Twitter has been all the rage over the past few weeks. The social media company has been on everyone’s mind ever since CEO Elon Musk began dropping the “Twitter Files” to expose how the company, under prior leadership, handled its content moderation strategy.
But one of the primary issues of note was the problem of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) being shared on the platform. Twitter had a significant problem with users sharing content depicting the abuse of children.
Despite having teams dedicated to addressing the problem, the company was unable or unwilling to take serious action toward eliminating this problematic material. Twitter’s child porn problem got even more attention when two plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the company because it refused to remove video footage being shared on the platform in which they were being abused when they were minor children.
Despite repeated pleas to remove the material, Twitter’s employees insisted that it did not violate its terms of service. It was only after the lawsuit was filed that the company relented. But by that time, the videos had been shared tens of thousands of times, further compounding the abuse these two individuals endured.
Andrea Stroppa, an independent researcher, working with Twitter’s Trust and Safety team, posted a thread on Twitter giving an update on what the company is doing under Musk’s leadership to combat the spread of CSAM on the site.
Stroppa noted that the company is “continuing its operations against accounts that publish child sexual abuse material” and explained that it was also focusing on foreign-language accounts disseminating CSAM:
The company is also working on making it “easier and faster to report CSAM with clear reporting options,” and “working to detect users that try to bypass account suspension.”
Twitter is also enhancing its collaboration with law enforcement. But over the course of working on this project, Stroppa noted: “The more we work on child sexual abuse material on Twitter, the more we find the HELL left by the old Twitter management.”
At this point, the analyst went into how the company operated under previous management:
We found several accounts that shared CSAM, including videos of children and teens involved in sexual activities. >95% of these accounts were created before Elon Musk bought Twitter. Some of these accounts have been active for years (even since 2017).
He explained that the accounts found to have shared CSAM “acted with impunity for years” and that they amassed over ten million views on the platform. Fortunately, Twitter has now taken those accounts down.
Stroppa continued, recounting what he found about how Twitter’s prior management responded after discovering an account sharing CSAM. He tweeted:
I found that old Twitter, in many cases related to child sexual abuse material published on the platform by malicious users, instead of suspending the whole account, just removed the tweet. Now Twitter, under Elon Musk’s leadership, directly suspends the accounts.
So, for all these years, accounts that shared child porn were allowed to remain on the platform. It was only their problematic – and illegal – tweets that were purged, meaning they could just continue sharing the material. Musk appears intent on protecting children on the site. “Two days ago, he authorized additional measures to fight child abuse on the platform. Old management had other priorities, but for the new Twitter, children’s safety is #1,” Stroppa wrote.
Shortly after taking over Twitter, Musk indicated that dealing with CSAM would be a top priority. It appears he is making good on his promise, taking steps even the company’s previous management refused to take. What is even more galling about this situation is how the activist media has attempted to use child porn to attack Musk.
Not too long ago, I wrote about how Forbes published a piece in which experts claimed Musk was making the problem worse by firing half the company’s workforce. It was an attempt to weaponize child porn in their effort to undermine his work – indeed, that is how low these people are willing to go.
Nevertheless, their attacks aren’t stopping him from doing what is right, unlike his predecessors. Now that he is in charge of the company, it is not only free speech that is being protected, but also children.