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 are shown a warning titled “Child sexual abuse is illegal.”
That strange fact was pointed out in a post on X yesterday, and to this day, I still see it when I search for the phrase. But why? Well, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with recent Threads moderation failures. There are also no explosive revelations about Megalopolis or its main star that I know of.
Instead, Facebook and Instagram appear to be blocking searches that contain “mega” and “drive.” I saw it when I searched with those two words together, but not when I searched for “Megalopolis,” “Adam Driver,” or any of the terms combined. with any other. The problem is not new either, since this Reddit post from nine months ago This is illustrated by the search for “Sega mega drive” on Facebook. (That search seems to work as expected now.)
It’s unclear why the words are blocked, and Meta didn’t immediately respond when we asked. Facebook and Instagram have blocked other seemingly harmless terms, such as “chicken soup,” because distributors of child abuse materials use it as part of your coded language to evade detection on the platforms.