Motion Picture Association Issues Cease and Desist to Meta: Stop Using PG-13

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has issued a cease and desist to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, demanding that the platform stop using the “PG-13” rating it recently rolled out, arguing that doing so exploits its brand.

The cease and desist refers to a change Instagram’s teen accounts protections to be “guided by 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.” The platform says it is “guided” by the movie ratings and content shown to teen accounts would be automatically placed into an updated 13+ setting and would be unable to opt out without a parent’s permission.

“Just like you might see some suggestive content or hear some strong language in a PG-13 movie, teens may occasionally see something like that on Instagram — but we’re going to keep doing all we can to keep those instances as rare as possible. We recognize no system is perfect, and we’re committed to improving over time. We hope this update reassures parents that we’re working to show teens safe, age-appropriate content on Instagram by default, while also giving them more ways to shape their teen’s experience,” Meta wrote in a blog post last month.

The day of the announcement, the MPA said it was not consluted on the change.

“The Motion Picture Association was not contacted by Meta prior to the announcement of its new content moderation tool for Instagram Teen Accounts. We welcome efforts to protect kids from content that may not be appropriate for them, but assertions that Instagram’s new tool will be ‘guided by PG-13 movie ratings’ or have any connection to the film industry’s rating system are inaccurate,” the MPA said.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the MPA today doubled down on its initial statement and says the use of PG-13 by Meta actually harms the rating, and argues using the PG-13 rating is given to movies based on a rigorous, comprehensive process and it is not possible for Meta to do the same on its platforms.

“The MPA’s ratings program is a rigorous, human-driven process where every film is carefully assigned an individualized rating and content descriptors. Whatever mechanism Meta uses to moderate content cannot responsibly be compared to that comprehensive process. The MPA’s program rates roughly 500 films a year; millions and potentially billions of images and videos are posted to Instagram each day,” the MPA says.

“For more than half a century, the MPA has maintained the well-known motion picture rating system to guide moviegoers and parents alike regarding the content of films they are about to watch. All of the ratings underlying the system are registered certification marks owned by MPA, including the famous PG-13 certification mark.”