Threads moderation team refuses to take down post of crypto scam
"Our team reviewed post on Threads. They found that it does not go against our Community Standards on fraud or scam," Instagram says in its denial to our team's takedown request of a probable crypto scam.
Recently, our team reported a crypto scam on the Triteens Media Threads account to the moderation team. The following is a screenshot of an image of the reported post that was sent to the moderation team for review. We flagged this as violating Threads' community standards on fraud, scam, and deceptive practices. It is worth noting that our original post contained nothing of relevance to what was mentioned in the original thread in this screenshot, which may be an indication the comment is spam or promotion.
Impersonating public figures is a common tactic used by cryptocurrency scammers, who often use fake endorsements or giveaways. Additionally, Scamwatch by the Australian Government warns that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. This screenshot from an apparent news article claims to provide 20,000 USD for free in "charity" if you use their code on the website. The offer of free money raised suspicion, prompting an investigation, and there was no attribution to the actual article in the user's post.
To get a further understanding of whether this site was a scam, I googled "Metascorex" to see what I could find. From a glance, I could see many articles and websites about the site potentially being a scam, calling out the website's recent registration, the use of "celebrity endorsements", and too-good-to-be-true offers. I also searched for any articles mentioning Elon Musk and Trump forming this so-called "charity" organization, but there were no articles highlighting this. Upon digging further I found the video shown below.
Please note we have reuploaded the video to our channel with sufficient warnings to avoid mistakenly having people fall for this and also decrease engagement with the original video.
It is worth noting that the video is captioned "Elon Musk Foundation free $21980", however, I couldn't find any explanation as to which foundation it was, nor any relevance to Elon Musk in any part of the video. No images or quotes were referencing him at all in the video. The video had no voiceovers at all, just music and a screen recording. This led me to conclude that this account may either be a bot or someone being paid to make these videos due to the lack of quality and also the lack of comments or likes on the video.
Another part of my investigation involved verifying the claims that the domain was recently registered, which is a potential indicator of a risky site. Sure enough, an ICANN lookup revealed what was already claimed by numerous other sites: this domain was registered on December 18th, 2024. This not only suggested that the domain is new but another red flag is the fact that this site claims to have been in operation since 2017 on its footer. See the second screenshot below.
Instagram's Response
So now that we've established that this website is most likely a scam, surely Instagram would accept this post as a scam and take it down right? However, the response was denied with Instagram stating they will not take down the post, but giving the option to appeal the decision. Despite our appeal, a similar reasoning was given to refusing deletion as stated in the image below:
These decisions were often made rapidly, within 1 or 2 hours which gives the possibility that Instagram's AI system could be making this decision instead of a human reviewer as even our review of this website took quite a while, and making a decision as important as a moderation action would probably take longer. This theory has not been verified, but if it is true, it could highlight one of the reasons these posts are not getting deleted. Meta did not immediately respond to our team's request for comment on this decision.
In a previous incident in October, Instagram's head Adam Mosseri blamed human reviewers for moderation issues that occurred on the platform. In the official response, Mosseri stated "We’re fixing this so they can make the better calls and we can make fewer mistakes," with "they" referring to the human moderators on the platform.
Upon further research, it appears Triteens is not the only Threads account to face these inconsistencies in moderation. Here are some posts we found referencing moderation failures on the platform and Instagram. These reports have not been verified by our team.
Interestingly enough, one Threads post alleges that typing "Merry xmas" gets your posts hidden as spam. Once again, we have not independently verified these claims. However, there is widespread debate over automated moderation practices on the platform.
A journalist from The Verge claims to have experienced similar moderation practices. The journalist claims that their account was deleted for "being underage" even though they weren't. Their appeal was denied when asked to review the decision by sending their ID. The minimum age to be on Instagram is 13 years old. In fact, in a Reddit post showcased below, another user appears to have experienced unfair moderation on their account suggesting they were banned from commenting for apparently no reason. The post contains replies of other people with similar experiences, saying their compliments on people's posts were deleted for spam.
Is anybody dealing with relentless Instagram moderation and/or comment removal?
by in Instagram
Key Findings
- A probable crypto scam directing users to Metascorex.com has been promoted via Threads on Instagram.
- The crypto scam has recently registered domains and possibly uses botted YouTube accounts to post videos advertising the product.
- Instagram's moderation team suggested that the content "does not go against" their fraud and scam policies.
- Instagram has been using AI moderation intensely in their moderation.
- Previous incidents have been blamed on human reviewers.
- Numerous social media posts and an article from The Verge allege odd/unfair moderation decisions by Threads and Instagram moderators.
Conclusion
Metascorex.com is most likely a scam, as free money is almost always too good to be true. Whoever is involved in this has been doing numerous shady practices including potentially botting YouTube accounts to post ads, registering domains recently despite claiming to have been founded in 2017, and using false or misleading celebrity endorsements. Overall, the site undeniably falls under Meta's guidelines on fraud, scams, and deceptive practices. However, Instagram's system denied our request for takedowns not once but twice. Upon further investigation, there were other instances of people alleging incorrect moderation decisions being made on their accounts or reports. While moderation is a difficult task for huge platforms, it is important to maintain a safe platform free from spam or inauthentic user accounts.
If you have questions or comments for me or find an issue with this article feel free to email me at [email protected] or DM us on Instagram below!
Triteens Media is THE media outlet for teenagers. Stories and journalism you can trust. We report on what matters. Subscribe to us if you want amazing reporting coming straight to your email!
This article was independently reviewed by The Cat Collective via Discord.
