 boys and 5 girls). During this experiment, 96,000 instances of algorithmically delivered content were systematically observed and recorded.

The findings indicate that a significant proportion of content surfaced to these accounts met established definitions of pornography, including material containing explicit sexual imagery and content linking directly to external adult websites. Importantly, this material was delivered in the absence of any user interaction that would reasonably indicate intent, curiosity, or prior engagement with sexual content.

Once I started viewing such content and staying engaged with it much more than other vids, the algorithm kicked in and within only a short period of time, 4 to 5 Reels out of 10 displayed nudity, genitalia, child exploitation material or straight up sexual acts. After a few hours, pornography was now 'the norm'. All being fed without hesitation, warning or filtration to a 14 or 15 year old child!

The investigation also examined Instagram’s response to user reports of explicit material. Platform moderation outcomes were inconsistent and, in many cases, demonstrably ineffective. More than half of the reported content remained accessible despite repeated reports, raising serious concerns about the reliability of existing reporting and enforcement mechanisms.

So, not only was pornographic content well and truly present on Instagram, when juveniles reported it, half of those reports were ignored and the content remained active on Instagram for other children to be exposed to.

This experiment demonstrates several critical points:

1️⃣ Pornography is present on Instagram: 48.95% of content items surfaced displayed content that meets formal definitions of pornography.

2️⃣ High prevalence among underage accounts: Material surfaced without user interaction, indicating that the algorithm actively delivers sexual content to accounts registered as children.

3️⃣ Algorithmic amplification without apparent moderation or contextual risk assessment: As an Instagram user becomes more fixated on a particular type of content, the algorithm significantly increases such content (or similar) in the feed. At no stage during the experiment did I notice a relaxation of this algorithm response, nor was there a warning regarding continuing to view content which could be harmful.

4️⃣ Limited enforcement: Platform responses to reports were inconsistent, with a substantial portion of content remaining despite multiple reports.

5️⃣ Refutation of Meta’s claim: These results directly contradict the statement made by Antigone Davis, confirming that pornography does exist and is readily accessible to juveniles on Instagram.

This data provides a clear, evidence-based picture of what juveniles are encountering on social media platforms and highlights the urgent need for consistent enforcement, effective moderation, and ethical design of online environments. More importantly, it provides clear and precise evidence to refute the statement made by Davis. "I don't think that social media has done harm to our children"

The response to that is perhaps for another article!

I am sick and tired of saying or hash tagging "Enough is Enough". I have had enough of the lies of Big Tech drowning out the truth being spoken by advocates and those who have experienced harm.

I look forward to presenting this report to eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant PSM over the coming weeks and also to having it tabled in State and Federal Parliament over the coming months.