Hollywood's leading trade association is demanding that Instagram stop using the famed "PG-13" rating to describe its new content policies for teens.
The Motion Picture Association, which represents the film industry's marquee studios and streaming services, sent a cease-and-desist letter last week to Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook.
"The MPA has worked for decades to earn the public’s trust in its rating system," Naresh Kilaru, a lawyer for the MPA, said in an Oct. 28 letter to Meta.
"Any dissatisfaction with Meta’s automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA’s rating system," Kilaru added in the letter, which was shared with NBC News on Wednesday.
Kilaru said Meta's advertising claims that its teen accounts would be "guided by" PG-13 ratings standards were "literally false and highly misleading." He said the PG-13 label is a "registered certification" mark "owned by MPA."
Meta announced in an Oct. 14 blog post that Instagram is "revamping Teen Accounts to be guided by PG-13 movie ratings, meaning teens will see content that’s similar to what they'd see in a PG-13 movie, by default."
"Just like you might see some suggestive content or hear some strong language in a PG-13 movie, teens may occasionally see something like that on Instagram — but we’re going to keep doing all we can to keep those instances as rare as possible," Meta said.
In a response to the MPA's letter, a Meta spokesperson said in part: "We know social media isn’t the same as movies, but we made this change to support parents, and we hope to work with the MPA to continue bringing families this clarity."
Meta said the company did not intend to suggest it had officially partnered with the MPA or gone through its ratings process, and it said it never made that claim. The tech giant simply drew inspiration from the movie industry, it said.
The MPA (formerly known as the MPAA) rolled out its famed ratings system in 1968. The PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984 after some viewers and filmmakers lobbied for an intermediate designation between "PG" and "R." (Fun fact: The first film released in the U.S. with a PG-13 tag was "Red Dawn.")
The MPA's cease-and-desist letter to Meta said its ratings are "determined by an organic and consensus-based process driven by an independent group of parents who view the entirety of a film and evaluate various factors in context."
"Meta's attempts to restrict teen content literally cannot be 'guided by' or 'aligned with' 'the MPA's PG-13 movie rating because Meta does not follow this curated process," the letter said. "Instead, Meta’s content restrictions appear to rely heavily on artificial intelligence or other automated technology measures."
The MPA represents Hollywood's five major legacy studios — Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. — as well as Amazon MGM Studios, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. Universal Pictures is a unit of NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.
