By Michaela Gordoni
Last year, Instagram made teen accounts referencing a PG-13 rating, and now it will make a clear distinction between its ratings and the Motion Picture Association’s.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Meta claimed last year it would be guided by The MPA’s ratings. However, the MPA sent a cease and desist letter to Meta, calling the use of PG-13 “false and highly misleading.”
“Today’s agreement clearly distinguishes the MPA’s film ratings from Instagram’s Teen Account content moderation tools,” said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the MPA. “While we welcome efforts to protect kids from content that may not be appropriate for them, this agreement helps ensure that parents do not conflate the two systems – which operate in very different contexts. The MPA is proud of the trust we have built with parents for nearly sixty years with our film rating system, and we will continue to do everything we can to protect that trust.”
Related: Instagram Gives Teen Accounts PG-13 Rating, But MPA Says Not So Fast
The agreement goes into effect on April 15.
“We’re pleased to have reached an agreement with the MPA,” said a Meta spokesperson. “By taking inspiration from a framework families know, our goal was to help parents better understand our teen content policies. We rigorously reviewed those policies against 13+ movie ratings criteria and parent feedback, updated them, and applied them to Teen Accounts by default.”
“While that’s not changing, we’ve taken the MPA’s feedback on how we talk about that work. We’ll keep working to support parents and provide age-appropriate experiences for teens,” they said.
Meta had implemented the PG-13 guidance after it received criticism from parents. It wanted to implement a standard of “age appropriate content,” The New York Times reported.
The new disclaimer says social media and movies are distinct.
It will read, “We didn’t work with the MPA when updating our content settings, and they’re not rating any content on Instagram, and they’re not endorsing or approving our content settings in any way. Rather, we drew inspiration from the MPA’s public guidelines, which are already familiar to parents. Our content moderation systems are not the same as a movie ratings board, so the experience may not be exactly the same.”
The MPA’s Instagram account said, “’PG-13’ is for the big screen, not social media. We are pleased that Meta has agreed to the MPA’s terms on any ‘PG-13’ references for Instagram Teen Accounts. Our agreement helps ensure parents do not conflate movies and social media, and that MPA film ratings – with over 90% approval from American parents – continues to protect the trust we have built over nearly sixty years.”
Read Next: MPA Slaps Instagram With ‘Cease and Desist’ in Fight Over PG-13 Rating
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