One of the enormous problems confronting Elon Musk when he took the helm at Twitter was the platform’s rather friendly attitude towards Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE).
Not only were users able to exchange explicit images at very low risk, but when victims of sexual abuse as children came forward, Twitter was very resistant to demands that their images be taken down.
Twitter refused to take down widely shared pornographic images and videos of a teenage sex trafficking victim because an investigation “didn’t find a violation” of the company’s “policies,” a scathing lawsuit alleges.
The federal suit, filed Wednesday by the victim and his mother in the Northern District of California, alleges Twitter made money off the clips, which showed a 13-year-old engaged in sex acts and are a form of child sexual abuse material, or child porn, the suit states.
Twitter sent a representative to the boy’s house to verify he was the person in the video clips, and then, according to the lawsuit, he got this message, “Thanks for reaching out. We’ve reviewed the content, and didn’t find a violation of our policies, so no action will be taken at this time.” However, Twitter did give him advice on how to make a copyright claim for the material.
There were hashtags on Twitter that served as a veritable online bazaar for exchanging kiddy porn. This all took place despite Twitter having a “Truth and Safety” mogul who was allegedly concerned about “safety.” However, he seemed more interested in stomping out parody (Former Twitter Safety Executive Defends His Ridiculous Censorship of the Babylon Bee and Libs of TikTok) and a bureaucracy that was supposed to suppress the online trade in sexually explicit material involving children.
When Musk arrived at Twitter headquarters, he probably did more in just a few days than the Twitter bureaucracy had done in years. Eliza Bleu, a survivor of human trafficking and advocate for its victims, complained in an interview that Twitter, before Musk took charge, had shown no interest in the issue of CSE on Twitter.
All this time, Twitter has not actually done anything meaningful to combat the problem. For ten years, the platform has not had a proper reporting form for content containing child sexual abuse material.
Thanks to the efforts of Eliza and those who supported her, in February 2022, Twitter added a feature to easily report child sexual exploitation material, which was a huge victory in a years-long struggle. However, a few months later, Twitter “took the easy reporting system for minor survivors away.” This was deeply disturbing news, as it is difficult to find a reasonable reason why the ability for platform users to easily report about CSE content has been removed.
Imagine having a “Trust and Safety” apparatus that took a decade to agree to make it easy to report kiddie porn? So what did the “Lies and Dangerous Stuff” group do?
And Musk seems to be true to his promise to make shutting down the kiddie porn trade on Twitter a top priority.
To those who aren’t aware yet, last week Twitter did add a direct reporting option for child sexual exploitation. (ONLY on tweets with content images/videos) this was not previously available and was a separate form that wasn’t easy to find.
I’m grateful to see these changes. pic.twitter.com/AI88XdX9HW
— Eliza (@elizableu) November 20, 2022
Even though the “safety” part of Twitter was a stinking dumpster fire of failure — in fairness, it was pretty successful in its primary mission of protecting leftists from hurt feelings — the mainstream media claimed it would even be worse under Musk because all the little fascists involved in policing thoughts were fired. Here is just one example of the coverage:
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) December 9, 2022
Today, the last vestiges of the thoroughly failed effort to prevent Twitter from being a prime source of CSE pulled pitch.
These are just some thoughts on the overdue departure of these people and what it will mean.
The “council” they were a part of was just as much an exercise in eyewash as was Twitter’s efforts to stamp out CSE material. This was just a sinecure to give some politically connected people visibility and a side gig to earn income. At least, I imagine they drew a salary for their participation in whatever the hell it was they did. They got to put the title on their business cards (by the way, the last name “Podesta” is what in Army CID they called a “clue.”) And they did, as our Brit friends would say, f*** all about the problem. Mike Cernovich addressed their accomplishments perfectly, and Elon Musk seemed to agree.
It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
Their joint “resignation” is an obvious political statement — one of them should have been sent to a hospice for terminal TDS patients — to embarrass Musk.
If Elon Musk continues to have suppressing CSE on Twitter as a priority, he’ll be successful. There is no relationship at all between having a man who did his Ph.D. thesis writing about his experiences on Grindr (I’m not joking) and having a successful anti-CSE effort. Rather, I would theorize just the opposite, as the whole “Minor Attracted Person” (the English word is “pedophile,” but that hurts feelings) bullsh** is starting to infect the left in the way that transgenderism has. The solution is to throw enough technical resources at the problem to make the cost-benefit ratio of using Twitter for CSE unfavorable. The last thing needed is a battalion of “policy” gurus confusing the issues.
The bottom line is that before Elon Musk arrived at Twitter, it had shown little interest in combatting CSE on the platform beyond the amount needed to keep governments at bay. I think the reason for that clearly lies within Twitter’s culture. The only way to fix a culture so broken that it would not take down explicit images of a 13-year-old engaging in a sex act is to burn it to the ground and rebuild. Musk is doing that.
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