Say you’re a nice old lady, looking for something to feed your sick grandchild. You decide to use Facebook – your main information-gathering tool – to search for recipes. Ooh, chicken soup sounds good, except… Now Facebook thinks you're a child predator?


As this hypothetical boomer grandmother discovered, along with many other people across social media, typing “chicken soup” into Facebook’s search bar yields no results, with a warning against child sex abuse displayed instead. “Ok, wtf is going on on Facebook?” @ident1kitt tweeted.




It’s no secret that Facebook and Meta platforms as a whole are much stricter in regards to explicit content than say, Twitter – It’s called X now for goodness sake. That caution extends to preventing illegal activity, such as the distribution of underage explicit material. But while that’s all well and good, what the heck does it have to do with chicken soup?


“I don't know what that's about and I don't want to know,” @spiritualcat wrote.


While it’s not clear exactly what chicken soup specifically has done wrong, Meta has obviously determined, as their message says, that the “search might be associated with child sexual abuse.”


According to an article on the warning message by HITC, “Distributors of child sexual abuse images are using coded language to post such content on social media without getting caught.” This language helps them avoid triggering detection tools. A piece by NBC added, “Sometimes they used generic terms with the initials ‘C.P.’, a common abbreviation.”





Fortunately, our boomer grandmother isn’t actually on any watch lists for her search, nor will she be accused of looking for anything other than actual chicken soup. She’ll just have to specify her search terms, for the greater good. That is if she can figure out how.