The dark secret is that no social media company would clamp down on such a lucrative source of user engagement. A lot of the early adoption of social media platforms is by young people and... well, you see?
Just because pedophiles are common on social media doesn't mean they're particularly lucrative as a demographic . It's not as if they can legally form pro-pedo groups and chat and share child porn and create a social graph around their interests that would be of any value to advertisers.
Your comment triggered the thought that blackmail is INCREDIBLY lucrative.
So much so that I'm surprised it hasn't already happened. If favourite rogue state infiltrated FB/IG enough to do what Bark is doing on a system level... that's a scary amount of leverage.
And it's difficult to see how our society could protect against it.
Leverage against some random dirtbag who lives in a trailer? The bigwigs are using services like Epstein's, not Instagram spam. And they successfully shut down that potential threat when he was compromised.
There's a lot of spectrum between a trailer and Epstein. And you don't necessarily need people in Epstein's social circle, for such a scheme to pay off. Industrial espionage and sabotage doesn't require bigwigs - worker bees that happen to have access to things just so that they can do their daily job can do a lot.