On November 5, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPA) officially sent a letter to Meta, requesting it to stop using the film rating term "PG-13" in Instagram's youth account content review policy, otherwise it will take legal action. The MPA believes that Meta failed to consult with the film rating board and that Instagram’s new review policy claimed to be “based on the PG-13 standard”, seriously misleading the public and causing confusion and damage to the film rating system.
MPA Chairman and CEO Charles Rifkin said they welcome measures to protect minors from inappropriate content, but Instagram's claim that it is "guided by a PG-13 film rating" is inaccurate and has no connection to the film industry's rating system. The MPA also emphasized that its rating system has been in operation for nearly 60 years, and most parents believe that the ratings are helpful in selecting appropriate films.
According to the Wall Street Journal, MPA’s lawyers sent a cease and desist order to Meta on October 28, arguing that Meta’s use of “PG-13” in youth account descriptions was “literally false and highly misleading.” They also emphasized that movie ratings are based on manual review by parents, not automatic management by AI, and were worried that Instagram’s approach would damage society’s trust in the movie rating system.
Meta responded that it has never advocated that the content of Instagram youth accounts receive official PG-13 certification from the MPA, and only uses the rating standard to help parents understand the type of content teenagers will see. Meta stated that citing PG-13 is fair use, and the new review system is designed based on the public PG-13 standard and is intended to help parents understand social media content scenarios in an easy-to-understand way, which is essentially different from the movie rating system.