When people search for “Adam driver Megalopolis” on Instagram or Facebook right now, instead of seeing posts about Francis Ford Coppola’s latest film, they’re shown a warning, titled, “Child sexual abuse is illegal.”
That bizarre fact was pointed out in a post on X yesterday, and as of today, I’m still seeing it when I search for the phrase. But why? Well, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with recent Threads moderation failures. Nor are there bombshell revelations about Megalopolis or its main star that I’m aware of.
Instead, Facebook and Instagram seem to be blocking searches containing “mega” and “drive” — I saw it when I searched with those two words together, but not when I searched for “Megalopolis,” “Adam Driver,” or either term mixed with any others. The issue isn’t new, either, as this nine-month-old Reddit post about searching for “Sega mega drive” on Facebook illustrates. (That search seems to work as expected, now.)
It’s not clear why the words are blocked and Meta didn’t immediately respond when we asked. Facebook and Instagram have blocked other innocuous-seeming terms, such as “chicken soup,” because distributors of child abuse materials use it as part of their coded language to evade detection on the platforms.
By Marina Johnson, Nabra Nelson. Marina and Nabra take a sweeping look at thirty years…
Live From the Blue Seats will be back tonight as some combination of Dave, Rob,…
Retail investors are reportedly the largest cohort in Strategy’s high-yield, low-volatility “Stretch” shares, which have…
Some scholars have argued that Marcel Duchamp's upturned urinal, titled Fountain and signed "R Mutt",…
Physician incomes are extraordinarily high in the United States. A new NBER paper finds that…
Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort people feel when their beliefs, values, or self-image conflict…