Uh oh. The girlies are fighting. Following a cease-and-desist order from the Motion Picture Association, Instagram will “substantially reduce” the use of its PG-13 rating in reference to censored teen accounts. The social media platform will also add a disclaimer to clearly distinguish between the MPA’s PG-13 rating and its own. All of this goes into effect beginning April 15.
The term “PG-13” is pretty ingrained in our everyday vernacular. It’s commonly used as slang for how appropriate something is, especially in a dating context. Example: “Keep it PG-13.” Apparently, the MPA doesn’t roll with that. At least, not when a platform like Instagram uses the term. When Meta announced Instagram teen accounts late last year, it included a disclaimer that the accounts would be filtered through a PG-13 rating. The MPA went full Hulk. The association promptly delivered a cease and desist letter to Meta, claiming the move was “false and highly misleading.” It really is that deep.
Meta quickly backtracked, eventually reaching an agreement with the MPA to resolve the issue. Instead of the rating being marked as “PG-13,” Meta will change it to “inspired by movie ratings for ages 13+”. Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the MPA, addressed the situation with the following statement.
“Today’s agreement clearly distinguishes the MPA’s film ratings from Instagram’s Teen Account content moderation tools,” said Rivkin. “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.”
“We’re pleased to have reached an agreement with the MPA,” added 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.”
On top of “substantially reducing” its PG-13 rating, Meta will add an additional disclaimer to further differentiate between the two. The full disclaimer reads as follows:
“There are lots of differences between social media and movies. 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.”
Who knew a little old rating would would stir up so much chaos. I suppose after owning your own rating system for 60 years, it’s only natural to get a little possessive over it. To reiterate, the changes in this post go into affect on Instagram on April 15.