Meta’s Use of the Term ‘PG-13’ Has Run Afoul of the U.S. Movie-Rating Organization

A couple of weeks ago, Meta announced that it was rolling out new protections for Teen Accounts on Instagram. As part of those protections, the platform said that new content filters would curate more age-appropriate feeds for young users. That curation would be “guided by PG-13 movie ratings,†the company said, in an effort to make them safer. Now, the Motion Picture Association—the progenitor of the official PG-13 standard—has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the social media giant, asking it to please not drag its respectable content benchmarks into whatever it is that Instagram is doing.

The Wall Street Journal broke the news about the MPA’s letter to Meta. From the looks of it, it would appear that the MPA doesn’t trust the social media platform to adequately apply the standards—and, thus, brand—that it has created. “The MPA has worked for decades to earn the public’s trust in its rating system,†the letter from MPA’s outside counsel Naresh Kilaru reads. “Any dissatisfaction with Meta’s automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA’s rating system,†the letter says. The letter further seemed to complain that Meta’s content restrictions “appear to rely heavily on artificial intelligence†and that the assertion that they were guided by PG-13 ratings was “literally false and highly misleading.â€

When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a Meta spokesperson said: “Parents tell us they want to better understand what their teens see on Instagram. To make things simpler for them, we updated our teen content policies to be closer to PG-13 movie standards—which parents already know. We know social media isn’t the same as movies, but we made this change to support parents, and we hope to work with the MPA to continue bringing families this clarity.â€

The spokesperson additionally told us that the company had never claimed or implied that its accounts were actually PG-13 rated or that they had been certified by the MPA. Instead, the company says, its new rules were guided by the PG-13 standards, which it says there is a legal precedent for.

Meta does have a blog post on its website titled: “Instagram Teen Accounts Will Be Guided by PG-13 Ratings.†The blog states that the company’s Instagram is “revamping Teen Accounts to be guided by PG-13 movie ratings, meaning teens will see content that’s similar to what they’d see in a PG-13 movie, by default.†Further down in the blog post Meta says, again, that “Instagram Teen Accounts will be guided by PG-13 movie ratings by default. This means that teens will see content on Instagram that’s similar to what they’d see in a PG-13 movie.†So, you know, whatever Meta was gunning for here…you can see where some confusion might occur, right? Here’s a look at the blog’s actual language:

It’s no surprise that Meta has launched its new Teen Accounts on Instagram, as the company has suffered from a number of scandals involving the platform and younger users. Indeed, a recent report compiled by a number of youth advocacy organizations alleged that the platform’s child safety protocols were not as effective as advertised.