Imagine this. Meta flies parent influencers to a waterfront location overlooking Sydney Harbour, hands out personalized Boy Scout badges and gourmet s’mores, then asks them to tell their followers that a blanket ban on social media for teens is a bad idea.
According to a new one, this is what happened Tech Transparency Project The investigation found that Meta staged the Sydney event in July 2025, five months before Australia’s landmark under-16 ban came into force. The TTP report shows that this playbook has now spread to more than a dozen countries where governments have begun to consider similar restrictions.
How Meta’s influencer playbook works
The pattern repeats itself almost everywhere, according to TTP’s findings. Meta hosts polished branded events, often called Instagram Safety Camp or Screen Smart, and then recruits actors, radio hosts, psychologists and parent influencers to promote its teen accounts to prove that bans are unnecessary.
In Indonesia, actor Darius Sinathrya told his 1.8 million followers to try out the security features. In India, actress Juhi Parmar has reassured parents that their teenagers are safer online, months after Instagram was approved for child abuse ads in the country. In Brazil, actor Douglas Silva, who has three million followers, did the same.
Many posts use vague hashtags like #instagrampartner instead of clear advertising statements. Meta also funds youth safety nonprofits and think tanks that repeat its anti-ban talking points without always disclosing that funding.
Why does this matter?
Independent testing tells a different story than influencer posts. The Washington Post previously found that Teen Accounts do not protect children from harmful content, and the TTP confirmed similar failings, repeating a separate investigation that found Instagram was serving sexual content directly to teen accounts despite Meta’s safety promises.
comment The GuardianEdward Patterson, a spokesman for Meta, disputed that its lobbying efforts were misguided, saying blanket bans simply pushed teenagers toward less safe, unregulated corners of the Internet. However, TTP director Katie Paul sees it differently, telling The Guardian that Meta’s reliance on paid messengers proves what the company itself knows, in her words, “the brand has become a problem”.
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